Topics

1

Multimedia / Can aswitch.exe be used for always connected/attached usb speakers?

« on: September 29, 2024, 11:06:56 pm »

Hi All

Probably a question for Rick to answer but if anyone else knows...

I have Dell SB521A soundbar - https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/dell-slim-soundbar-sb521a/apd/520-aasi/pc-accessories - on order which has a usb power and audio connector, no separate audio lead.

Will aswitch.exe recognise already attached usb speakers at boot and do it's thing to output audio via usb or will I have to faff around unplugging/replugging usb speaker lead to get it to work?


Regards

Pete

2

Comments, Suggestions & Questions / os2world website script problem?

« on: December 04, 2023, 02:37:01 pm »

Hi All

Over the past couple of days I have noticed os2world.com causes lots of peak cpu activity, far more than usual, to show in Warpcenter cpu monitor - even if all that is open is the homepage.

Is this some sort of runaway script? I ask because cpu activity does not stop when I close os2world and open a different website that I know - and have double checked - does not cause lots of peak cpu activity and only closing the browser (Seamonkey) gets rid of the cpu's peaking - very pretty it is in 12 colours.

I have also run Seamonkey visiting several websites that do not cause cpu peaking, then visited os2world which causes cpu's to start peaking, then closed os2world and revisited previous websites which all now show cpu's peaking.

Anyone else seeing this?


Regards

Pete

3

Applications / ArcaOS 5.1.0 and cups

« on: September 15, 2023, 08:40:22 pm »

Hi All

Having got 5.1.0 installed and seems to be working well I decided to hook up my printer.

Having watched the install stuff loads of "legacy printer drivers" on to the hard drive it was a bit disappointing to find that cups does not get installed.

Used ANPM to install the various cups bits and hplip to get my HP Envy Photo 6234 working, started the Install CUPS Printer and got:-

   "CUPSLPR.EXE not found"

or words to that effect.

A quick search of hard disk and DVD discovers no trace of cupslpr.exe - luckily I (thought I) knew the answer to this problem: copy the lpr.exe supplied with cups and now living in @unixroot\usr\bin to [BootDrive]:\tcpip\bin\cupslpr.exe

Well, Install CUPS Printer was happy with that and I got my printer installed.
All was looking good until I actually tried to print from Lucide which showed an error message about connecting to spooler to which I clicked Retry which seemed to have worked but nothing came out of the printer.

Checking the OS/2 printer there was nothing waiting to print, printer and driver setup looks good nothing obviously wrong.

Checking the cups side of things via the cups browser interface No Job got to cups...

I retried printing the document. This time it got stuck in the os/2 spooler waiting to pass the job to the cups spooler. Deleted the os/2 print job and had a think...

I checked the working cups setup on my old system and noticed that the lpr.exe files are very different sizes - the old system uses Pauls cups 2.1.0 zip packages which are unpacked into their own directories rather than scattered around inside @unixroot/usr. Could be that the ANPM installed cups (2.2.13) supplied lpr.exe relies on other files within @unixroot/usr...

I copied @unixroot\usr\bin\lpr.exe to @unixroot\usr\bin\cupslpr.exe, moved CUPS Daemon out of the Startup folder, checked the spooled print job had been deleted then rebooted.

After reboot I deleted [BootDrive]:\tcpip\bin\cupslpr.exe, started CUPS Daemon and retried printing from Lucide: Success.


Regards

Pete

4

Web applications / Which image sharing websites work with our old Seamonkey/Firefox?

« on: September 18, 2020, 05:57:44 am »

Hi All

Following a couple of hours of trying various image sharing websites I have come to the conclusion that they all now seem to use a later javascript, or something else, that our older browsers do not work with.

I'm posting this question in case I have missed a site that actually still works...


Regards

Pete

5

Hardware / Changing video driver on ArcaOS?

« on: September 09, 2020, 10:02:40 pm »

Hi All

I remember that eCS had a "video wizard" to change from SNAP to Panorama or vice versa does ArcaOS have something similar hidden somewhere?

If not do I have to uninstall SNAP, reboot in vga, then install Panorama?


Regards

Pete

6

Internet / Browser or website problem?

« on: June 06, 2020, 02:54:31 pm »

Hi All

Using Mozilla/5.0 (OS/2; Warp 4.5; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/45.0 SeaMonkey/2.42.9esr, checking about:buildconfig I see '--enable-optimize=-march=pentium-m -O2' which should help Dave identify exact build I think.

I am trying to access https://www.gumtree.com and during load images on the page briefly display but after loading the page is totally blank, no text or images. This worked until very recently.

The "View -> Page Source" displays the page code.


I have exchanged email about the problem with gumtree support who respond with "tested the site using a Chrome and FF browser on Windows 10, and all appears to be okay" along with the suggestion to try Chrome or other modern browser.

Having just installed haiku in VirtualBox I gave the included WebPositive browser a try with exactly the same results.

The WebPositive "about" shows:-

   WebPositive 1.1 (alpha) browser - September 2018

   HaikuWebKit 1.6.7
   WebKit 606.1.4


I guess WebPositive is not "modern" enough.

Out of interest is the above WebKit part of qt5? - is our proposed new browser already out of date?

Can anyone identify the problem(s) the above browsers have with gumtree.com?


Regards

Pete

7

Setup & Installation / More moving/creeping/downward sliding Desktop icons

« on: May 28, 2020, 07:02:05 pm »

Hi All

Moving Desktop icons is a problem that I have only encountered briefly once before on a laptop where it seemed to cure itself... or I do not remember taking any action to resolve the problem...

However, developed this problem a couple of days ago  on a desktop system: ArcaOS 5.0.4 installed, using WarpCenter at top of screen, XWP1.0.13 installed. As the problem does not look like it will "cure itself" I have been trying to investigate the cause.

Having found some old os2world discussions about this I tried running RmDesktopFolderPos.cmd which generated this output and left the Desktop as it was:-


[J:\PROGRAMS\UTILS\MOVINGDESKTOPOBJECTS]RmDesktopFolderPos.cmd run
Error: 218466@10 was not found in PM_Workplace:FolderPos.


Does not look like that will help then... though I have not checked some of the uses suggested so far.


Tried toggling the XWP Shutdown a few times with reboots.
No change.


With Desktop icons back in their "start" position, ie no vertical scrollbar anymore, I ran the WPTools checkini app.

No problems reported but on Desktop restart the icons have all moved down, the vertical scrollbar is back.
So, checkini does not help.

Moved the icons back by scrolling which got rid of the scrollbar.

I then ran cleanini - from http://www.ca-arnold.de/download/cleanini55.zip - and on Desktop restart the icons have *not* moved.

I then powered off the system and made a coffee.

On rebooting the system the icons have moved down again!

I suspect IFX running during boot has reinstated this behaviour.

I edited config.sys and put REM at the start of the ifx line.

I then scrolled the Desktop back into position and ran cleanini again - no Desktop icon "creep" on restart.

I then powered off the system, counted to 20, powered the system on.

No problem with the Desktop icons - so I guess IFX was reinstating the moving icons bit.

To test I rebooted - after using Text Editor to make these notes.

No moving Desktop icons.

I used the XWP Restart Desktop a few times with no "icon creep".


I edited config.sys and deleted the REM at the start of the IFX line then rebooted - and the moving icons problem is back.

I scrolled the Desktop back into position, ran cleanini, put REM at the start of the IFX line in config.sys and rebooted - no moving Desktop icons.

I can only guess that IFX is finding something in the existing os2*.ini files that is causing this problem but it seems strange that the moving icons do not happen when IFX is not run during boot. I had a read of the ifx.txt file and tried this command to test the ini files:-

   ifx /fvr


The output informed me:-

   Info:  removed invalid entry that causes Desktop icon-creep


As ifx /fvr runs in read only mode that entry still exists and, it seems, does not affect anything unless ifx is run during boot in which case the moving icons problem appears. Strange that running ifx during boot does not remove that invalid entry - or does it?

I had a look through some of the ifx*.log files generated during boot and see:-

   Info:  removed invalid entry that causes Desktop icon-creep

Has ifx failed to remove that entry as the "creep" happens if ifx is run during boot - but, strangely, not when ifx is *not* run during boot.

For now ifx is not called during boot as it seems to be introducing the problem - maybe the above "invalid entry" is removed but, maybe, that entry is what prevents the "icon creep"?


Any thoughts on this "moving/creeping/downward sliding Desktop icons" problem variant?


Regards

Pete

8

Setup & Installation / Airboot no longer works...

« on: May 11, 2020, 11:27:57 pm »

Hi All

An interesting evening so far. Thought I would create an ArcaOS 5.0.4 USB Flash Drive install which worked OK; booted fine to the Maintenance Console so I would expect to be able to install from it.

However, on rebooting from the Maintenance Console Airboot threw a wobbly and delivered this message:-

Scanning...
- Your system has at least one broken partition table entry or your hard drive contains bad sectors. System halted.(HDD2)


Hmmm... does not look good.

I booted from an ArcaOS5.0.1 dvd to the Maintenance Console and from there discovered that there does not seem to be any Airboot docs installed on my ArcaOS 5.0.1 system.

I did locate airboot2.exe in \sys\bin and ran it thinking to delete the Airboot installation and then reinstall. So I then discovered it is a case of using "lvm:newmbr:1" on the command line to remove Airboot.

Before going any further I chkdsk'd drives with no reported problems, no problems at all running dir on any drive.

I had a look at the disks/drives using LVM - which made no complaint about bad partition table(s).

As I have DFSee installed I fired that up - I would like to say no problems reported but there are some lines that have me puzzled:-

At least 4 non-trivial minor warnings were not shown. Use 'part -w:t -t-' for details.

DFSee OS/2   15.0 : Executing: part -w:t -t-
Command timestamp : Monday 2020-05-11 19:29:39
 Pid02=J: warning : Logical partition is marked as startable! (active)
 Pid03=H: warning : Logical partition is marked as startable! (active)
 Pid04=L: warning : Logical partition is marked as startable! (active)
 Pid06=D: warning : Logical partition is marked as startable! (active)


Not sure how they have become marked as startable, H: and L: are boot drives and on the Airboot menu but J: and D: are not - and I do not think logical drives can be marked startable.

Is this what Airboot was moaning about?

Having checked that my ArcaOS5.0.1 installation was Startable I rebooted and had no problem booting my ArcaOS installation.

I tried reinstalling Airboot which worked fine but on reboot delivered the above "- Your system has at least one broken partition table entry ..." After again booting the dvd to Maintenance Console and removing Airboot I can at least boot ArcaOS.

I can only guess that something is wrong with the Airboot configuration as there does not seem to be anything wrong with partitions or filesystems in use.

The problem is: How to get rid of the existing Airboot configuration?

Any "cures" out there?


Regards

Pete

9

General Discussion / Twenty Years Online

« on: April 05, 2020, 05:42:49 am »

Hi Martin

Looking forward to the next 20  :-)


Regards

Pete

10

Utilities / ISOFS 1.1.2

« on: March 06, 2020, 07:34:11 pm »

Hi all

Firstly: Thanks to Rich for this release.

Some problems I noticed with installing this package:-

1] For whatever reason my config.sys file was not updated when I uninstalled V 1.1.0, the existing ISOFS related lines were unchanged and a backup config.sys was not created.

2] The WPI installer script insists on installing  ISOFS to [boot drive]:\sys\bin and with no option to select an alternative location.

As my boot drive is small (2Gb) I do not install extra software to it - end of WPI install; time to use WPIView to extract the needed files to the location I want.


Regards

Pete

11

Hardware / Liquid/Water CPU Cooling systems

« on: February 03, 2020, 12:32:31 am »

Hi All

Just wondering who else is using some form of liquid CPU cooling system - and what? - and why?

I have 2 systems here using CPU "All-In-One" water cooling kits - "All-In-One" means a complete kit that comes prefilled and sealed.

Both systems are on their 2nd water cooling kit. They were both initially fitted with Antec Kuhler H2O 650 kits.
I of these failed within 18 months and there was a bit of an argument with Antec Europe about their 3 year Warranty which got resolved when I emailed the CEO Antec USA and explained why I was about to take Legal Action against Antec. I had an email from Antec Europe apologising that a trainee had made a mistake and misunderstood that the Warranty is from Date of Purchase not from the Date of Manufacture. They offered to send me a H600, as the 650 was no longer in production, which I was happy to accept. So Antec Warranty seems good - but you may need to argue if you get stuck with a trainee responding to a Warranty Claim.

The other Antec 650 kit started to fail a couple of weeks ago - just about at the end of the 3 year Warranty.

After a bit of "internet hunting" i decided to replace the failing Antec 650 with a Cooler Master MasterLiquid Lite 120 kit.

This was a fairly easy swap over as both kits utilise the existing AMD AM3+ CPU mounting backplate, so unscrew/unclip the Antec CPU cooler, undo fan/radiator assembly and remove from case, fit Cooler Master fan/radiator assembly, clean CPU, "gunge" CPU, clip on Cooler Master CPU cooler and adjust tension screws to give a tight grip.

Seems to be working fine.

Be aware that fitting a kit is not be so simple on all sockets. Very often it is necessary to remove the mainboard from the case to replace the CPU mounting bracket with a bracket supplied in the kit.


The reason I prefer liquid to air cooling is very simple: I live in an old house and no matter how often the Wife whips me into doing the "hoovering" dust build up in CPU air coolers happens very quickly requiring cleaning about every 3 months to avoid CPU overheating problems.

Of course with a liquid cooling system there is still a system fan to clean *plus* the radiator. I have found a trick here that works with both current kits: mount the fan to radiator so that it draws air through the radiator instead of the standard "pushing" the air through. This allows easy cleaning of radiator as the fan is not in the way plus the radiator helps prevent dust build up on the fan. I should add that in 3 years of using the Antec 650 I cleaned the radiator once; with an air cooler I would have been looking at cleaning 4 times a year for 3 years - and probably needed a new fan and heatsink after about 2 years.


Regards

Pete

12

Programming / How to obtain number of disk drives (not partitions) attached to system?

« on: November 04, 2019, 05:47:31 pm »

Hi All

I had a look at using DosPhysicalDisk but that seems to return almost the number of partitions available rather than disks.


Regards

Pete

13

Applications / Strange PDF file problem using Lucide...

« on: October 17, 2019, 05:15:42 pm »

Hi All

I have a silly PDF problem introduced by my ISP who is now producing my bills in PDF format.
As I cannot read the bills online I have been downloading them to view with Lucide 1.5.0 GA.
However, something has changed with the PDF files as I cannot view my later Bills using Lucide; all that is displayed are blank pages.

I have checked the Document Info available via the Lucide menu item View.

The older bills I can view all have this Document Info:-

Document: STANDARD.pdf
Format: PDF-1.7
Creator: Foxit Quick PDF Library 15.11 (www.debenu.com)
Producer: Foxit Quick PDF Library 15.11 (www.debenu.com)
Created: 01/01/2019  3:02:19 PM
Modified: 01/01/2019  3:02:19 PM


The pdfs that cannot be  vewed in Lucide have the same Docment Info:-

Document: 01062019.pdf
Format: PDF-1.7
Creator: Foxit Quick PDF Library 15.11 (www.debenu.com)
Producer: Foxit Quick PDF Library 15.11 (www.debenu.com)
Created: 01/06/2019  3:08:37 PM
Modified: 01/06/2019  3:08:37 PM

Obviously the values of Document, Created and Modified are different for each bill but the Format, Creator and Producer values are the same.

As the Format, Creator and Producer values are the same for Bills I can view with Lucide and those I cannot does anyone have any ideas on what the difference between the Bills could be and how to view those Bills that cannot be viewed in Lucide?


Thanks for any help.

Pete

14

Web applications / Browser or website problem?

« on: April 24, 2019, 04:25:34 pm »

Hi All

I could not access os2world the other day as it seemed to have crashed with a "Database connection error".

Now that it is back I do not seem to be able to click on a forum topic on os2world.com and access the discussion eg clicking on "Samba client on OS2 Warp 4.52" results in this page opening http://www.os2world.com/forum/index.php?topic=2064.msg21495#msg21495 which displays "404 Not Found" on the browser tab and

"Not Found

The requested URL /forum/index.php was not found on this server."


Looking at the url I changed it from http: to https: and the discussion is now displayed.

Anyone else having this problem? - and is it a website problem?


Regards

Pete

15

Applications / Using a scanner with hplip?

« on: April 19, 2019, 05:00:33 am »

Hi All

Had my Canon MG7550 pack up and decided to replace rather than repair.

As HP seem to be well supported by cups with hplip I settled on a HP Envy 6234 "all in one".
I then discovered that I needed a later build of hplip than was available from the ecups wiki... However, Paul is looking into building an update at the moment.

I did discover that a suitable version of hplip is available as an rpm and having already installed cups from rpm on my laptop I soon had a cups test page printed followed by some output from OpenOffice.

Great! Printing working, now for the question: Anybody using a scanner with hplip? - I see the rpm hplip has the scanner support files and am looking for advice/instructions on how to get this working; ideally with Tame/2 but just from the command line would be a start.


Regards

Pete