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Messages - rwklein

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106
Hi

I'm trying to install eCS 2.0 RC7 on a HP Pavilion DV6.. This machine is a laptop with 4GB in RAM and Intel Core 2 Duo.

If I boot from the CD and select "Default Values", the installation goes until

"Unpacking eComStation Installation diskette files to memory disk...
CD-ROM sector read error (drive=00, sectore=2,064, Code=09)."

and freeze right there. If I select "Boot with menu for own values" it freeze in the same part.

Any ideas why Im getting this error or any workarround?  I'm so sure the CD is working ok, I installed eCS on virtual machines without any problems with that CD.

Will it be some incompatibility with the DVD drive (hp CDDVDW TS-L633M ATA Device)?

Any tips will be apreciated.

This has nothing todo with the OS/2 boot. What is going wrong is that OS2CSM code is trying to read the diskette images from the CD ROM and for what ever reason this is not working. The whole OS2LDR Is not even loaded at this monent.

What will most likely work is install eCS on system and copy the configuration over to this new system.
This is most likely a BIOS INT 13 problem somehow.

107
Programming / Re: WDBASIC IS A BAD JOKE
« on: 2009.11.24, 12:48:59 »
NOT ONLY DON'T BOTHER BUT IT'S A MANIFEST DANGER.

Just downloaded and ran it. Gives a prompt but NO INSTRUCTIONS included. "Help" tells me it can't find netscape for html. -- NO CLUE AS TO HOW TO EXIT. -- AND ALMOST UNPRECEDENTED, CAN'T CLOSE NOR EVEN KILL THE WINDOW WITH PSPM.

WHATEVER it is, FAILS BADLY. This isn't even a toy, NOW I'M ANNOYED.

MUST I RE-BOOT TO GET RID OF THIS CRAP?

If you need a few simple programs, just get Virtual Pascal.

(Yes, I'm back after more than a year. The moderators didn't un-register me, obviously still hard of understanding, and I feel inclined to perhaps rant about THE YET MORE EVIL MICROSOFT for the benefit of fanboy saijin.)

You know if you don't like the software don't use it. Report it to the developer in a constructive manner your problem and if its not fixed then thats that. Its freeware this program. Its all free of charge.

Just think twice before stating it in public in such a tone the software does not work. We have already lost enough developers. Just remember its all freeware you can download it. And if the developer does not want to fix it then c'est la vie. But lets keep things in a nice atmosphere.

Roderick Klein
Mensys

108
Hardware / Re: OpenGL ddk
« on: 2009.11.11, 15:36:45 »
I'm not stating its not useful to develop a open gl hardware driver for OS/2.

What might be a waste of time is using the old open GL portion from the Open GL DDK from IBM, since its based on OpenGL 1.1.(with some digging you should be able to find it on the internet :-))  One purpose I could think of is it would be easier to port Linux applications to OS/2 and then you need an up to date Open GL backend.

I don't know how it like these days but Open GL and Linux is also still messy last time I looked. With that I mean vendors don't make API's public (what else is new :-)). Some vendors have open source drivers others not.
Writing a driver I understood from an Open GL developer can also be a big job.

One thing to look at for software based open gl is:

http://www.mesa3d.org/systems.html

Roderick

109
Hardware / Re: OpenGL ddk
« on: 2009.11.09, 17:59:53 »
I forgot to add that Open GL DDK is very old. And thats why you might want to consider to use the MESA library.
Its at the level of Open GL 1.1. So how usefull it would be is the question.

Roderick Klein
Mensys

110
Hardware / Re: OpenGL ddk
« on: 2009.11.09, 17:55:17 »
If you look around on the internet or ask some people you can still get a copy of the Open GL DDK from IBM. With this you can have the closest example of how to make a Open GL driver for OS/2.

For Mensys (eComStation) about 6 years ago I tried to get permission from IBM to get a license on the DDK. At the time you needed to pay $25.000 for a license to Silicon Graphics, IBM could then pass a license to you. However Silicon Graphics had given the license for other platforms free. The status of the OS/2 version was unclear (from what I can remember).

Ever since the Open GL DDK for OS/2 was never officially released at it hangs in a legal no mansland.

Its realy the question if its worthwhile to do anything with this old stuff if you can get a copy of the beast. A lot of OS/2 developers got a copy because it was once on a public IBM FTP server.

You would have more luck with Mesa library and start from scratch there. Maybe the Open GL DDK is usefull to see how to hook into the GRADD subsystem.

Roderick Klein
Mensys

111
Let me jump into this discussion. I don't know what this OS/2 server version 5 stuff is about. Mensys and Serenity Systems have had very good contacts within IBM and a lot of informal contacts as well. The only thing we have seen is a consistent execution of the IBM policy to reduce OS/2 support as IBM more or less "promised".

In 2003 IBM basically shut down all cooperate support in the United States for OS/2. Customers where told to contact IBM Germany for any questions. Scott Garfunkle posted in 2005  or 2006 to comp.os.os2.bugs he would no longer work on the OS/2 kernel. He would be on standby however for emergency cases. And the company Exigen from Letvia seems to be out of the OS/2 business since 2005 as well since IBM closed the funding from development for OS/2 as well.

So yeh I know these names popup within the IBM documents the Warp server 5 stuff. Also consider the fact that most people within IBM these days don't even know what OS/2 is! So they could well have mistyped it. I don't know ? 10 years ago Mensys already got phone calls from people within IBM that did not know what OS/2 was! So you can certainly guess what its like these days :-(

With all internal contacts and external contacts from IBM, etc. Mensys nor Serenity Systems has never even heard of a rumor that this product is real. The added fact that just about all internal support infrastructure for OS/2 within seems to gone seems to make the question doubtful the product was ever developed.

I do know there was a push from some people within IBM Europe to get an MCP 4.53 with all fixes. But this never made it.

Roderick Klein
Mensys

112
Open Bounties / Re: Universal Webcam drivers
« on: 2009.09.23, 11:38:18 »
The need of thinking together the webcam and apps sounds reasonable.

It doesn't matter for the users if  it is Mercury or other ones (by qt4 ?), the point is getting communication + audio + webcam. The question is up to the programmers.

Keep an eye on the requirementlist, without thinking about hand in hand a bounty for a webcam driver and application is pretty useless unless you want a digital mirror... Like Warpcafe wrote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror

Think very well about it that we have multiple messanger protocols like America Online (still around ?), Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, MSN. I'm did not do research to find an application that could support these mayor chat protocols, is cross platform (so hopefully easy portable to Os/2) and would support webcams as well.

Something to realy consider is that such a client in some cases requires maintance. Then its better to take for example a platform neutral client as Mercury messanger (for MSN).

It would not be good old Microsoft again if they would not modify the MSN protocol. Look on http://mercury.im/
At the top of the page: "You are logged out because there was a problem with the connection with the MSN server' bug just after signin. Mercury 1.9.5 and Mercury 2.0 RC1 have been released to fix this."

Thats an example of needing somebody todo maintainance on the client.

Roderick

113
Open Bounties / Re: Universal Webcam drivers
« on: 2009.09.23, 11:25:55 »
The sources might be in the Warpvision repository:

For binary package:
http://www.os2world.com/content/view/2526/48/

I think I read somewhere Paul Smedley stated (somebody quoted him) that the sources are not realy usefull...


I don't remember commenting on this - but I maybe I just forget commenting :P

Oooh darn I should have been more carefull writing something like this.

This thread, somebody might have mis quoted you.

http://osdir.com/ml/org.netlabs.warpvision.general/2007-06/msg00010.html

Roderick

114
Open Bounties / Re: Universal Webcam drivers
« on: 2009.09.22, 17:40:24 »
The sources might be in the Warpvision repository:

For binary package:
http://www.os2world.com/content/view/2526/48/

I think I read somewhere Paul Smedley stated (somebody quoted him) that the sources are not realy usefull...

Roderick

115
Open Bounties / Re: Universal Webcam drivers
« on: 2009.09.22, 14:56:00 »
Kewl webcam drivers again. I remeber being at one of the first Netlabs developer workshops and Vladest (author of Warvision) had a  driver. And he had a kewl app, but he could look at him self.

Its good you guys bring up the topic again. But in all discussions I always miss one thing.
What about the application to use the webcam with ? From my point of view Mercury messanger is the best bet.
Its written in java http://mercury.im/ I run it from time to time.

It has an interface that somehow with quicktime can accept video input. You can already view webcam feeds with it, just not send.
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=205592 I found this discussion. Don't know what is needed for this. It would require of course some OS/2 specific code.

There is already a webcam driver for OS/2 I think somewhere on Netlabs...

A webcam that only sends its data to the screen is nice, but only if you want have confirmed the whole day how handsome you look :-)

Roderick

116
Programming / Re: Flash
« on: 2009.07.23, 23:59:48 »
We (mensys) have a second build from the developer and its working better. The text rendering that Flash 10 has some additions for is working now. More tests are needed.

A large chunk of work has gone into updating the ODIN code.

Current build works reasonable with Firefox 3.x but not with Firefox 2.x from current testing. We are still working to make it more stable. From time to time it crashes the browser.

Its almost midnight here, some quick screenshots from my laptop.

117
Article Discussions / Re: Status update on eComStation 2.0
« on: 2009.06.30, 19:28:20 »
Hello Christian,

<snip>

Why?:

- Frustrated: because of the NONE Information given by Mensys, all the problems, discussed for years now, never changed, never got the point, never showed something like a plan behind it, -  especially all those days when it comes that announced deadlines have passed away without any information, proofed several times. And I hope you do not think I want to behave like the people you have in mind, want to destroy something or just complaining. No - I am at least a customer who payed once (and again) for something promised that actually did not happen.

And I think it is not fair to say criticism is not fair because this damages the people who still do a lot for this project. Shouldn`t it be allowed to do so? To tell your opinion?

<snip>

And that Mensys brings the stuff, no one else is able or willing to do: Yes - that is what I as a customer can demand when I payed for it, isn't it? That seems to me logical and usual in business.

Why is it a problem to tell that I am not satisfied with that what is provided from Mensys?

And you are right: what is the REAL change in this situation? NOTHING.

The fact that you get little, to information, is because of the simple fact that its to busy here at Mensys.
And I wish it was, honestly, it was different!  People see that as an excuse, when I mention that.
Yes it only takes 5 minutes to do that crucial website update for information. The R&D (research and development) that takes place here consumes masses of time. And it seems few people are willing to do that R&D.

Its thanks to the R&D that I did here that RSPINST from IBM runs on Athlon 64 and that we can install eCS. Certainly its taken for granted and you as a community certainly have a right to expect a working product that you buy!

Some people blaim project management. But in my view when you drill deeper into the sollutions handed down by people, to improve project management,  thats when the wrinkels become visable in theory handed down. For eCS 2.0 50% of the orginal feature set has already been scrapped and moved for beyond eCS 2.0. eCS 2.0 is the big pickup OS/2 needed after IBM basicly did Warp 4. And I knew it would be difficult, but that difficult as its turning to be, not ?

You know all does people who talk about a "plan". It was such uncharted terrain where ACPI would take us. As it would push the OS2KRNL to new limits never done before. Is ACPI working the way it should ? No its not. But just like with most eCS code it needs time to mature. The disc resizer and Samba for example. eCS 2.0 Silver release will contain a very mature implementation of Samba for example.

eCS 2.0 has been feature complete for almost 2 years now. But it has not beens stable enough for shipment as a GA product.

Mensys is involved with to many things. And yes we do cream off all types of projects. Some people claim to know what we do in daily live in the office here. But in my humble view sometimes a distorted picture has been given by how "ineffcient" we sometimes work.

We are certainly greatfull for the volenteers working on eComStation! And yes they are out there.
People like Peter Weilbacher, Alex Taylor, Jaques van Leeuwen, just mention a few names.


We have already jacked up the amount of funding much further to get things done. By hiring people!

I'm not aware of a such a small company that is so interwoven in a community as Mensys is with Joachim and me (Roderick).
So far we make certain we get an Open Office on eCS. I'm trying to pull the OS/2 VOICE  back on track. How often Warpstock got started or was even made possible because I persoanly stuck my neck out in the last years to various degrees.
Some people can stand comfirm that here on os2world.com.

We invested time and money to debug UNIAUD. Guess why WIN32PRN was started in 2002, that was me (oke it did not work out as planned). Flash 10 is still on track and being worked (some people outside Mensys now have an early test version).

SNAP got stranded and Panorama is here now and working not that bad. I'm emailing with the guy that will the DANIS506.ADD / AHCI device driver developer (follow up of SATA). I'm coordinating extra investment in CUPS via VOICE to fix the printer driver problem.  USB drivers being worked in the background.


Is eComStation a commercial, venture, yes it is! Should Mensys be involved with all the community stuff ?
Well no, but honestly I have tried to outsource stuff out the door so I could focus on the more big picture.
But that has worked out mostely differently then planned...

Any volunteers for VOICE ?

Roderick Klein
Mensys

118
The idea sounds great, but it is impossible to implement. If you build your own desktop, you do have the luxury of selecting a specific video card (and other things). Your proposal falls apart, when a user tries to get a laptop. There is no real choice of which video adapter (and other things) that you will get. It is also a little unreasonable to have to add a video card to a motherboard, that already has a video adapter built in, and it seems that places to plug such a thing into the board, are also, slowly, going away, and the ones that are available, may be required for other things. Then, there is the problem, that video adapter XYZ, model 1, is available today, and is designated as being the adapter of choice, but tomorrow, that adapter is obsolete, and no longer available, because model 2 has replaced it, with different specs. Then, you run into the problem that model 1 is only available in North America, and not Europe, or Asia. The logistics of actually accomplishing the goal, makes it impossible to achieve. My greatest concern, at the moment, is not that we don't have 2D acceleration, but that it seems that the chip manufacturers are probably not maintaining the VESA compatibility, which will make even Panorama unusable. The bottom line, at the moment, is that there aren't enough resources to go around, to accomplish what needs to be done. Some sacrifices are needed, to keep the whole thing going, until somebody finds a way to do what is needed.

To create drivers for 2D acceleration I think I wrote and I can write again. But maybe I will write it differently.
For now there will be no 2D acceleration drivers.  The financial resources are no there. And if you closely look at Scitech, you will see they sometimes had to debug a specific chipset multiple times to get it working correctly.

Basicly some other people already confirmed Panorama does a pretty impressive job.
SNAP in VESA mode is slower then Panorama is. If you have a system with 1 CPU core SNAP might be better.

Panorama has a modified GRADD.SYS, the frame buffer to speed things up. What realy even makes it run faster is when ACPI has SMP enabled. It goes even faster (some additional CPU tricks are utilized, don't know what).

Doug Bisset what do you mean the VESA standard will not remain around ? Silly question but the OS needs some base firmware todo output before its device drivers are loaded  ? And heck is the VESA standard goes away, some new generic interface will be around.

That Panorama is not the same as SNAP, granted. But its not as bad. And SDL already has a fixed version.
I used virtual PC with as well on my T60 and don't see any problems realy. In windows mode sometimes some slight redraw problems.

Other then that I have been using it for over a year now on my T60.

Roderick Klein
Mensys

119
Hardware / Re: Criticisms of Panorama VESA
« on: 2009.06.14, 23:51:06 »
Hi all!

Well, your questions are easy - to ask. Answers however are not so simple.
If panorama sucks? If you want to have os/2/ecs just working somehow - it definitely doesn't suck. It allows you to install aged os on very modern hardware. It is universal - so it supports wide range of hardware. In theory you must not bother if ecs will install on particular video card, no matter what you have you will get screen working. In those aspects it's similar to other drivers presently developed like acpi, uniaudio and genmac.
All those drivers are about to cover wide range of hardware and increase chance that ecs will find it compatible enough to install and work on it.
But here similarities end. While uniaudio supports more than 2 audio channels on hd hardware, acpi let to use more than single core of modern cpu's (among other things like apic for instance) and genmac allows to use wi-fi cards - panorama does not provide any benefits from having better software. No matter how fast video card you put into - you will get VESA performance.
While other drivers give you progress over past (more audio channels, more cores, faster wi-fi standard) - panorama gives regression - slower performance, no 2d acceleration, no native panel resolution programing, no nothing.....
To give you some clue...
In panorama faq, one of advices how to increase slow desktop operations...
"... to increase speed of screen operations you might try to disable "full window dragging"..." 
So, now we must answer to ourselves - what do we want from os/2/ecs in the future? Just to install on modern hardware. If so, then it's okay. We should be happy. Perhaps for next couple of years it will be still possible.
But in such case we must say good bye to comfortable work with office suites, web browsers, bitmap viewers and of course to video players. Maybe such limited usability is ok for somebody, for me it is not.
Such shrinking functionality will not attract new users. Instead it may speed up migration to other platforms developed with future in mind. What advantages will have warp over other platforms? WPS? With unpatched bugs inside and closed sources? Kernel? Dead and depending on "how long will ia32 instructions in new cpu's" be supported? Who's going to pay for ecs? Owners of 486's and pentiums I? Can you see many corporate users buing new machines to run ecs on it?
What will be next generation of ecs video drivers? Text mode monochrome for fullscreen non-wps apps?
It won't work that way for long. New bounty is needed here. Decent video driver with full 2d acceleration
similar to snap - or os/2 death will have to be confirmed.



The 32 bit computer arena will not leave for at least another 5 years and that is a modest guess. Second a lot of video cards will keep some kind of VESA Interface in the video card.

I have no clue what your talking about with Panorama performance. But both me and Joachim (on a T60) use Panorama at 1024x768 64000 colours. I can use Open Office, Firefox with Flash. I can even drag a window playing a flash movie in Firefox without any real performance hit.

I guess a lot of people don't understand what a pain it is to develop code for nice broad chipset support.
You can come up with a bounty, but its not realistic ? Sounds pessimistic ? I know how much work Scitech had to build support for some video chipsets. So a bountry of a few hundred dollars won't cut the cake. It will need much more and it will need continued funding to stay current.
One thing is certain the Panorama performance is much faster then standard GRADD/ SNAP Vesa.

Make certain GRADD.SYS in \OS2 is 4635 bytes big and then in the screen object the frame buffer is switched on.
I'm sorry but to proclaim that OS/2 is dead with Panorama is a bit of a wild guess.

What you should also not forget is that the statement on ecomstation.ru is from a Russian perspective. The Russians for eCS 1.2R made a special release of the eCS demo CD with low memory usage (below 64 MB ram!). So Panorama on  Pentium 60...
But a duo core, its like a TGV..

Roderick Klein
Mensys

120
Internet / Re: Need help choosing eCS Compatible Hardware
« on: 2009.06.08, 22:59:32 »
Hi,

Thanks for that guys, seriously I am so eager for eComStation, I love the way it works and looks. I wish I could try the live CD. I have tried it once on my old computer. Why doesn't Serenity Systems put more effort into advertising eCS? I don't know + people will have no trouble getting used to, a true Windows contender.

well there's 3 points I would like to add my 2 cents:

1) Why doesn't Serenity Systems put more effort into advertising eCS?
Hmm. Hard to tell. Actually I believe that Serenity is no longer the "driving force" beyond it but more or less acting as the "license holder and contract party" towards IBM. Mensys is the company behind it. And the reason they are not doing *more* advertising (if any at all) is that the last "distributable" version is 1.2.
2.0 is more or less close to being published GA. Once that is done and it proves to be kind-of failsafe, the will release a demo CD (Knoppix-like self-bootable read-only tryout version) and depending on how they feel about its maturity will then start to spread the word.
Fact is, there *is* a market for it, yet... (and this leads to the second point...)

2) people will have no trouble getting used to, a true Windows contender.
Ouch. Your excitement about eCS (albeit welcome here) set aside, eCS is in no way a "Windows contender". Reason being: For that to be true, one must identify the traget group of Windows which is almost impossible since multimedia people use it, ATMs use it, gamers use it, companies use it, nerds use it...
If you were to say "gamers", then the anser for eCS is definitely: Nope.
Talking about multimedia: Nope as well. ATMs: YES... but then again, if there is a bank ordering eCS for all their ATMs... they expect professional-level SLAs. Who is going to care of delivering and acting to compliance? THere is no organization behind eCS that could manage such things to the required extent. eCS is rather a kind-of generally purpose OS for people trying to get rid of Windows. Thus, eCS is rather competing with OSX, Haiku, Linuxes, etc. (and it's currently not in its best shape even for that...)

3) I wish I could try the live CD. I have tried it once on my old computer.
Hmm, I don't get the point here - did it work on your old computer but is doesn't work on teh new one?

Regards,
Thomas

What do people understand under advertising ? Seriously. We have had people that suggest we put an advertisement in the New York times, uhuhuu $$$$. You will see more in selected media in the coming months. And there is an interest from banks that want eCS. Heck we sold recently to an insurance company. And eCS 1.2R is selling.

I think Thomas you are slightly off. We are capable of dealing with customers that need eCS in large environments and have done so already. I can not reveal sales numbers or names. The sales numbers is one thing.
The names of customers. People are always looking for testimonials about eCS from companies on our website (ecomstation.com). Well we have asked people. Maybe Eugene from eCo software has a different success rate then we have because Russian culture is different compared to our western culture.  What I mean by this is that for the average IT guy it seems its a sin to mention he is running OS/2 in his organization. Its just the image that eCS/OS/2 has. From a technical point of view its not justified... Its just the image OS/2 has to a large degree in the ICT industry.
And yes have asked but managers are rather publicly not quoted.

And yes we have a bank evaluating eCS for there bank terminals and ATM's.

Roderick Klein
Mensys


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