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Messages - DougB

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316
Utilities / Re: Does DFSee do everything LVM does?
« on: 2010.05.23, 21:18:59 »
Personally, I never use anything except the MiniLVM for LVM operations (partitioning, setting drive letters, changing Boot Manager etc.). It seems to have fixed the problems that I have seen with IBM's LVM, or the LVMGUI (a disaster from the beginning, IMO). DFSEE does have LVM capabilities that have worked properly when I tried them.

I am not too sure, exactly, what you are trying to say. If you have your hard disk set up the way you want it, you should not need to use LVM, MiniLVM, or DFSEE, to change it again. MiniLVM will be presented, during install, if you choose to change your disk configuration, but you may also see DFSEE (or a sub set of it) if you need to do something like shrink a FAT32, or NTFS, partition to make room for eCS. DFSEE is also used to check your disk configuration. You may need to bypass that if it finds problems.

317
Setup & Installation / Re: LVM - the curse of eCS?
« on: 2010.05.10, 19:09:33 »
I had a problem with LVM, on my 100 meg ZIP disks, but making them have a real partition on them fixed that problem.

I haven't seen a problem with LVM and DFSEE, for a long time.

318
The X60 is, briefly, reviewed at: http://en.ecomstation.ru/hardware.php?action=item&id=1765. Other devices can be reviewed at: http://en.ecomstation.ru/hardware.php. I don't see your specific printer there. If it is PostScript capable, it will probably work. If not, you may have a problem. You will probably not be able to use the SD card slot, although some of them will work. A cheap multi card USB adapter should work though (I use a LEXAR Jumpdrive Trio). The USB sticks may need some special treatment to make them work. Your USB CD burner should work, with the latest drivers (which you may not be able to get, without getting eComStation). I think the scanner may be a problem, although some of them do work.

If you do have Warp 4.52, it will be easier to get it to work than the old warp 4, but I expect that you will still need to do some driver updates to get it to install, and even more (which may not be available), to get it to work properly (especially with USB). Even with those potential problems, I expect that it should work well enough to convince you to update to eComStation. Since you are a student, you would qualify for the student pricing, and since you already have warp 4.52, you would get a discount for that too.

I agree that OpenOffice is trying, very hard, to have more features than MS Office, but it seems to be the only answer when you need to handle documents created by MS Office (especially later versions). I haven't used it enough to really learn much about it, but there are a lot of configuration options that may reduce the clutter.

Modern JAVA apps can be a problem. The latest "official" JAVA for OS/2 is 1.4.2_09-b05, but it is possible to get some things to work with JAVA 1.5.0_07 (some tricks are required to get it installed, and working). Other versions don't want to work. Apparently, there is a newer JAVA under construction, but no word yet about how it is going.

I have used both NVU, and Komposer, to build web pages. They are almost identical, and do a good job, without too much of a learning curve. Both are available for other platforms too. There is a project under way to update Komposer, and I expect that it will be available soon, meanwhile, the older version works well.

319
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I'm not a huge fan of Windows

You seem to be in the right place...

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and am considering installing an old copy of OS/2 W4

EComstation http://www.ecomstation.com/ would probably be a better option. Warp4 is quite old, and it can prove to be a bit of a challenge to get it to work on newer hardware, but it can, usually, be done. Be sure to research the restrictions. Start by posting the description of the machine that you intend to use, so we can comment on any potential problems.

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Word Processors:

OpenOffice is available. There is an older version (2.02) at HOBBES http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/ (home of most things OS/2). You can also get a customized version 2.4, or 3.1.1, from Mensys that adds some specific OS/2 support, but they charge for that.

Lotus Smartsuite may still be available too, but there are a lot of them at HOBBES, that are free, and may be more to your liking.

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Jsesh:

I downloaded, and installed, with no trouble. It seems to work, but I don't know if everything will work.

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PDF:

Acrobat Reader 5.0 is available, but is out of date. We also have Lucide, which seems to handle most things properly. It is still under development, so any problems might get fixed, if you supply the information to the authors.

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Image editor:

Here you have a pretty good choice. It depends a lot on exactly what you want to do, but there are a few excellent native programs, as well as a number of JAVA programs, that can be used.

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Development tools:

In OS/2 this generally refers to programming tools."Web tools" could be more descriptive. Again, it depends on what you want to do. Simple web sites can be developed using a text editor, or one of the more advanced editors such as NVU, or Komposer. There are also even more advanced things like SQL and web publishing tools.

320
General Discussion / Re: New member
« on: 2010.03.27, 19:30:15 »
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The main thing that lags from time to time is running Firefox and the older Openoffice 1.1.5 (the odin based one), it seems that those apps like a faster processor.  They do run, just a little slower then I'm used to.

The problem is not the processor speed (although that does have some effect), it is the amount of real memory. Those applications need a lot of memory to run, so they end up paging all of the time. That significantly slows everything, but they are still usable, as long as you stay away from complicated web sites, or large files.

321
I think you have some misconception about where the OS/2 Boot Manager used to be allowed. Partitions have nothing to do with it. Boot Manager itself is a partition.

In the old days, Boot Manager needed to be completely within the first 1024 logical cylinders (the same rule applied to every bootable partition). With new hardware (with the I13 extensions), you no longer have that restriction. Boot Manager can be anywhere on the disk, as long as the I13 extensions will support it (any system that is less than 10 years old should have no trouble, anywhere on the disk). After experimenting for a while, I have decided that the best place for Boot Manager is right at the very end of the disk. If it is there, it will not interfere with rearranging other partitions, should you wish to do so, and it doesn't interfere with certain things that demand that the very first partition needs to be a primary partition, formatted as FAT, FAT32, or NTFS.. There is also a pretty good chance, that there will already be a small, empty, space at the end, simply because it is less than a full cylinder. Almost always, Boot Manger will slip into that otherwise wasted space. To get it there, Uninstall Boot Manager (use LVM, or MinILVM), then fill up all but that small, empty, space at the end of the disk, with other partitions. Then install Boot Manager. If it refuses to install, you will need to expand that last partition, somehow (try DFSEE to shrink the previous partition by one cylinder, which should add on cylinder to the empty space), then install Boot Manager. Then, add the partitions that you wish to be managed by Boot Manager to the Boot Manager menu. After that, you can do what you want with the other partitions, being aware, that fooling around with partitions can result in permanent data loss.

322
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Has the Atheros AR5007 driver in your package been updated since the Team OS/2 version was released to support the Asus netbooks?

I am not sure. My package contains whatever someone told me that they got to work.

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It seems like the settings in the inf or reg-file - the HKR_  settings are important. Could it be an idea to gather which changes in those values that use to be important, so a user would know what values to experiment with? I guess that not all values are that important. I've documentet the values I had to change on a the intel 3945 abg (Acer One)  and on an intel 2200 (T43).

Or is this "already known"?

It seems that it is necessary to have a REG export for the specific machine that you are trying to make work, to get the best results. How portable those exports might be is somewhat questionable. It is also not well known what the various settings might do (one can guess, and if the install *.INF is available, that may give some indication about what settings are for). This does become a problem for those who do not have windows installed. It may also depend on which version of the driver is used. WinXP drivers seem to be preferred, but Win2000, and WinVISTA drivers, and exports, are known to work (sometimes). I haven't heard of any results with trying Win7 drivers and exports.

I cannot test everything (anything), so I depend on people telling me what works, and supplying me with the appropriate files so I can package them in GENMU. I have packaged a couple of experimental ones in the GENMU_TEST package, so that people can test them, and report back to me. Currently, there is one device in there that has not been tested (and one that is good). If anybody has a RALINK [1814:2790] to test with, I would like to hear the results.
 
I will suggest, that it may be to the OS/2 communities advantage, if everybody would try to get whatever NIC they have, to work with GENMAC (unless they are already supported). The more that we can get to work, the better chance we will have to get something new working later. It is obvious that GENMAC is a dead end street, but since we have nothing to replace it, yet, we do need to try to get more devices to work.

BTW, I am told that the devices that are currently in GENMU will be included in eCS 2.0 GA.

323
Applications / Re: Is GenMAC Open Source?
« on: 2010.02.02, 05:54:25 »
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Why won't he open source it? Is he using someone else's code?

There was some hint that suggested that that may be the case, or that something was somewhat questionable if somebody decided to push the patent thing. Nothing definite though. Then, recently, there was a suggestion that Willibald may not be well enough to do anything as mundane as work on software development. Nothing definite there either. Hopefully, if that is the case, he will recover.

I don't know the details of writing modern NIC drivers, but it seems to me that we may have a base to start from. The Realtek 8139 driver was written specifically for OS/2, and it works well. I suspect that it could be used as a base for many other drivers, as long as the technical data can be obtained from the manufacturers to be able to control the hardware. I would think that the software interface doesn't need to change much. The main problem would likely be to find someone who can, and is willing to, do the development. I am also not sure where the source would be found.

324
Applications / Re: Is GenMAC Open Source?
« on: 2010.02.01, 20:00:06 »
Some effort was put into trying to get GENMAC open sourced, or even closed sourced, but available to selected people. All of that went through Thorolf Godawa, who managed to become the front man for Willibald Meyer. The answer from Willibald is, apparently "No, it is not worth my time to do that. Find another solution". Of course, it was more than a year after Willibald quit working on GENMAC before anybody had the courtesy to inform the user community about that decision.

We, the users, are now attempting to expand the capabilities of GENMAC. In spite of being told that it is impossible to do, we are slowly adding devices to the supported category, using the "UNSUPPORTED" mode of GENMAC, and updating a few supported devices. You will  find the GENMU package at ftp://genmac@os2voice.org (use "UNSUPPORTED", without the quotes, as the password) along with GENMU-TEST  which contains UNTESTED drivers for a couple of devices (although one has now been added to the GENMU package). However, it is apparent that this project will be severely limited by the capabilities of the current GENMAC base. That means that SOMEBODY had better start developing NIC drivers, or eCS will be as dead as Microsoft, and IBM, want it to be.

325
Hardware / Re: OmniKey Cardman 3121
« on: 2010.01.30, 00:11:10 »
You might be able to get it to work with the usbecd.sys driver (it is at HOBBES), and a lot of work. Usbecd.sys will get most USB devices mounted, and it offers some basic commands that can be used to "talk" to the driver, However, it is all raw data, and you would need to figure out how to make it do what you want it to do. There are instructions in the driver package.

326
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When I reboot, both OSes complain "no valid hardware found for WRND32$"

If I understand correctly, you simply copied an existing eCS installation from the DELL system. That is never going to work right until you tweak all of the (hundreds of?) places that need to be tweaked. One of those would be that you need to replace the 2200 support, using the Adapters and protocols program (MPTS.EXE), with the 2915 support. Chances are that you also need to replace the wired NIC support as well. The GENMAC installer does not do that, all it does is install the required files to support the device. It won't matter if you remove the 2200 files, or not, as long as you don't exceed the limit on the number of files that can be in \IBMCOM\MACS (127???).

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DougB, I'm using v2.20, I downloaded the unsupported file you pointed me to. I read the info file you wrote. When I check the appropriate box and push the 'I Agree' button, nothing happens.

Did you select a package to install, before clicking 'I agree'? You need to double click the one that you want, and it should color the box next to it.

 

327
Hardware / Re: Is replacing cmos battery on T43 a big deal?
« on: 2010.01.27, 22:16:00 »
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The correct battery was available locally for $15, but the store would be closed before I could get there. Tried soldering one up, and it works. But I have a bad feeling. The wireless card is an Intel 2915 and the cardbus is a Ricoh.

The battery should be okay, as long as you didn't cook it while soldering.

The 2915 wireless should also be okay. It is supported by GENMAC 2.20, however, there is an updated driver in the GENMU package at ftp://genmac@ftp.os2voice.org (use UNSUPPORTED as the password when it asks) that is reported to work better. Be sure to read the readme. You will also need the XWLAN 3.10 support to properly control the wireless.

http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/util/wps/xwlan310.zip

http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/system/drivers/network/genmac220.wpi

I don't know anything about the Ricoh cardbus. There may be some useful information at:

http://www.os2warp.be/index2.php?name=pcmciaentry

328
Hardware / Re: Is replacing cmos battery on T43 a big deal?
« on: 2010.01.25, 17:59:55 »
There is no point in speculating about how to do anything on a ThinkPad. It seems that every machine has a different setup. You absolutely REQUIRE the specific maintenance manual for the specific machine, or you can get yourself into major trouble trying even the simplest repair job. The maintenance manuals are available on the internet. Just get it, and follow the directions.

329
Hardware / Re: Is replacing cmos battery on T43 a big deal?
« on: 2010.01.20, 21:46:36 »
Those batteries are all plug in types. The problem may be in locating one.

If you google on the machine type (mine is an 1871) and "manual" you should find a link to the maintenance manual for your machine. That will tell you exactly how to change the battery, along with a lot of other good information.

330
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So, after a cursory search, it appears that t42s come with a serial port, and t43s don't, unless you use a docking station, is that correct?

It may depend on individual models. There are a number of T42 and T43 models. Some may have things like serial ports, and higher resolution screens, while others don't. You need to carefully investigate whatever you buy.

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I am not using ACPI but old APM driver, suspend/resume works nicely. I cannot influence the fans like Doug can (and which might make me try ACPI). The T43p is hotter, but not much. I

The fan is controlled by the system, the software doesn't seem to have any control. All I can do is lower the speed, which does cool things down. It also seems that the 1871-W8M does not support APM (or APM doesn't support the machine), so the only option that I have for power control is ACPI, and that is somewhat limited since Suspend/Resume won't work.

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