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WebSite Information => Article Discussions => Topic started by: MikeG on 2007.07.05, 07:17:49

Title: eComStation v2.0 RC1 - Let`s install it!
Post by: MikeG on 2007.07.05, 07:17:49
Did sound work? I install on a Thinkpad T23 and sound would not work until I replaced uniaud32 with a newer version. Also, when installing on on my Thinkpad R51e ACPI hangs at the splash screen. My opinion, great progress but 2.0 needs more work.

Great article!

Mike
Title: Re: eComStation v2.0 RC1 - Let`s install it!
Post by: ChrisR on 2007.07.05, 12:27:46
I tried to install it on an older intell 500 mhz and I'm not coming far.
Getting a message that snap demo licence is over and will fall back to standard vga, press any key..  (don't have an any key key on my keyboard) but pressing whatever, nothing happened..
I suppose I have to select custom install and select vga instead of snap.. will try that later.
But this should not happen.. its weird.. 
Title: Re: eComStation v2.0 RC1 - Let`s install it!
Post by: kim on 2007.07.05, 12:49:28
I haven't fully had time yet to tweak the system on the ThinkPad T60; but I sure will do that; so haven't got the audio to work yet. Played around with the ACPI to get the system to work with dual core, but no success yet on that.

But the biggest concern that I have is the random freezing on the ABit IS7-E system; it seems that when the system starts up from a fresh start, i.e. power on everything works fine. But, if I reboot the system the system freezes random on either the SNAP or USB drivers?! Quite odd. Might be that the ACPI-support that's playing me some tricks here.
Title: Re: eComStation v2.0 RC1 - Let`s install it!
Post by: The Blue Warper on 2007.07.05, 13:38:51
Quote
But the biggest concern that I have is the random freezing on the ABit IS7-E system; it seems that when the system starts up from a fresh start, i.e. power on everything works fine. But, if I reboot the system the system freezes random on either the SNAP or USB drivers?! Quite odd. Might be that the ACPI-support that's playing me some tricks here.

Hi,

just a note (based on what I can recall right now).  AFAIK, this is normal behaviour, OS-independent, 'cause ACPI gets correctly initialized upon bootup.  That's (or at least that should be...) why you are experiencing these hangs.  I think there should be something about this in the ACPI FAQ.  ACPI values seem to keep staying loaded in memory, even between reboots, and even between reboots into different OSs (e.g. from Windows to eCS).  So if one experiences repeated crashes, the extreme procedure here seems to be shutting down the PC and waiting some minutes before powering back on.
(Hope I didn't post wrong info...)

Bye!
Title: Re: eComStation v2.0 RC1 - Let`s install it!
Post by: kim on 2007.07.05, 13:47:25
Thanks for thast input; but if the work around to be recommended would be to make a proper shutdown before re-booting the system; I would be quite frustrated. I have no clue how Windows or Linux handles this; but could one say that there is a need for a soft reset of the ACPI values when either the system starts or shuts down so that the system starts without nasty freezing.
Title: Re: eComStation v2.0 RC1 - Let`s install it!
Post by: RobertM on 2007.07.05, 21:28:38
Quote from: kimhav on 2007.07.05, 12:49:28
I haven't fully had time yet to tweak the system on the ThinkPad T60; but I sure will do that; so haven't got the audio to work yet. Played around with the ACPI to get the system to work with dual core, but no success yet on that.

But the biggest concern that I have is the random freezing on the ABit IS7-E system; it seems that when the system starts up from a fresh start, i.e. power on everything works fine. But, if I reboot the system the system freezes random on either the SNAP or USB drivers?! Quite odd. Might be that the ACPI-support that's playing me some tricks here.

I saw this on an Asus board - and it was due to the onboard SATA support - dont know if your problem is the same. anything except Power On from OFF would result in the boot-up hanging (or the install). The Asus (till a BIOS update) would also report the dual 160GB drives as 12GB on soft-boot (correct size on power on from off)... which is why I think it was the SATA support. Updating the BIOS resolved the mis-reported drive sizes - but nothing else. This machine though, also had problems with anything that required a soft boot (like XP), and has known SATA issues in the nForce chipset.

-Robert
Title: Re: eComStation v2.0 RC1 - Let`s install it!
Post by: bjorso on 2007.07.10, 14:35:44
Hi all,

Since first install on the Shuttle system from the article I have tried to improve graphics. Running SNAP in VESA is no joy, moving an open window locks rather ugly on the screen. I tried to upgrade to the commercial licence of SNAP and the result is only a fraction better. Trying to use the Panorama-driver produced a Trap when I installed it from the WarpIN-archive.

Well, well, reverting back to VGA and SNAP made the system run again. Next time I tried to install Panorama manually as described in the readme and that was successful. After a change to enable Shadow buffering and proper resolution the result is finally really impressive! Looks like Panorama is something to be glad for!! :)

Another advantage of Panorama is support for WideScreen monitors, after using a monitor like that I don't want anything else in the future.

//bjorso
Title: Re: eComStation v2.0 RC1 - Let`s install it!
Post by: kim on 2007.07.10, 16:26:26
I can confirm the same with the ThinkPad T60; the Panorama works like dream compared with the SNAP drivers; so there is no doubt in my mind what should be the standard VESA driver in the final version of eComStation or at least be included.
Title: Re: eComStation v2.0 RC1 - Let`s install it!
Post by: Blonde Guy on 2007.07.11, 06:31:37
Installed on Intel 865G-based computer with a SATA drive.

ACPI Shutdown, Sound, USB, Network, Accelerated Video, DVD Writer all work.

Without ACPI, neither shutdown nor sound would work, but the installer figured it all out -- I took the default settings.

I wish there was also support for the sleep modes on the desktop -- that could save me a fair sum over time in electricity.
Title: Re: eComStation v2.0 RC1 - Let`s install it!
Post by: djcaetano on 2007.07.11, 17:02:29
   I was out of luck, then... Here eCS RC1 installed even worse than beta 4 and beta 3 (beta 3 was the easiest, but I have use extra disk with 10.104 kernel on boot or it would lock up on testcfg loading).
   I am running eCS 2.0 RC1 and I made my mind: I'll be buying it, but I am still feeling dread about several hangs when on SMP mode. Sometimes the system says me I am out of memory. I found on the internet that in SMP mode we cannot mess around with VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT, which was set on 1536 on default install. I changed it to 1024 and it seems this "out of memory" problem has gone away.
   But the hangs still happens. And Firefox is a lot jerky, slow reaction, the "OK" button when deciding if I would save or open a file is forever disabled (no way to enable it, even clicking over it) and the loading animation on the tabs do not work. This is very weird behaviuor and probably this is all correlated to some problem supporting SMP on this machine (ASUS P5GZ-MX running an Core 2 Duo E4300, with 2GB of RAM).
   I noticed the problems are less frequent since I changed from /PIC to /APIC, and added a lot of switches manually (since the installer was not even able to detect my machine was a dual core), but they are not solved at all.
 
   I have not tested Panorama, but SNAP runs nice on the integrated Intel video board.
Title: Re: eComStation v2.0 RC1 - Let`s install it!
Post by: kim on 2007.07.18, 13:39:03
Well, I have had way better luck with RC1 than for example B4 that I could even get to install on the 8600 at all; so based on that it really went down the drain for me testing new releases. Happy I did since RC1 works way better than B4; but still there needs to way more testing and for me the next eComStation starts to look a little bit like that the customers will find all the bugs (sounds familiar with another big OS brand) and as well I really hate  to see that lots of the new nice features such as Panorama are developed commercial terms and that the code isn't open sourced - didn't we learn anything at all from earlier experience with IBM? Here I think that the few of us that have interest of buying or upgrading to eCS v2.0 when it comes and my guess that it's will be released during either Warpstock US or Europe (if there will be one) since couple of the presentation from the DWA mention release date during 2007 for eCS.
Title: Re: eComStation v2.0 RC1 - Let`s install it!
Post by: jmillar on 2007.07.18, 15:38:51
Multiprocessing is now mainstream. Kids, moms, grannies use CORE 2 and dual core AMD's. It's home computing now, not server or high power workstation material. And quadcore is available NOW, and quite cheaply!

We already now how fantastic OS/2's multitasking, multithreading and priority handling are.
Any sturdy info on how ECS v2 handles multithreading? Efficiency, smoothness, etc.

Is it just me, or up to now very few people were going the multiprocessing route on ECS?
I'd love to hear from those of you who have experience from the OS/2 multiprocessing trenches. How about v2?

jmillar
Title: Re: eComStation v2.0 RC1 - Let`s install it!
Post by: djcaetano on 2007.07.18, 20:32:26
Quote from: jmillar on 2007.07.18, 15:38:51
Multiprocessing is now mainstream. Kids, moms, grannies use CORE 2 and dual core AMD's. It's home computing now, not server or high power workstation material. And quadcore is available NOW, and quite cheaply!
(...)
Is it just me, or up to now very few people were going the multiprocessing route on ECS?
I'd love to hear from those of you who have experience from the OS/2 multiprocessing trenches. How about v2?

  My experience with SMP is kind of bad. I have been using OS/2 since early 90's and I never experienced so many random hangs as I am experiencing  now with eCS2.0 on SMP mode.
  It seems there is some serious limitation on memory management when running on SMP on some systems when using more than 512MB of RAM. At least, this is the case of my system.
  On the other hand, when everything is working, the performance gain is overwhelming. Every single program loads much faster than on UNI mode. FireFox and OpenOffice load times are much smaller and the same happens to WPS startup and desktop archiving. Also, VirtualPC runs much smoother on SMP than on UNI (speed-wise). I had not made extensive testing/benchmarking, but the difference is really impressive.

   I hope Serenity solve the SMP issues I am experiencing, or I'll need to disable SMP support even if I use a dual-core computer.

   Just to add my 2 cents, I believe Serenity made a bad choice when decided to take the "closed beta" path. I believe they were afraid many people would use the beta version and never buy the final version. Well, while this can be truth, it's not likely they will avoid people using eCS without paying; it's just a matter of looking on the internet and one will find it to download in eMule, torrent, etc. Those who want to keep with illegal versions will do it, no matter what Serenity does.
   On the other side, closing the beta, the amount of testers of eCS is really small - at least those that can really report problems, since those obtained it in "alternative ways" do not feel free to do bug-reports... and of course they do not want to read an answer like "Buy it and we will see if we solve your problem".
   I believe I'll buy eCS2.0 when it is out (I'm tired of my old OS/2 4.52 and the infinite patchs and upgrades), but I'll be really pissed off if I try to install in this dual core computer and it fail to work ... after I had spent hundreds of bucks in it. And the same goes to other "closed" software for eCS, like someone said, Panorama VESA.
   As a rule of thumb, I believe the more beta-testers, the better.
Title: Re: eComStation v2.0 RC1 - Let`s install it!
Post by: LJX on 2007.07.18, 22:15:06
Hi All!

To quote : " Just to add my 2 cents, I believe Serenity made a bad choice when decided to take the "closed beta" path. I believe they were afraid many people would use the beta version and never buy the final version. Well, while this can be truth, it's not likely they will avoid people using eCS without paying; it's just a matter of looking on the internet and one will find it to download in eMule, torrent, etc. Those who want to keep with illegal versions will do it, no matter what Serenity does.
   On the other side, closing the beta, the amount of testers of eCS is really small - at least those that can really report problems, since those obtained it in "alternative ways" do not feel free to do bug-reports... and of course they do not want to read an answer like "Buy it and we will see if we solve your problem".
   I believe I'll buy eCS2.0 when it is out (I'm tired of my old OS/2 4.52 and the infinite patchs and upgrades), but I'll be really pissed off if I try to install in this dual core computer and it fail to work ... after I had spent hundreds of bucks in it. And the same goes to other "closed" software for eCS, like someone said, Panorama VESA.
   As a rule of thumb, I believe the more beta-testers, the better."

I agree with djcaetano, personally I'd like to beta test this software too but unfortunately I can't even get a response from Mensys with regard to purchasing release 1.2R. Guess I should keep trying..
Title: Re: eComStation v2.0 RC1 - Let`s install it!
Post by: kim on 2007.07.19, 13:55:48
About now getting ay answers on questions made directly to the vendors is really frustrating and as well it really pisses people off. Also at one point Mensys said that that they could either choose the time they spent on answering question that the community to give answers or spend it on development. Okey, I can follow their thoughts on that one; but I guess that it could be organized a bit better. As well, bad support doesn't really make people to buy subscription to the support....

Also another another thing about the software subscription; clearly Serenity / Mensys doesn't implement all the fixes from IBM. Just check the fixpak level on the RC1 release, it's FP4. So neither the fixpak 5 from 2005 or fixpak 6 from february this year has been implemented (yet).
Title: Re: eComStation v2.0 RC1 - Let`s install it!
Post by: obiwan on 2007.07.21, 02:05:07
Scope of testing is based on what you want to achieve with the testing. It might seem on the surface like broader distribution must equate to more discovery of bugs and therefore better data, but that is not always the case. People can report many things as bugs that are just their own mistakes or misunderstanding of the product. Even if every bug report were 100% accurate, it can end up being an awful lot of information to have to deal with. You may have to help users along in order to uncover the root of the problem, and that eats up a lot of time. Even without that, you have to pick and choose what you will fix because you can't fix everything. Even if you are trying to solve only a few problems, only one problem, processing 100-1000 reports about it does not help, but only takes up valuable time. Even having 5 or 10 reports just makes it that 5-10 times more complicated. In order to actually solve the problem you need one single reliable test that you can reproduce. That way you can see if the work you do corrects it. Only after that test passes can you try again in a broader scope, and then you must reduce it again to a single test. There is no magic to turn bug reports into fixes. It is all work, so there is sense in limiting testing and trying to keep it orderly.

My experience with technical support SSI/Mensys over the years has been outstanding. Particularly considering the complexity and age of the product they are working with. Particularly in comparison with other desktop operating systems. Particularly in contrast with what a home user could expect from IBM for OS/2 back in the day. Does anyone else recall the sorts of experiences I had trying to get support from win16 software vendors for real problems when I mentioned I happened to be running it on OS/2? On the other hand, Joachim actually looked on Hobbes for a driver for me (which I should have thought to do myself) and talked me through enabling LAN PEER services (which I also should have just looked up). I really do not think "bad support" is at all a fair description, and I don't think describing it as such is at all helpful to anyone. If you want good support, there has to be a limit to it, and that means supporting the GA product, not processing endless bug reports for prereleases.

I don't know about these fixpaks, but I know there was a fix for JFS that is incompatible with bootable JFS, so applying it would mean breaking the product. I think if SSI chooses to delay application of fixpaks it is for a technical reason, not personal laziness.
Title: Re: eComStation v2.0 RC1 - Let`s install it!
Post by: kim on 2007.08.21, 18:48:13
Another topic I think is a failure for quite a few of the new components within the future eComStation is that it's based on closed code and not open source. Since eComstation is based on a closed code base, ie OS2 from IBM, it would be far great if the new features and add on would be open source to get a wider usage.

I'm aware of that it's a hard decision for Serenity how to handle it; add new features that people can download without any cost and re-use on earlier version of OS2. But, taking the close code path once again I doubt will gain new users.

For example I'm really sad that Panorama drivers is closed code and as it looks now only will be distributed as part of eComstation. Why not at least have a shareware version of it that can be downloaded and tested on old system and fully unlocked. SNAP was a great product (and still is) - but we all know the story by now what happened there. Do we really want to take that path again?

And about the pricing for eComstation, it's not easy to get new users to jump on the train with the current price tags. The money that Serenity pays to IBM based on the OEM agreement is free money for IBM. Even when IBM actually sold OS2 as a products the OEM agreements was really lucrative for involved parties when it came to pricing. What I'm saying is that eComstation could have a far lower price. It's all about what path to take - high price -> few users or low price -> more users.
Title: Re: eComStation v2.0 RC1 - Let`s install it!
Post by: RobertM on 2007.08.22, 00:57:08
What I'd like to see happen is IBM divest themselves of OS/2 by selling it to Serenity Systems.

The problems I see for that happening though are major:

I dont know how we as a group (OS/2 users, developers, distributors) could get around those issues short of re-writing OS/2... with the numerous inherent problems related to that (such as recreating the kernel and it's fantastic CPU, thread and process scheduling techniques - and duplicating the APIs, WPS, REXX subsystems, etc).

It may not be so much of a problem if IBM could at least lower their costs to Serenity, and provide more technical information (or source) to certain sections that they wholly have the rights to.

Either way, at least Serenity is making some pretty big steps...