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Messages - edurrant

#1
Hi Sigurd,
  I do believe the future includes the long overdue tablets but the ones that came out a few years ago had one major flaw, they ran an operating system from a desktop PC - MS Windows in those days. The recent success of the Apple iPAD, I think comes from the fact that it uses the simpler operating system found on the iPhone, the iPhoneOS (please do not shorten to iOS as some people do - iOS is an IBM midrange operating system previously known as OS400).

  I expect the market to be flooded with cheaper Android based tablets by Christmas, again Android is a phone OS, not a desktop OS. I believe the Dell tablet is to be called the "Tab" others may be called slates.

  These devices are an example of making technology simple for the average user, something the IT industry should have been doing for the last 20 years - the technology has been there but industry and commercial considerations have stopped it happenning.

  As well as using scaled up phone OSes, these tablets tend to use the same phone processors - the A4 in the case of the Apple product and the snapdragon in the case of Android tablets - neither of these processors run x86 instructions and so will not be able to run eComstation. 

  So while we have a few tablets like the Lenovo X200T that use an Intel processor, these will be very rare in my opinion.

  What these tablets do deliver is a simple machine where the user doesn't have to be a "geek" to understand how things work. Even Microsoft with their upcoming new Windows Mobile Phone 7 OS have based this on their Zune music player OS not on the desktop Windows 7 OS, so the tendency is away from desktop OSes for mobile devices onto simpler, more locked down proprietary OSes.

   If we want to run eComstation on these devices, the simplest solution is to use an RDP or VMC "app" on the device back to a system running eComStation. I have already done this with my Apple iPOD touch (the Apple iPAD is simply a jumbo sized Apple iPOD touch) and it works well, except the iPOD touch's screen is too small to really use eCS - the tablets may well be an acceptable size - and yes touch translates into mouse movements when you use one of these devices, without any changes being needed to eComstation.

well, there's my 6 penneth!

Ed.
#2
USB / Re: USB DVD/CD-ROM Drive and eCS?
2008.02.01, 22:53:21
Hi, Yes I saw your description of problems on another thread here I think.
The obvious question, have you upgraded anything in the EeePC ? If you have for example replaced the 512MB DIMM with a larger one, this could be the cause of the problem, faulty or incompatible memory can cause some very weird problems in a system !

Basically if you have upgraded anything, I would recommend going back to all original parts and OS configuration and if the problems still occur, it's time to send the unit back for repair or replacment under warranty.

Cheers/2

Ed. 
#3
USB / Re: USB DVD/CD-ROM Drive and eCS?
2008.02.01, 12:05:29
I have managed to install eCS 2.0RC4 to an SD card and boot the EeePC from it - I have not been able to solve the eCS Install process issues with a USB attached CD-ROM drive, rather I had to install to a desktop and then copy the image across.

I have just uploaded the full details (in English & German) to another thread on this forum - checkout:

http://www.os2world.com/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,63/topic,548.msg3533/topicseen,1/

I have not tried ACPI yet - I deliberately disabled it, however as the ASUS EeePC uses the Intel chipset, it may well work.

Video will need to be GENGRADD with a custom pif (?) configuration file.

Audio - does not work with the Uniaud that is in RC4 as this has (I think) the HD Audio chipset, but the latest Uniaud I believe has some support for this added, so maybe ...

For Networking, neither the cabled or WiFi cards have drivers for OS/2 however there are Genmac drivers for very similar sounding cards which "may" be able to be modified.

Still some work to do in this area.

Cheers/2

Ed.
#4
Hardware / Re: Asus EEE PC 701 and eCS
2008.02.01, 11:53:34
Documentation of How To install eCS 2.0 RC4 to an SD card and boot the ASUS EeePC is now finished attached to this thread and will be uploaded to Hobbes in both German and English versions.

The system is running well, but only in VGA and without audio or network support at present. Still some work to do in that area.

Cheers/2

Ed.
#5
USB / Re: USB DVD/CD-ROM Drive and eCS?
2007.12.27, 23:32:29
Thanks for this detailed description, I can see how this works and in some ways is similar to what Eugene suggests, however I am worried that someone new to eCS and OS/2 would not be so happy to do all this (risky in some parts) work to try out a new Operating system.

The eCS install (and Live CD) needs to work from a USB attched CD-Rom (or flash drive or ...).

Cheers/2

Ed.
#6
USB / Re: USB DVD/CD-ROM Drive and eCS?
2007.12.27, 06:53:34
Just to let everyone know - the problem hasn't gone away in eCS 2.0 Release Candidate 4, which was released a couple of hours ago. Still the same insert install CD problem.

I have also tried booting from an SD card (with a different volume name but otherwise the same eCS install image) with an USB CD-Rom drive also attached - it with the correct volume name and flag file, in the hope that the problem may be related to locateCD changing drives but ir does appear that at this stage in the install, USB support simply stops working.

Cheers/2

Ed. :(
#7
USB / Re: USB DVD/CD-ROM Drive and eCS?
2007.12.25, 11:07:33
Thanks George,

  Your suggestion is similar to the one documented by Eugene at eComStation.ru. With difference that you don't boot from the new partition but rather from the eComStation diskette. This could be the key !

  The only problem for me with the approach you suggest is that it requires the destruction of the current system so that a new partition to be created on the SSD. I'd prefer to keep the existing configuration which would mean shrinking the partition in some way. Admittably I will probably need to do this at some stage but I'd like to get things working first before risking having to totally reset / reinstall the EeePC. I'm actually trying to get the Live CD (eCS 1.2 demo) to work first of all so that I can see what drivers etc. I need.

The key is that locateCD will find where the "CD-Rom" is by searching for a drive with the correct volume label ("ECS_CDRUN") and a flag file present.

I know that on systems where the BIOS allows a setting of "legacy mode" the BIOS emulates the USB devices as being local devices, unfortunately the EeePC does not have this option in BIOS.

By the way - I presume you meant to write 1GB not 1MB memory key ??

Since I have three USB ports on this system, I could have the Floppy Drive on one and boot from that and have an external USB drive with the CDROM image on another port (or even have it on a SD card in the system). The key point is that USB support must be available when locateCD runs - perhaps I can fix that easier on the floppy disks and then retro-fit what I found into the CD-Rom boot image ? - Worth a try anyway - thanks for the ideas.

Cheers/2

Ed. ;D

 
#8
USB / Re: USB DVD/CD-ROM Drive and eCS?
2007.12.24, 23:37:44
I'm still trying to find a way of fixing the current install process however much of the code is embedded in the revised loader (os2ldr) and drivers (memdisk and locatecd) that I am starting to think this will not be possible without basic changes to the install process approach.  :(
#9
USB / Re: USB DVD/CD-ROM Drive and eCS?
2007.12.23, 23:50:24
By the way guys, some of you are saying that writing CDs and DVDs with USB attached drives can be an issue - which I believe, however the drive that "BigWarpGuy" is looking at is only a reader, not a writer.

Cheers/2

Ed.
#10
USB / Re: USB DVD/CD-ROM Drive and eCS?
2007.12.23, 08:29:34
Hi Guys,
I'm also working on trying to work out how to install eComStation on my new ASUS EeePC and have hit the USB device issue.
This seems to be an issue not only with USB attached CD/DVD-Rom drives but also with any USB attached device - I've tried an external harddisk and the internal (USB internally connected) SD memory card - all three get to the stage when locatecd runs and says please insert the CD-Rom even though it is actually already there.

The EeePC does not have a legacy support option in the BIOS so that approach is out. There is a Mini-PCIe card slot available so in effect that could perhaps be used for an EIDE or SATA adapter of some kind. Alternatively a network based install may be possible using a DOS boot diskette in a USB attached floppy drive however all of these methods, while would probably work with an OS/2 Warp 4 install may not work with the eCS Install and given that more and more sub-notebooks now come without internal optical drives, I would suggest that this is a problem that needs to be fixed (somehow) in the eCS install process.
I've just found a description of what locateCD does - I had thought I could simply remove it and hardcode the CD letter in the config.sys and config.x files in the packed boot image files, however as the program actually transfers control from the booted image over to the RAM disk, this is not going to work - so it looks like I have some more investigating to do !

Looks like this has become my Christmas holiday project !

Here's hoping I can make some kind of a breakthrough.

Hmm, I wonder If I made the bootimages into actual floppy disks and attached a floppy drive AND an external CD-Rom drive it might be able to work ... But the floppy drive would probably need to be a 2.88MB one ..

Ideas, only at this point no solutions yet. :-\

Cheers/2

Ed.