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Messages - UberCoder

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1
Networking / Re: Samba client on eCS
« on: September 07, 2025, 09:29:47 am »
Marvellous...thanks.

*Update* so...both yum install libc & libcx both failed as YUM couldn't find the repositories. I came ascross this yesterday, which i s whi I downloaded & ran the applicable .wip files, in an attempt to bypass this problem.

I also tried to install ANPM from the wiki page up linked...yum install arcanoae-rel, followed by a reboot. Now opening the yum bootstrap process (as well as any call to yum) fails with a bunch of python errors...what have I done?? Is there a way to wipe yum and start again from scratch - or would a complete re-install of eCS be simpler??.

I have no idea how to update WarpIn...and TBH now I'm slightly scared to try as it seems highly likely to break something else...

*UPDATE 2* right...I've been trying various things over the last few hours and the more I do, or try to do, the more it seems to me that OS2/eCS isn't the mature & functional OS I recall it to have been...There's no way I should be scrambling down all these rabbit holes just to be able to use the machine in any practical sense.

Thank you to all who have answered my questions over the last week - much appreciated. However, I shall now be wiping my eCS box and installing something more, shall we say, polished...

P.

2
Networking / Samba client on eCS
« on: September 06, 2025, 08:32:27 pm »
Hi All,

I'm running into a brick wall trying to get my eCS box to connect to the Samba server on my NAS.

I've done extensive reading and downloaded the NetDrive plugin, the evfsgui & the command line utils.

I'm now at the the 'yum install gettext' stage, but this isn't working. Apparently its missing a couple of C libraries libc063 & libc066.

I've tried 'yum install netlabs-exp', but 'yum install gettext' still fails with the same dependancy issues.

I've downloaded & instyalled the WPI packages for the 2 .dll files from ftp.netlabs.org,  but 'yum install gettext' still fails with the same dependancy issues.

Note: all the 'required' DLL files are in c:\ecs\dll

What else do I need to do to get 'gettext' to install properly...?

And what other gotchas are there lurking in the weeds for me to trip over next?!

cheers

P.

3
Setup & Installation / Re: eComStation 2.1 - black screen on boot up
« on: September 05, 2025, 07:44:41 pm »
Just of curiosity, on which hardware are you running it?

Martin, its a Patriot 'Bookshelf' PC. the MoBo is an ECS BKMVP4 v3 Socket 7 board with a K6-2 processor ar 450MHz & 288Mb or 100MHzRAM (oddly a 256Mb stick and a 32MB stick). The onboard video is a VIA Trident Blade3D. The audio is C-Media CMI8738AM and the network is a Davicom 9102A Fast PCI Ethernet adapter.

I've found the suitable drivers for all the onboard peripherals - but obviously I need to get them onto the machine before I can apply them! Fortunately the network driver is small enough to get on a floppy disk, so that'll be first. Then I hope I can set up the Samba client and then I can pull the rest across my home network. 

Cheers

P.

4
Setup & Installation / Re: eComStation 2.1 - black screen on boot up
« on: September 05, 2025, 07:30:23 pm »
Thanks - though I'd prefer to have made Warp worK, since this project is really a nostalgia trip back to when I used Warp on this PC at work back in the early 2000s...but I guess beggars can't be choosers!

5
Setup & Installation / eComStation 2.1 - black screen on boot up
« on: September 05, 2025, 04:29:09 pm »
Hi all,

After batteling with and losing to the Warp 4.52 installation process, I have deceided to try my luck with eCS 2.1.

This, too fought me, but its all installed now & working. I'm posting this incase a future new eCS2.1 user has a similar problem.

The initial phase of the installation went well. I had initially wiped the HDD with 'ClearHDD.exe'. I chose the default install option.

After the initial reboot following the completion of Phase 1, I selected to boot up from the HDD (the default option). The black screen with the 'eCS Blob' was shown & quickly replaced with the graphical eComStation splash screen. This then cleared and I was shown each device driver (basedev) as it was loaded. The last line being 'c:\os2\pmshell.exe'. After a short pause, the screen cleared. There were a couple of brief flashes, as if the screem mode was being changed, but beyond that, nothing. the HDD activity light was off. Nothing changed. Eventually I rebooted (ctrl-alt-del worked).

I'm not sure how many of these steps were actually necessary, but the followig got the installation back up & running for me:

  • On boot up, on the eCS Blob screen, press Alt-F1, to open the recovery menu.
  • Select F3 to install the basic generic display drivers & reboot when this complete (Note: for me, this initially did nothing...but read on
  • On boot up, on the eCS Blob screen, press Alt-F1, to open the recovery menu (again).
  • Select F6 to boot without checking hardware
  • You now should see the GUI being build on screen, but in 640x480x16 mode. Just complete Installation phase 2 from here.
  • After Installation phase 2 is compete & you've rebooted in the eCS (for real), You'll see as Final Installation Steps (or similar) dialog. select the 1st tasb ('Screen') & select to change you video driver. You'll be presented with a list of 4 options 'Snap', Panorama', 'Gradd' and 'VGA' (selected).
  • I selected 'Snap', closed the dialog & rebooted.
  • When the system came back up, I was able to select all the screen resolutions & colour depths my video hardware supports.(Note: any change requires a reboot)

That's it. Hopefully if anyone comes along in the future having a similar situation to what I had, this will help them.

cheers

P.

6
Setup & Installation / Re: Extremely slow Warp 4.52 installation.
« on: September 05, 2025, 08:12:56 am »
and here's the result....no change. If anything, its slower!

The more I think about it, I don't think its a disk/ide issue. Its more that the whole system is slow and any slow dis access is a by-product of that. However, I did a Win98se install as a comparison, earlier in the week, and it installed in around 30mins, so the machine itself is entirely functional.

All this leaves me at a loss...in 30+years of playing around with PCs both professionally and at home, I've never come across an OS install that appears to make no complaints, but just runs at small percentage (1%..? 5%..?) of what it should run at. It really feals like its runnnig at 4.5Mhz, rather than 450Mhz.

I think I'll try 1 last time, this time with a different HDD, and if that's not successful, I think I'll accept defeat.       

*UPDATE* 1st alternative HDD failed - BIOS didn't reccognise the CF <-> IDE adapter. moving on to try a 'real' HDD...   

*UPDATE 2* Annnnd no. Different HDD same problem. Switching to try my luck with eCS2.1...wish me luck! 

*UPDATE 3* And eComStation 2.1 doesn't work either...I suppose I should be grateful that it only tooK 2 hours to fail, rather than 2 days. Anyway, I'll start a new thread...

Thanks all for your input. 

P.

7
Setup & Installation / Re: Extremely slow Warp 4.52 installation.
« on: September 04, 2025, 10:42:52 pm »
SO...my activities for the evening, thus far:

I downloaded and booted from the DFSee floppy disk and deleted the pre-existing partition as suggested.
I then attempted to reinstall OS2 - this failed completely with some errors about a corrupted partition table. It was unable to build a new partiton.
I then booted into Dos and used Fdisk to create a new Primary Dos partition.
I then re-started the OS2 installation (without formatting the Dos partiton). Using the OS2 LVM, I was now able to successfully delete the Dos partition & create a new 'Installable' partition for OS2.
I am currently waiting for the OS2 installation process to get round to prompting me to select a format type, etc...Its not looking promising. Once again its running extremely slowly...

Just spotted RTAN's post and link to ClearHDD (thx). I've killed the install attempt (above) run ClearHDD on the machine & restarted the install. Partition creation passed uneventfully and I'm back back to waiting for the format type prompt, now. The the process does feel as if it's been running a little quicker...we'll see. 

I'll leave it to run over night, but if its still copying files tomorrow morning, I think I'll scrap the whole thing and see about trying to install eCS2.1.

8
Setup & Installation / Re: Extremely slow Warp 4.52 installation.
« on: September 04, 2025, 10:22:22 am »
The machine only has 1 IDE controller. The HDD is master, the CD, the slave.

The format selected was HPFS

The partitioning was done under Dos (fdisk) as the LVM tool didn't seem to work. The dialogue for select the size of a new partition didn't work. I could see it flash briefly on screen, then disappear.

I guess it could be worth going back and deleting the partition and trying again from scratch.

*UPDATE* That didn't work. I managed to successfully run through the LVM tool and create a new partition for the OS....its still running slow as a dog.

*UPDATE-2* strictly speaking, its a little faster. It managed to complete the HPFS format in about 30mins and has reached the start of the 1st file copy phase in about 50mins. However, the actual file copying seems no faster. It tool nearly 5 mins to copy the 1st file(!) 

9
Setup & Installation / Extremely slow Warp 4.52 installation.
« on: September 03, 2025, 10:58:56 pm »
Hi all. New member.

I'm trying to re-install Warp on a PC from early 2000. Back then it was my work development machine. I bought it from my employer when they did an IT upgrade and put WinXP on it. Now I'm trying to return it back to a Warp box.

It's a Patriot machine running a K6-2 with 288Mb of RAM and a (not original) 4Gb HDD setup with a 300Mb partition for the OS.

I've verified that the hardware all works by installing Win98 on the machine. I'm now trying to install Warp 4.52. This is not going well.

As far as I can see, the installation process is running without any errors. Its  just that its running extremely slowly. For example, it seems to take around 24hours to format the HDD and to complete the 1st round of file coping from the CD to the HDD. I let it run, but after 48hrs it had yet to get to the GUI portion of the process.

It's not the file transfer that's slow, it's the whole installation process. Even with the CD out of the drive, it's slow to do anything.

I have tried with a different set of installation CDs. Same result.

I have tried it with a different HDD. Same result.

I did try copying the relevant data to the HDD and installing from there, booting from floppy disks modified to look for the data on the HDD. This failed as the HDD for some reason couldn't be accessed. I tried replacing the IBM IDE driver with the 'danis506' driver but this just caused the FDD to stop working.

Unfortunately the machine's BIOS doesn't support booting from USB.

So...I know the hardware all works. I assume the installation ISOs/CDs are good, since I've tried 2 different sets with the same results. I'm getting no errors (when booting from the CD), so what could be causing the process to run so slow?? What can I do fix it?

And don't forget that this machine (albeit with a different HDD) ran Warp 4 back in the day...so I know its possible.

Cheers & TIA

P.

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