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Messages - Alex Taylor

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331
Hardware / Re: ThinkPad X60 tablet pen & multi-touch support?
« on: January 04, 2014, 02:48:00 am »
OK, I eventually managed to find the IRQ by searching around in Windows.  It's IRQ 5, so I've defined (1,200,5,I) for PSCOM in CONFIG.SYS.

Now COMRAW.CMD writes data, and DECODE seems to show something that might be meaningful. 

I've installed XSMOUSE and verified that PUTEVENT works. 

But I'm really not clear what exactly I'm supposed to do next.  I've tried running X61FSR.CMD but it does nothing except print out the screen size and move the mouse pointer to the middle of the screen.  Using the stylus or finger produces no discernable effect.

Am I supposed to do something else at this point?

332
Hardware / Re: ThinkPad X60 tablet pen & multi-touch support?
« on: January 02, 2014, 04:29:05 pm »
What official build of ACPITREE?  I can find no official build of ACPITREE.  Current ACPI releases only included the source code.

Binaries built for old versions no longer work.

333
Hardware / Re: ThinkPad X60 tablet pen & multi-touch support?
« on: January 02, 2014, 07:12:09 am »
The tablet works fine in Windows so presumably the hardware is enabled.

334
Hardware / ThinkPad X60 tablet pen & multi-touch support?
« on: January 01, 2014, 12:13:39 pm »
I recently picked up an X60t (pen+multitouch model) because I need a highly portable system for carrying around campus.

I've installed eCS 2.2 beta - so far so good, for the most part - all the usual basic devices work (although I had to change the video to Panorama as I got constant hangs with SNAP).

Now I'm looking at getting the touchscreen working. I downloaded Wim Brul's PENTOOLS02.ZIP and have been going through the instructions. However, I'm kind of stuck. I managed to compile and run ACPITREE.EXE for current ACPI. However, the output doesn't show any IRQ value, so I'm not sure what to specify when loading PSCOM.SYS.

         +*DTR_ T:[Device] HID:[WACF008] STA:[0xf]
 Current state:
      > IO:[1 0x200 - 0x200 Al:1 Len:8]
      >Trigger by Edge, Polarity High
      > ENDTAG


I tried the (1,200,4,I) value suggested for the X61.  However, when I run COMRAW.CMD with that set, and try a few stylus actions, I just get a 0-byte 19200.RAW file.

Any ideas?

335
Setup & Installation / Re: ecs2.2 beta refresh
« on: December 29, 2013, 05:08:27 pm »
Quote
Please open a bugtracker ticket on this if you haven't already.

I would, but I am not sure what I am going to report. Presumably, Mensys has tested installs along side of Windows 7 PRO (with a recovery partition), on a 500 GB disk. I would be amazed if they haven't seen the problem. Of course they missed a lot of bad stuff in beta I.

Never assume that your problem is self-evident or easy for the developer to reproduce.  We need to see the logs and work files generated by the disk utility (especially the *.rdf files which it places in %TMP%) in order to even begin to guess at what the problem is.

Quote
Can you tell me what the name of the integrity checker program is, so I can try it without having to go through the whole thing again?

DISKUTIL.EXE but it's not installed to the hard disk.  It's on the eCS install disc (IIRC in \ecs\install) - however you will also need s:\ecs\lang in your DPATH and s:\ecs\dll on your LIBPATH (replace S with your DVD drive letter) in order to run it.  Obviously this is set up automatically if you boot from the install disc. You can run the disk checker directly from the Maintenance Console, BTW.

336
Applications / Re: Which are your Favorite OS2-eCS Apps?
« on: December 29, 2013, 04:58:49 pm »
Let's see, talking purely about OS/2-specific programs then probably...
  • PMView Pro
  • PMMail
  • MED (text editor)
  • VX-REXX
  • YAOS

337
Hardware / Re: Boot 2.2 beta .iso from a USB memory stick?
« on: December 26, 2013, 05:10:38 am »
The eCS dev team has investigated ways to support booting off USB flash disk, unfortunately we haven't yet been able to figure out a method that will work.

338
Setup & Installation / Re: ecs2.2 beta refresh
« on: December 26, 2013, 05:07:44 am »
Quote
Okay, now the disk integrity test is happy, but miniLVM complains about a corrupt partition table, and it will allow no actions.

Please open a bugtracker ticket on this if you haven't already.

MiniLVM and the disk integrity checker are always supposed to be in agreement about whether a disk is acceptable.  If that is not happening, then the integrity checker is presumably failing to detect some critical issue and that absolutely needs to be fixed.

BTW please don't conflate MiniLVM with LVM.  It is LVM that reports errors with the partition table.  MiniLVM is nothing more than a dumb GUI that reports what LVM tells it.

339
Applications / Re: NTFS /Q
« on: November 27, 2013, 04:31:47 am »
Possibly the developer didn't want to release the code?  I believe NTFS.IFS was sublicensed from eCoSoft; it wasn't developed in-house by Mensys.

340
Programming / Re: Test build of GCC 4.7.3 available
« on: November 21, 2013, 10:04:01 am »
GCC 4.8.2 seems to be working pretty well now :) Qt4 builds ok and seems to work, trying to build Firefox 17 with it now.  Those two are pretty robust c++ test cases :)

That's great news! Thanks for all the amazing work, Paul!

341
General Discussion / Re: What is the agenda for OS/2 today?
« on: November 19, 2013, 01:53:56 am »
Your points are quite valid.

I think we may have a small opportunity here, actually. There's been a fair amount of backlash in the Linux community over the directions both KDE and GNOME 3 are taking (over-complicated bloatware, inarticulate vision, and a seemingly arbitrary & piecemeal abandonment of their founding UI metaphors).  I also get the impression there's a bit of a backlash brewing against the X Window system itself (which is one of the worst examples of combined specification and software bloat that you're likely to find anywhere).

If we can present what we want to do as a new GUI environment - which can run on any operating system, including OS/2 - that aims to recreate the Workplace Shell in its entirety (that means, including Presentation Manager) and is fully API compatible, then we might be able to drum up some enthusiasm. 

By aiming at a self-sufficient system, we would implicitly need to start with the basic PM framework first – but if we can get enough OSS community developers onboard, we might even be able to have a PM development group and a SOM/WPS development group that work in tandem.  (OK, maybe I'm dreaming in technicolour myself now!)  But the thing about PM is that architecturally speaking, and in terms of the tools and expertise required, it's not really that complex AFAIK.  That presents a lower barrier to entry.

I see nothing wrong with extending/improving the functionality of PM (for instance, adding some desperately-needed Unicode capable controls) as long as we are absolutely strict about the backwards-compatibility requirement.  Indeed, IMHO we'd need to allow for some modernization in order to motivate people to get on board.

342
General Discussion / Re: What is the agenda for OS/2 today?
« on: November 18, 2013, 10:37:47 am »
If I can interject my own thoughts.

I wholeheartedly agree with Martin's long-term objectives, and even the broader aspects of his strategy.  I do think it's unwise to try and start with the WPS, however, for several reasons.

First of all, the only way this project can get off the ground is if it attracts developer enthusiasm from the OSS community outside OS/2. That means, practically speaking, that the project needs to start with something that can actually be tangible and useful to the wider OSS community.  A new kernel is useful because it has no dependencies on lower-level OS/2 software.  Non-OS/2 users can actually do things with it.  Even a replacement for PM is potentially useful because, being itself the lowest-level graphics environment, it only depends on the underlying OS services – meaning that if it's well (i.e. portably) written, it could in theory be built and used on other OSes like *nix.  Again, it's something tangible for the OSS community to get behind.  But a replacement WPS that starts out by depending on the existing Presentation Manager... if you go and ask a random open source developer if they'd be willing to help out, they're just likely to respond "As a non-OS/2 user, exactly how do I benefit?"

In other words, what pitch is more likely to attract developers right off the bat?
1. "Let's create a new, open operating system based on the architecture of OS/2"
or
2. "Let's write some OS/2 software that only runs on existing OS/2 systems"

Second, and related, is that the necessary toolchain is so obscure that even if we can attract these outside developers, we'll have real trouble equipping them and keeping them engaged.

Third, and this is mainly a philosophical argument that I freely acknowledge many people will disagree with, is that I've long been opposed to the idea that the WPS is "the one indispensible feature" of OS/2. OS/2 is so much more than that, and I'm afraid that focusing straight away on the WPS above all else risks obscuring all the other parts of the operating system as equally important objectives.

343
Article Discussions / Re: ecs 2.2
« on: November 18, 2013, 10:21:59 am »
Agree 100% with Daniel's post.

Last year I sat down to try and learn how to write a simple WPS class.  My objective: create a subclass of WPFolder which added a single new item to its standard context menu.  After puzzling through several confusing tutorials on EDM/2 which were clearly written for older versions of SOM, I eventually created something which I didn't entirely understand but which at least compiled and showed up as a new WPS class.  However, it did nothing.  No new menu item.  I could find no information about how to debug or diagnose it, or where to look for more information.  Disheartened, I just gave up and shelved it.  I no longer have the time or the motivation to dig into it any more.

These are the barriers that face anyone trying to get into WPS development.

344
Article Discussions / Re: ecs 2.2
« on: November 15, 2013, 12:04:17 pm »
Tablets and smartphones (and other, possibly yet-to-be-commercialized devices) will almost certainly replace desktop computers within the demographic that uses a computer as an appliance: that is, for word processing, web browsing, email/social media, simple home accounting and (up to a point) games.

However, real computers/workstations will remain essential for other groups. People who need to do programming and development, for example.  Any setting where serious computing power and serious amounts of local storage are necessary.

Computers used to be loosely organized into three different levels: servers for back-room processing, workstations for serious work requiring serious hardware, and end-user devices. Since the mid 1980s the end-user segment has evolved from dumb terminals into powerful machines in their own right, and as a result it's gradually converged with the workstation segment to the point where the two haven't really been distinguishable for about the past 15 years or so.

What we will probably see is tablets and smartphones take over the end-user segment, and desktop computers will retreat back exclusively into the workstation segment.

345
Networking / Re: XWLan updates
« on: November 13, 2013, 10:49:30 am »
When I got the W500, it had an Intel 5300. I took that out, and replaced it with a 5100 that I bought on eBay.

When doing this, there are three antennae on the 5300, but only two on the 5100. I puzzled over that for an hour. Does it matter which lines are attached? I now wish I'd photographed the card after installation.

I really don't know.  Mine had a 5100 from the start. I've opened it up and examined the card in the past, and noticed that there are three antenna leads but only two are connected to the card (the third is tucked into the space beside the card with its end protected by some kind of black plastic cover).

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