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Topics - WinOS2

#1
Hello all.

I set my Dad's old APtiva that I found in the garage. It was originally a WIN95 machine.

The machine was totally dead.

I changed out the the power supply. The original could power the system, but the fan was seized.

The hard-drive was a complete brick, despite my many attempts to try and revive it. I changed it out and put in a max-DOS sized 2GB seagate.

It was originally a p133, but I happened to come across a P166 and put that into it instead.

The floppy drive worked, but I ultimately had to change it out, because it was not reading diskettes consistently and could not format very well. For a long time I thought the problem was the diskettes themselves. Put in a replacement and the performance was normal.

Put in a better video card, an S3 Virge GX. The original was a Mach64 (onboard).

Beefed up the RAM with 4 16MB SIMMs, to make it 64MB. I was originally 16MB. Hard to believe, but the minimalism is impressive considering what you get for such low memory resource.

Put in a cable ethernet card for networking on the internet. Took out the dial-up modem.

The original monitor was shot and very dim. I am using a 19" crt monitor which I share amongst the other old machines I have around here.

I installed Warp 4. Now Warp 4, as I have come to understand, works best with IBM equipment. So it seemed logical to run OS/2, despite having the original Aptiva disk that had Windows 95. I could have done this, but Windows 95 is boring. I was employed in several IT departments over the years and my experience with Windows 95 was regular part of my work life. So, Windows 95 would be no challenge. During the 1990s, I had only rare oppurtunities to see, let alone use OS/2 Warp. It was actually Warp 3, that I seem to remember more.

Back in those days, OS/2 adherents are like how Linux users are today. Except, for one thing. The DNA in the OS/2 kernel is far more closely related to Windows than any distro of Linux. But OS/2 and Windows despite a close relationship in the works, are quite different.

One thing I was struck by immediately was the reliance on a config.sys bootup. Whereas Windows 95 uses initializing through the System32 dlls and the registry. Config.sys might seem a clunky way to initialize the system, but for hands-on computer users like me - it is how you want it.

Anyway, Warp 4. I have not yet installed a fixpack.

I have had some HPFS errors. In particular this strange file: _CACHE0.DB

This file seems to pop up a lot when I do a CHKDSK. It seems like a harmless problem, but a annoying bug. Would a fixpack resolve this?

I should also mention that the LINKS browser for OS/2 is a thing of beauty for this system. There is no need for Netscape with this excellent browser. It has LYNX 2.8.4 beat by a mile. Having some graphic support is perfect. Netscape is bloatware and I won't even bother with trying Netscape now. From my experience with old browsers with Windows 3.11, they choke on almost everything in Web 2.0 these days. So, in Windows 3.11 you are pretty much relegated to DOS to surf the web with LYNX or DOSLYNX (there is no port of LINKS for 16bit Windows), but other protocols (gopher, ftp, news, etc.) Win 3.11 works just as well as a modern machine. The same can be said of OS/2 Warp.
#2
I have been setting up some old computers with legacy operating systems and I have decided to revisit OS/2 Warp 4. I have it installed and got the video driver and Realtek ethernet driver working fine. I am putting in a different sound card shortly to replace the one I can't find drivers for.

With my success of getting Windows 3.11 on broadband and having everything work great, I thought that Warp 4 should be quite easy. Windows for Workgroups was a bit tricky, but it really was a snap once I relearned old Windows. Running the ethernet in DOS was a bit of a learning curve. But thanks to a terrific ethernet card - Trendware TE-PCI, it runs really smooth with the DOS packet driver that came in the driver package for WFW. On another PC is Windows 95 and that was child's play to get going.

So, Warp 4. Should be easier than Windows 3.11 I thought and I love OS/2 Warp. It's a cool system.

However, I am discovering some weird problems that I cannot seem to work out. I thought I had set up the DHCP correctly. The DHCP is connecting and retrieved the lease fine, but no connection. I am wondering about the Route Entry window in the TCP/IP config. I am not sure what to put in the 'destination address', which is what I think might be causing the problem. I have the router and subnet mask settings correct. I have IBM NetBIOS, but have not configured that in any way. Also, I am noticing in the DHCP monitor that I have to sort of 'wake up' the DHCP sometimes by checking the configuration. Kinda strange. What is the BOUND state anyway? Does this have anything to do with anything?

Is there a site you can point me to for a proper way of configuring Warp 4's TCP/IP so I can get the broadband connection working right? The tabbed notebook is a bit confusing.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. I have installed the latest fixpack - number 15.