The Chairman's Secrets

By Paul Leduc.


 * Paul Leduc leaks a new batch of OS/2 tips and tricks to the public.

Tip 1
Tip 1. As you know, installing Warp from CD-ROM on a Thinkpad is a bit of a challenge, since you need both a diskette drive and a CD-ROM drive, but it is possible to only have one at a time physically on the machine. The way to do the install is with an external drive.

However, here is an alternative method. (Note: I have not personally tested this.. it is from an IBM internal forum conference)  Installing WARP V4 on 755 CD (Fresh install) or 760

a. You need 3 blank disks, 20 MB free space for OS/2 image, and of course WARP V4 CD (haven't tried with BETA or DEMO-PKG CD), and if available,WARP V4 Installation Disks (3 disks).

b. You need to copy OS/2 images from the CD to your Hard Drive.

c. Set the installation program to point to your hard disk instead of CD.

d. Install. Once done, you can delete the OS/2 images on your hard drive.

e. FYI: WARP V4 does not recognized MWAVE. To install mwave modem and sound, you need to install it manually from disks. The disks can be   downloaded from http://www.pc.ibm.com ... somewhere. Do a search.

For detail explanations on installation, please read-on.

1. Start your system with the CD-ROM drive attached and the OS/2 Warp CD-ROM CD in the drive.

2. Make a temporary directory on the hard drive called OS2IMAGE.

MD D:\OS2IMAGE    (I use D drive, you can replace it with other                           drive) 3. Type

XCOPY X:\OS2IMAGE\DISK_0\*.* /S D:\OS2IMAGE\DISK_0  and press Enter XCOPY X:\OS2IMAGE\DISK_1\*.* /S D:\OS2IMAGE\DISK_1 .....   ( Repeat until DISK 11 )

where:

X: is the CD-ROM drive, and D: is a drive that contains enough disk space to place the images and OS/2 (approximately 20 MB for OS/2 Warp 4).

4. Swap in the diskette drive; insert a formatted diskette and type the following:

XCOPY D:\OS2IMAGE\DISK_1\*.* A:\, then press Enter LABEL A: DISK 1, then press Enter

5. Edit the CONFIG.SYS on the new DISK 1.

Change: SET OS2_SHELL=SYSINST2.EXE To:    SET OS2_SHELL=SYSINST2.EXE D:\OS2IMAGE

Save and Exit the file.

6. To start the installation you will need the following:

- The original OS/2 Warp Installation Diskette - The modified DISK 1 - The original DISK 2 (for OS/2 Warp 4 only) - Diskette images in the C:\OS2IMAGE directory on the hard drive

(If you do not have the original diskette for installation, you can   always create it with LOADDSKF command. The images are in \DISKIMGS    on the WARP V4 CD.)

Insert the OS/2 Installation Diskette in drive A: and restart your system machine. Insert the modified DISK 1 when prompted for DISK 1.

7. Go thru the installation by entering the settings and other options. The installation will go on until it finish copying all the files required (Disk 0 to Disk 11) to the hard drive. When done, it will prompt you to remove disk in floppy drive and wil reboot when you press ENTER. Do not press ENTER, instead press F3   to exit to the OS/2 prompt.

8. Edit the CONFIG.SYS by using TEDIT.

tedit config.sys   press ENTER

Change: SET SOURCEPATH=D:\OS2IMAGE (path in your hard disk) To:    SET SOURCEPATH=X:\OS2IMAGE  (path in your CD, in my case                                         it is E drive)

You can delete the D:\OS2IMAGE directory now.

9. Type EXIT to go back to the installation screen. Remove the disk in   the floppy drive and press ENTER to reboot.

10. Shutdown your machine. Replace the floppy drive with CD drive. Put your WARP V4 CD and start the machine. The installation program will point to your CD again.

11. The installation will proceed as you would normally have. However, just to inform you, at the end of the installation (GUI), it will prompt you to remove disk from your floppy drive (which you don't   have) to restart the machine. If you click on OK button, the system would not restart. This is n normal because it will search for a   floppy drive. Just press CTRL+ALT=DEL to reboot.

-
 * How I did mine ?? Here it is ****

I have a 810 MB hard drive with 4 partitions.

Name    Status       Access     FS Type            Size Startable   : Primary   Boot Manager          1 WARP    Bootable    C: Primary   HPFS                400 DOSWin  Bootable     : Primary   FAT                  18 None       D: Logical   FAT                 350

I have a DUAL BOOT System. Drive C is assign to either WARP or DOSWin partition. Only one can exist at boot-up.

I use to have WARP V3 on the WARP partition. I format the WARP partition to have a clean install. ( I've tried installing WARP V4 on top of V3, it is not very clean, and hang my thinkpad). You could surely try and let me know if it works.

I copied the OS/2 images in my D drive. The rest, I follow the install -ation instruction as stated. (D:\OS2IMAGE)

It is very easy when you have multi partitions. But if you have only one partition, then it's a bit messy. Below is what I did with single partition hard disk (I've did it with a 300 MB Hard Disk). The partition for OS/2 WARP has to be FAT or else you could not copy the images from the CD to hard disk.

If you find a way to copy OS/2 images from the CD to a HPFS partition on a single partition hard drive, please let me know. Below is how I did the installation with a single partition hard drive (ONLY C DRIVE)

1) Create a DOS bootable disk. (FORMAT A: /S)

2) Create CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT for the thinkpad and name them    as CONFIG.WRP and AUTOEXEC.WRP (Place this on the bootable disk)

CONFIG.SYS (name it config.wrp) --    DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE NOEMS DOS=HIGH,UMB DEVICE=C:\DOS\IBMTPCD.SYS /D:TPCD001 /P:170 /R FILES=50 LASTDRIVE=Z

AUTOEXEC.BAT (name it autoexec.wrp) @ECHO OFF PATH=C:\DOS C:\DOS\MSCDEX.EXE /D:TPCD001 /M:15

3) Copy this files from your DOS to the bootable disk.

E.* (DOS Editor for PC-DOS) EDIT.*, QBASIC.* (DOS Editor for MS-DOS) XCOPY.EXE ATTRIB.EXE MSCDEX.EXE FORMAT.COM FDISK.EXE SYS.COM IBMTPCD.SYS (Your CD-ROM driver for IDE CD-Drive)

4) Boot your thinkpad using the bootable disk.

5) Format your partition as FAT with normal DOS.

FORMAT C: /s

6) Create a \DOS directory on the hard disk and copy the files

MD C:\DOS COPY A:\CONFIG.WRP C:\CONFIG.SYS COPY A:\AUTOEXEC.WRP C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT COPY A:\*.* C:\DOS

7) Shut down the machine. Replace the floppy drive with CD-Drive   and boot using the hard disk.

8) Your CD drive should be readable by the system as you've   put in the CD-ROM driver. Insert the WARP CD and copy ths OS/2    images. Here I use C drive to copy my OS/2 images. (C:\OS2IMAGE)

9) Follow the installation instruction as stated. 

This documentation is supplied as is. It has never been tested in real lab testing and therefor not the official method of installing WARP V4 on thinkpad. Please use with caution.

Best regards, Deil Yusoff - IBM Malaysia, Network Specialist (MFADZIL at KULVM)

Tip 2
Tip 2. A neat way to determine how many bytes are in a directory (including all the sub-directories) is with the following command: DIR /A:-D /S | FIND /V "-"

Now, if you are wondering what this does, check out the help for the DIR command and the FIND command.

This will display the totals for each directory, and the grand total for all directories at the end.

Note.. if you have set the pause switch (/P) on for your DIRCMD environment variable, first turn it off by entering SET DIRCMD='' before running this, otherwise, it will appear as if your system is hung, when in reality it is paused (but since there may be nothing on the screen, you will never know it!).

If you missed a previous tip here, you can customize the way your DIR command works by setting a statement in your CONFIG.SYS.. for example, SET DIRCMD= /O-D /P will always sort your directory list by date, most recent first, and pause when the screen is full.

Tip 3
Tip #3.(OS/2 Advocacy tip from cbruner@westonia.com) For those of you who may not be aware, there is a petition page for OS/2 software which I'd ask that you check out, fill in, and have your friends using OS/2 do the same.

The page is http://www.teamos2.org/petition.

This page includes your signature automatically on a petition for software that you would like to see, and which you would purchase if available on OS/2.

The list of software is comprehensive, and even includes email so that you can send your own individual request to companies. It also explains the software, and shows you the petition.

If nothing else, please go there to request full duplex drivers from Creative Labs.... with Voicetype, that is something that is definitely required. (Editor's aside: Given the recent announcement by Creative Labs, I'm afraid this one's now as likely as Microsoft porting Word to OS/2. :-