Topics

1

Hardware / New PC - Gigabyte B450M S2H / Ryzen 3 3200 G

« on: April 11, 2020, 01:42:52 am »

Took the plunge (had a towel ready), after reading Ivans post I decided to get an AMD based machine. Gigabyte B450M S2H mainboard with a Ryzen 3 3200 G processor. Installing arcaos latest beta went smoothly, using PS2 keyboard and mouse (both had been lying in the parts bin for over 10 years). I haven't tested everything yet. Network works, sound driver loads but no speakers connected yet, so not sure it works. USB didn't install, because the board has only XHCD hardware. After installing the beta available to testers USB works, although I have only tried reading, not writing to MSD. USB keyboard and mouse work. Both (different models) Samsung 1 TB SSD's gave problems, as they did in another machine. Replaced one with a Western Digital one I bought, and that one does function well. Seems at least some Samsung SSD's and our AHCI driver are a bad combination. Will create a ticket for that at a later date. Panorama works well, came up in the right resolution.  Arcamapper did not report my complete nethood, but using ip address it could connect. Already did away with it, because I installed the full Netdrive package. So far, this has been a good experience. The only problem is, not more then 1.556.064 K physical memory available. Free shared memory however is 303 M, which is more than on my other machine. Don't expect it to be a problem, but time will tell. Next step is ordering another WD SSD and completely implement my current system on the new one. After that, decommission the old one. Anyone interested in a Core2Quad Asus P5Q deluxe?

2

Programming / RexxLA The Rexx Language Association

« on: September 18, 2019, 12:53:14 am »

Announcement:

Voice president Roderick Klein will be attending and doing a presentation at the rexx conference held at the famous Hursley IBM lab.
His presentation will be on the 23rd of September. http://www.rexxla.org/events/2019/schedule.html
There will also be presentations by René Jansen, who has presented at Warpstock Europe last year.
Rexx, altohugh cross platform, is still mainly executed on the OS/2 platform and many of the conference participants use OS/2. eCS or ArcaOS.

3

Internet / The new browser / QT5

« on: August 07, 2019, 09:50:17 pm »

It looks like a beta release of QT5 is imminent. Days rather then weeks away (my assessment, https://github.com/bitwiseworks/qtbase-os2/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+sort%3Aupdated-desc). Pretty much on schedule. Once the retail version is complete work on the browser proper can start. A lot of people have sponsored this project, either directly to BWW or through VOICE. Please, keep sponsoring. Beside the browser a lot of other application will become available in more recent versions with this port of QT5. i.e. qBittorrent. I think Tellie is already waiting impatiently to start porting newer QT apps to our platform). A little bird whispered in my ear that the Falcon browser  might be available as early as November.



Sponsoring: http://www.os2voice.org/membership.html#bww

4

Events / Warpstock Europe 2020

« on: July 11, 2019, 10:15:20 pm »

OS2Voice is asking for input for the location and date of Warpstock Europe 2020. We would prefer a location that is easy to reach by public transport. (air and train) We prefer a date somewhere around the last two weeks of May. There are some holidays in this period and e would like to know if we should plan in hose holidays or outside of them.Please make your suggestions before the end of July.

Bjorn.

5

Networking / Which NIC to buy?

« on: March 17, 2019, 01:06:02 am »

I have a computer with a Realtek onboard NIC. The Multimac driver traps. The trap can't be analized because the computer won't produce trap dumps.
So, I'm looking for an add-on PCIe NIC card with a non-Realtek chip that is supported by an OS/2 driver. Checked quite a few online shops but the choice in PCIe is very limited. Most cheap brands do not list the chip used. A high end >200 euro one seems a bit of a waste... Tried a PCI to PCIe adapter with an intel NIC fitted, but the BIOS doesn't even see the NIC, just the adapter. Does anyone know of something that works and is readily available and affordable?

6

Events / Warpstock Europe 2019

« on: March 05, 2019, 01:24:03 am »

http://www.warpstock.eu/

The page says  that currently a social even on Friday is not planned. I will arrive Friday afternoon and if anyone is interested, book a restaurant for a group. Visiting a few bars is also an option, first round is on me (Out of my own pocket, not Voice funds)

Let me know here, might take a while for me to react, don't check this site daily.

7

Setup & Installation / Installing ArcaOS on a GPT formatted disk

« on: February 26, 2019, 02:17:46 am »

Yes, I know, that doesn't work... I didn't know the disk was gpt when I tried to install ArcaOS. Once I realised my mistake, I made images of the system and windows partitions, converted the disk to MBR using DFSee, writing the images to a second NTFS formatted gpt diskin the machine, booted from a win 7 cd and inserted a USB stick with DFSee to restore the partitions (can't boot the pc from the hard disk anymore of course).
Lesson 1, never assume anything but check first. Can't run DFSee when booted from a win cd(. So, now I have partition images on an NTFS disk, one very large, and can't restore them under win, can't read them booted from the ArcaOS stick which -will- run DFSee.
Ok, I have a large USB disk, so, new plan, format it NTFS (takes half an an ice-age), install NTFS plugin with netdrive on other pc, copy the files over, reformat the USB disk to JFS, copy back and do the restore booted from ArcaOS stick.
And so I find out the poet Burns was right, the best laid plans.... Netdrive throws an error 3 when trying to mount the NTFS drive. Install NTFS003 package from Hobbes. Also doesn't work, tells me the MFT is not where it expects it to be.
What Now? DFSee comes to the rescue, select the NTFS drive, file recovery to a JFS drive. In a while I will be able to finally restore the images. I hope....
Of course it has taken me more time by now then even a reinstall of Win7 with the endless downloading and rebooting to get all the fixes. But I'm pigheaded and won't give up that easily.

8

General Discussion / QT funding

« on: February 12, 2019, 01:24:42 am »

As you all know, a current web browser is of vital importance to OS/2/ArcaOS/eCS. For a new browser we first need QT5- Currently, we have about half of the funds necessary to port it. The current state of donations is https://www.os2world.com/past-news/79-general/22325-qt-5-donation-meter.html . I have just donated 1500 Euro out of my retirement fund. It's not enough. We are only half-way. Take out your wallets and scrape the last pennies out. Every little bit helps.I'll buy everyone who donates over 10 Euros or dollars a beer at Warpstock EU!

9

Applications / Apache open office, user error)

« on: December 09, 2018, 10:07:40 pm »

I hadn't been using openoffice for some time and needed to edit a spreadheet. Opened it, did my editing, tried to save the document. Boom, Office crashed. Could not find out why at the time. Installed the new version a few days ago and could not open any documents. Insufficient user rights. Same with saving. No crash though). Duckduckgoed a bit, and found someone had had the same problem with a Linux version of Libreoffice, caused by a temp variable pointing at a directory that office had no permission for, with the result that the path entry for temp files in offices settings was blank and not editable. I checked, the same, editable though, but stayed blank after editing. So, I typed set temp at a command prompt. It returned TEMP=q:temp. Oops.....
I could only find the problem because the latest port of openoffice does the error handling better than the previous one. So, a big thank you to the guys at Bitwiseworks. Remember to keep sponsoring!

10

Events / Announcing Warpstock Europe 2019!

« on: June 27, 2018, 09:10:26 am »

Yep you have read it correctly, Warpstock Europe 2019 is being
announced. Why so early ?

You can read some of the reasons here https://www.warpstock.eu.

The primary one being that Warpstock Europe will be celebrating its 20th
anniversary. The Dutch OS/2 VOICE is looking to team up with other
computer interest groups such as REXX LA and the Dutch HCC.
The Dutch HCC in turn has a whole bunch of groups dedicated to older
computers.

The event will be organized at the Stay Okay Soest on the 18th and 19th
of May 2019. Access for Saturday and Sunday costs 105 Dollars. This is a
discounted rate until the 31st of July 2018! Normal price is 120 Dollars.

For further information please visit https://www.warpstock.eu!
I need people to book as early as possible. I am doing this by mostly
alone and I am trying to get other groups of the Dutch HCC involved as
well. But this requires me to know as far ahead as possible how many
people are coming to the event. And if I need to book an extra event
room. The event rooms at the Youth Hostel are extremely popular!

Hope to see everybody at the 20th Warpstock Europe in Soest!

Best regards,

Roderick Klein

11

Internet / SFTP client

« on: June 24, 2017, 12:58:39 am »

Hi,

Is there an SFTP client available other than the command line one that comes with eCS ArcaOS? I searched and only found KSPC which needs open SSL knix.
The command line one does not accept any input on a password prompt here with a certain site. I don't know if that is SSH related, using Pauls SSH.
Might try installing the knix SSH and KSPC later.

Related to this, currently the SSH clients rpm is broken and there seems to be a problem fixing it. Paul, if you read this, perhaps you have a few pointers? Ticket http://trac.netlabs.org/rpm/ticket/251

12

Setup & Installation / Installing ArcaOS keeping an existing yum/rpm

« on: May 23, 2017, 03:08:10 am »

I have tried to install ArcaOS to E: with selecting custom install and selecting F: to install the Unix environment to. On F: lives an existing yum/rpm/anpm environment. The installer hangs at the point it is trying to install the unix environment- The last log entry I see is:

Boot drive: E:
Destination: F:
RPM source: T:\CID\SERVER\RPM

I have tried moving etc\rpm, etc\yum and user\lib\rpm away from F: but it didn't make a difference. Has anyone else noticed similar behaviour?
Installing with unix environment to E: works as expected. I could simply edit the config,sys and delete the unix stuff from E: as a workaround but prefer to work out if this is a bug first (The installer hang itself IS a bug, it encounters a problem and does not report it).
As far as I'm aware it should be perfectly ok to share a unix env between two bootable partitions on a third partition because the rpm database is on the unixroot partition, so stuff should stay in sync.

Reported to Arca Noae as ticket https://mantis.arcanoae.com/view.php?id=1093

13

Events / Warpstock Europe in Rotterdam

« on: April 01, 2017, 01:48:42 am »

For those going to attend Warpstock Europe 2017 who like their food I am willing to make a restaurant reservation (restaurants here usually do not have seats available without reservation on Fridays and Saturdays). Some options are: SanSan, Sichuan kitchen, authentic, fairly spicey, Saigon, Vietnamese food, pretty good but 'western' version of food (authentic noodle soup though), Little V, really nice Thai food, Vessel 11, English (yes, they do serve very edible dishes), Smaak van Afrika, reasonable African (both west and east) cuisine. a host of Frencht style places usually a bit more expenisve, steak houses, etc etc. To make a reservation I will have to know how many will attend, so if interested, state your preference and date you would like a reservation for.











)

14

General Discussion / OS/2 Voice sponsorship

« on: March 10, 2017, 08:56:04 pm »

++ From the VOICE OS/2-eCS News Service   http://www.os2voice.org ++

From: roderickkleinDESPAM@DESPAMxs4all.nl

Hello everybody, 

Just like money does not grow on tree's, the same is true for software. While open source projects are great for some a lot of development time is needed. 

At end of last year VOICE made donation to Bitwiseworks of 2000 Dollars to help support Firefox development. Here you can find a list
of VOICE supported more with your donations:
http://articles.os2voice.org/ 

You can buy 1 or more OS/2 Voice sponsorship units here:
https://www.arcanoae.com/shop/voice-sponsoring/ 

If you have any questions please send us an email!
Or we hope to see you at Warpstock Europe 2017 in Rotterdam. Visit http://www.warpstock.eu for details. 

Regards, 

Roderick Klein
President OS/2VOICE
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15

Events / Warpstock Europe 2017

« on: March 10, 2017, 08:24:42 pm »

++ From the VOICE OS/2-eCS News Service   http://www.os2voice.org ++

From: roderickkleinDESPAM@DESPAMxs4all.nl

This year the OS/2 VOICE foundation will be hosting the European conference about OS/2: Warpstock Europe 2017 in the city of Rotterdam in the Netherlands in the central library on Saturday the 20 and 21 of May 2017. Please see http://www.warpstock.eu for details! 

We are working hard to put the schedule online, expect that within the next few days! But you can already find the information how to get to Rotterdam and where to stay on the website. Also hotels that are close by. Most hotels are within walking distance of the main library. Rotterdam central station are just around the corner and Rotterdam Blaak train station is underneath the main library! 

Access for 1 day is 25 Dollars for 1 day. You can buy access for Warpstock Europe via the Arca Noae website (See www.warpstock) for details. The organization team would very much like if you pay your access in advanced via the Arca Noae website with your creditcard or via paypal! At the requests of Arca Noae please do not send checks from Europe! They are extremely expensive to process! 

There will also be a social event on Friday evening at 19:00 which is organized by my personally. Everybody is welcome to join the tram trip of 1 1/2 hours. The tram will leave at 19:00 at tramstop Blaak just 1 minute walk from the main library. If you do want to join the tram trip buy with your Warpstock Europe access a ticket with the tram for 0 Dollar. For coffee and tea in the tram, please book in advanced!!! 

When on the tram you will be required to pay me Euro 7.50. Note the rent of the tram costs 600 Euro! I will partly pay this myself and we have been sponsored by Daniel Caroll from the US!! 

Some of the things you can expect at Warpstock Europe 2017: 

* The latest news from BWW regarding its software development. 

* The latest news from Arca Noae regarding its brand new OS/2 distribution called ArcaOS. 

* We will also have an OS/2 quiz to test your knowledge on OS/2 its history, technical details etc. This quiz will most likely also be accessible via the internet! 

More details to follow on the program! 

We hope to see you in Rotterdam. 

Best regards, 

Roderick Klein
President OS/2 http://VOICE.org
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