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OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical => Applications => Topic started by: Tuure Linden on August 25, 2019, 12:44:32 pm

Title: WordPerfect for Windows 6.1 OS/2 tools
Post by: Tuure Linden on August 25, 2019, 12:44:32 pm
I own a copy of WordPerfect 6.1 for Windows and it runs well under WinOS/2. However after installation there's a message box that states that additional tools for OS/2 is available and the OS/2 support disk should be ordered from Corel. That's not possible, of course, and I haven't been able to find the disk image from the Internet either. Does some one here perhaps have a copy of the disk?
Title: Re: WordPerfect for Windows 6.1 OS/2 tools
Post by: xynixme on August 25, 2019, 02:25:52 pm
https://winworldpc.com/product/wordperfect/5x-os-2 (https://winworldpc.com/product/wordperfect/5x-os-2)?

IIRC I've deleted my installed copy a while ago (after a backup), because it didn't work anymore.
Title: Re: WordPerfect for Windows 6.1 OS/2 tools
Post by: Tuure Linden on August 25, 2019, 02:49:57 pm
No, that's not it. It seems to be a native OS/2 version of WordPerfect 5.2 and it doesn't install under ArcaOS. I tried. There's an error message about insufficient RAM. Probably it was never compatible with Warp 4 in the first place.
Title: Re: WordPerfect for Windows 6.1 OS/2 tools
Post by: Olafur Gunnlaugsson on August 25, 2019, 03:05:02 pm
No problem, I uploaded it to Hobbes

http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/incoming/WP61Tools.zip
Title: Re: WordPerfect for Windows 6.1 OS/2 tools
Post by: Olafur Gunnlaugsson on August 25, 2019, 03:08:35 pm
No, that's not it. It seems to be a native OS/2 version of WordPerfect 5.2 and it doesn't install under ArcaOS. I tried. There's an error message about insufficient RAM. Probably it was never compatible with Warp 4 in the first place.

It will install under ArcaOS and eCS, but it will only install reliably onto the C drive, and only on some file systems, so no JFS. It may also need the "large disk fix" during install, but it works fine without it.
Title: Re: WordPerfect for Windows 6.1 OS/2 tools
Post by: xynixme on August 25, 2019, 04:24:55 pm
Sorry for assuming that WP itself shared the same extras.

It will install under ArcaOS and eCS, but it will only install reliably onto the C drive

FTR: my broken copy of WordPerfect for OS/2 used HPFS drive D: (< 2 GiB) indeed, which wasn't the boot drive.
Title: Re: WordPerfect for Windows 6.1 OS/2 tools
Post by: Olafur Gunnlaugsson on August 25, 2019, 04:30:50 pm
Sorry for assuming that WP itself shared the same extras.

It will install under ArcaOS and eCS, but it will only install reliably onto the C drive

FTR: my broken copy of WordPerfect for OS/2 used HPFS drive D: (< 2 GiB) indeed, which wasn't the boot drive.

It would install on other drives but there were some problems (that have escaped my mind, it's been a few years)
Title: Re: WordPerfect for Windows 6.1 OS/2 tools
Post by: Tuure Linden on August 25, 2019, 06:59:58 pm
The integration tools seem to work except Quicklaunch (there's an error message about a missing DLL). Thanks!
Title: Re: WordPerfect for Windows 6.1 OS/2 tools
Post by: Olafur Gunnlaugsson on August 25, 2019, 07:01:28 pm
The integration tools seem to work except Quicklaunch (there's an error message about a missing DLL). Thanks!

Does it say what the missing dll is?
Title: Re: WordPerfect for Windows 6.1 OS/2 tools
Post by: Tuure Linden on August 25, 2019, 07:40:40 pm
Actually it does, it name had "wp" and "20" something. I didn't write it down because I didn't like the quick laucher anyway. Back in the day when I used WP 6.1 in Windows 3,1 and laiter Windows 95 I found it annoying and disabled it.
Title: Re: WordPerfect for Windows 6.1 OS/2 tools
Post by: Fahrvenugen on August 26, 2019, 11:28:29 pm
Hi,

The patch / OS/2 tools for Wordperfect 6.1 works fine on JFS or HPFS, the only issue is that it needs to use the 8.3 file names.  Of course this is no different from any Win3.x application.

Otherwise I recently installed it on ArcaOS and had no difficulty.

I agree that the quick launch app isn't needed any more and I would not bother with it.   Back in the day - when machines didn't have gigs of memory and it would take some time for Win3.1 apps to start up it was helpful.  But today for most systems starting a Win3.x app is extremely quick, so there isn't really a benefit to running quicklaunch.

Otherwise I quite appreciate the efforts that Novel put into making sure that WordPerfect 6.1 ran well under OS/2 and had a few extra enhancements that were otherwise not available.

Title: Re: WordPerfect for Windows 6.1 OS/2 tools
Post by: Olafur Gunnlaugsson on August 27, 2019, 03:56:06 am
Hi,

The patch / OS/2 tools for Wordperfect 6.1 works fine on JFS or HPFS, the only issue is that it needs to use the 8.3 file names.  Of course this is no different from any Win3.x application.

The problem with JFS was with the native OS/2 5.x version of Word Perfect, not the WinOS2 version of 6.x

And 6x and 7x 16 bit Windows versions of WP are in general much more usable on OS/2 than the native version although v7 never got a port of the OS/2 tools like 5x and 6x
Title: Re: WordPerfect for Windows 6.1 OS/2 tools
Post by: Fahrvenugen on August 27, 2019, 05:59:46 am
I just found the "official" location for the tools, direct from Corel.

ftp://ftp.corel.com/pub/WordPerfect/wpwin/61/os261.exe

That's for the US English version and WordPerfect 6.0a or 6.1.  They also have a copy of the patch for other language versions of WordPerfect for Windows 3.1, along with a variety of other patches and utilities at

ftp://ftp.corel.com/pub/WordPerfect/wpwin/61/



Title: Re: WordPerfect for Windows 6.1 OS/2 tools
Post by: Olafur Gunnlaugsson on August 27, 2019, 06:45:04 am
I just found the "official" location for the tools, direct from Corel.

ftp://ftp.corel.com/pub/WordPerfect/wpwin/61/os261.exe

That's for the US English version and WordPerfect 6.0a or 6.1.  They also have a copy of the patch for other language versions of WordPerfect for Windows 3.1, along with a variety of other patches and utilities at

ftp://ftp.corel.com/pub/WordPerfect/wpwin/61/

Wow, The reason I uploaded to hobbes is that ftp.corel.com did not answer on sunday I assumed it was dead, anyway the file is the same as the one shipped by Novell except corel has added a note to the archive.
Title: Re: WordPerfect for Windows 6.1 OS/2 tools
Post by: Tuure Linden on August 27, 2019, 10:20:10 am
It's extraordinary that a software company still provides patches for such an old piece of software. Great! There might even be patches for older WP versions I have, for example 5.0 for DOS.
Title: Re: WordPerfect for Windows 6.1 OS/2 tools
Post by: Olafur Gunnlaugsson on August 27, 2019, 10:56:19 am
It's extraordinary that a software company still provides patches for such an old piece of software. Great! There might even be patches for older WP versions I have, for example 5.0 for DOS.

There are, in fact even patches for older WP DOS products such as DataPerfect and DrawPerfect, this is primarily because the stopped updating the ftp site in 2002.

BTW, Corel gave permission to a WP user group website to distribute the old Satellite Software International DOS software for free online a few years back, excluding old versions of WordPerfect etc., which Corel still sells. While that user group has disappeared, those old packages should be downloadable from somewhere.
Title: Re: WordPerfect for Windows 6.1 OS/2 tools
Post by: Olafur Gunnlaugsson on August 27, 2019, 11:05:08 am
P.S. Corel was bought by venture capitalists Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) last month, as they are notorious for hard cost cutting it may me an idea for those that still use old Corel software to download whatever support files they need from the ftp site now as it may not be there for long ...

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/07/03/1877785/0/en/KKR-Acquires-Leading-Software-Platform-Corel-Corporation-from-Vector-Capital.html
Title: Re: WordPerfect for Windows 6.1 OS/2 tools
Post by: Tuure Linden on August 27, 2019, 03:25:53 pm
I'm downloading everything interesting from the Corel FTP site right now. BTW, it was hard to find a good and working GUI ftp client for OS/2. I ended up using JFTP, it seems to work. I could have used command line tools such as wget, but I prefer graphical FTP client. And downloading files one by one with Firefox makes no sense in this situation.

I have already forgot the name of the client I used with Warp 3.0 over 20 years ago... There was at least one good FTP client if my memory serves me right.
Title: Re: WordPerfect for Windows 6.1 OS/2 tools
Post by: Fahrvenugen on August 27, 2019, 04:18:45 pm
These days I don't use FTP all that much, but I recall when I used Warp 3 there was one I had installed which once connected to a site it presented everything as if it was a folder / object.  You could just drag and drop the files you wanted or an entire folder to your system and it would grab everything in the background.  It worked great, especially if you wanted to create a mirror of entire FTP sites and such.

I agree that it is impressive that Corel has kept this content online and all in one place - especially when a pile of this stuff predates Corel owning the software (some of this stuff is Novell and some SSI).
Title: Re: WordPerfect for Windows 6.1 OS/2 tools
Post by: xynixme on August 27, 2019, 05:39:29 pm
it presented everything as if it was a folder / object.

Here NetDrive caused a lasting system hang while visiting ftp.corel.com/pub. A FAT32 update may have played a role. I had to use <Alt-F1> to rescue a desktop and to go to a prompt to delete volumes.cfg* files. SM/2 also couldn't visit the site. AFAICT there's no overload of interesting files, but something being interesting is about as personal as a "good" FTP solution. :)
Title: Re: WordPerfect for Windows 6.1 OS/2 tools
Post by: Andy Willis on August 28, 2019, 03:21:43 am
No, that's not it. It seems to be a native OS/2 version of WordPerfect 5.2 and it doesn't install under ArcaOS. I tried. There's an error message about insufficient RAM. Probably it was never compatible with Warp 4 in the first place.
I installed and have played with WP 5.2 for OS/2 (didn't have any real work to do in it) under ArcaOS.  The issue is not Warp 4 (or above) but rather that the installer cannot handle greater than 512M (as I recall that was the limit).  With ArcaOS, I was able to set the memory to 512M.  The install then went fine (I don't recall having to make any other changes).
Title: Re: WordPerfect for Windows 6.1 OS/2 tools
Post by: Andy Willis on August 28, 2019, 03:24:40 am
It will install under ArcaOS and eCS, but it will only install reliably onto the C drive, and only on some file systems, so no JFS. It may also need the "large disk fix" during install, but it works fine without it.

I installed on e: (no C: drive in the system at the time) onto an all JFS system.  The only issue I really ran into was that the installer can only handle 512M of memory.
Title: Re: WordPerfect for Windows 6.1 OS/2 tools
Post by: Olafur Gunnlaugsson on August 28, 2019, 04:48:10 am
It will install under ArcaOS and eCS, but it will only install reliably onto the C drive, and only on some file systems, so no JFS. It may also need the "large disk fix" during install, but it works fine without it.

I installed on e: (no C: drive in the system at the time) onto an all JFS system.  The only issue I really ran into was that the installer can only handle 512M of memory.

As I mentioned before, this was not an installer issue, I may not have been clear in my first post