Person to Person Tips

Person to Person Tips file Author: Darius Fariborz
 * IBM UK Labs Ltd,
 * Hursley Park,
 * Winchester,
 * Hants SO21 2JN,
 * England.

Email: faribor at winvmb.vnet.ibm.com Compuserve: 100141,3612

Subject: P2P/ v1.0 to P2P v1.0.x Interconnectivity over TCP/IP

TCP/IP address within the same workstation, in P2P/2 v1.0.1, is 1376 and 5001 for P2P/2 v1.0. For example to convert address books from v1.0 to v1.0.1, use 'Export' from the P2P v1.0.1 Address Book utility and then edit the exported file (now in ASCII), and change 5001 to 1376. Next this should be imported.

Subject:WfWGs v3.1 and NETBIOS

Netware Requestor bundled with WfWGs has not got netbios.exe and needs to be obtained and installed separately, if Novell netbios is required.

Subject:ISDN - Called Party sub-addressing If using CdPSA with IBM ISDN card, make sure it is properly configured at the called station.

Subject:ISDN - SCII Card

For SCii software and Hardware installation consult SCii pubs. Also refer to P2P/Windows README file on diskette one for further practical tips.

Subject:Installation "Serious Disk Error"

if Serious Disk Error msg is popped out during installation of P2P/W, then decrease the size of virtual memory(swapper file).

Subject:Async Reliability Problem

If P2P/2 v1.0 over Async used for a long time it may crash the system. To get over this, specify a large swapper file (20MB). P2P v1.0.1 handles this thru better memory management. Subject:ActionMedia without the Capture card

The effect of using AMII card without Capture card (the card that plugs on to AMII), is that the Dual View will be greyed out. In addition only local software emulation or remote software emulation/Video can be viewed at any one time.

Subject:ISDN - SCII card

SCii ISDN needs subscriber number. Note that SCII configurator doesn't give an error and the NDIS MAC drivers that P2P uses, need this information.

Subject:ISDN - SCII Card

If inadvertently made a voice call from Address Book and also had a Data app checked, then the voice call will go thru, however the data call starts but will fail, as expected.

Subject:ISDN - SCII card To remove SCii mac drivers from WfWGs Control Panel-Adapters listing, delete \windows\system\oem0.inf file. Don't mistake INF with IBM's NIF file, though they are similar. Subject:ISDN - SCII address

SCii Telecom, 4 Avenue Victor Hugo - 75116 Paris, France. Tel:+33 1 44174417    Fax:+33 1 44174419 USA ....... Tel:(301) 7797490    Fax:(301) 7797281 UK ........ Tel:(0329) 664333    Fax:(0329) 664333 Germany ... Tel:(89) 5467570     Fax:(89) 54675732 Subject:ISDN - SCII Data call Limitations

SCii cannot handle 2 data calls, however this is possible with the IBM ISDN card. But you can have a data and a voice call with SCii. IBM ISDN doesn't support voice explicitly.

Subject:Fast Modems

P2P/Windows+P2P/2 is capable of supporting V.fast + V.turbo Modems, providing your PC comport is speced to do so.

Subject:Jovian LAN Card

P2P does not work with the Jovian adapter. Subject: P2P Clip & Windows for Workgroups clip/DDE Interoperability

Subject:P2P Clip & NEOS Peer LAN clip/DDE Interoperability
 * P2P's Clip provides for sharing of clipboard/DDE between communicating workstations; Microsoft's Windows For Workgroups offers the same via a different user model.
 * This note confirms that P2P's Clip will happily co-exist with W4W, and, furthermore, will interoperate as follows -
 * Suppose we have 3 PCs, A, B & C; A & B are running W4W and have shared a page in the Clipbook such that clipboard and DDE operations are shared between them; B nows calls C using P2P and shares Clip onto the call. If A and C each run an application such as Excel, Lotus, or whatever, then if A copies cells to the clipboard, C can Paste (clipboard) and/or Paste Link (DDE) and it will work. (The reverse direction and any other combinations of machines will also work).
 * Note also that, in the scenario above, C can be running either OS/2 or Windows (the same restrictions would apply as in the general case of two machines of differing operating systems for P2P Clip).

Subject: P2P Clip & Windows for Workgroups clip/DDE Interoperability
 * P2P's Clip provides for sharing of clipboard/DDE between communicating workstations; IBM's NEOS Peer LAN offers the same via a different user model.
 * This note confirms that P2P's Clip will happily co-exist with Peer LAN, and, furthermore, will interoperate as follows -
 * Suppose we have 3 PCs, A, B & C; A & B are running Peer LAN; B now calls C using P2P and shares Clip onto the call. If A and C each run an application such as Excel, Lotus, or whatever, then if A copies cells to the clipboard, B then uses Peer LAN "Network Clip/DDE" to "Copy" the clipboard and "Get" the data from A; then C can Paste (clipboard) and/or Paste Link (DDE) and it will work. (The reverse direction and any other combinations of machines will also work).
 * Note also that, in the scenario above, C can be running either OS/2 or Windows (the same restrictions would apply as in the general case of two machines of differing operating systems for P2P Clip).


 * A minor snag has been uncovered with the way we got Clip to happily coexist with W4W. These notes explain how W4W works, what we did to cope with it, and why there's a small snagette. In the following remember that "clipbook" is W4W's clipboard sharing utility.
 * Suppose machines B and C are running W4W, and C and D are running P2P with Clip.
 * D copies something to the clipboard; Clip sends the list of clipboard formats to C, where Clip copies them to the clipboard; W4W clipbook notices this, and copies all the formats and the data (so Clip fetches all the data across which was delayed up to that point and renders it) onto its shared page for B; THEN (rot its socks) it ADDS a private format called "Clipbook Preview" to the clipboard on C WITHOUT emptying it first; Clip gets a message saying the clipboard has been updated, reads the contents and sends it all back to D (whence it originally came).
 * That was considered undesirable, so what we did was: when the message arrives to say "clipboard updated" we check to see if the format Clipbook Preview exists on the clipboard and if it does we ignore the update (so it's not "bounced back" to D).
 * Then, however, suppose B updates it clipboard, W4W copies it to C which gets its clipboard emptied and filled with new formats and data, *including* "Clipbook Preview"; now Clip gets the update message but ignores it because of the Clipbook Preview format.
 * To fix that, we used the fact that whenever Clip fills a clipboard it adds its own format (for Windows "P2P/W-CLIP") to the others.

So, now when Clip gets a "clipboard update" message, it checks to see if the formats include Clipbook Preview *AND* P2P/W-CLIP, in which case the message is ignored (because W4W must have added its format without emptying, which it only does when it is *reading* the clipboard to copy to its shared page). When B's page gets copied to C, W4W empties the clipboard first, hence P2P/s format is missing, so we then correctly pick up the message and send off the contents.

Snagette: Suppose we now add machine A which is connected by P2P and Clip to B. (Remember B is sharing clipbook via W4W with C, C is connected by P2P and Clip to D). Still following? Now A copies some stuff to the clipboard; Clip sends it to B, adding its own format of P2P/W-CLIP to the others (hear it coming..?..); B copies it to C via W4W which adds its own format of Clipbook Preview; Clip on C gets the "clipboard updated" message, but IGNORES it because both formats are present.
 * We have decided to live with the snagette. Why? Because -
 * 1 it's a pretty unlikely scenario for anyone to hit.
 * 2 since B and C are both running P2P, they could P2P call each other over the LAN (they must have a LAN because they are connected by W4W) making a 4 way P2P & Clip call, and do their clipboard sharing that way; any shared page on the clipbook between B and C should be unshared before doing it; then everything will be fine. i.e. there is a work-around.

Subject: Run-time DLLs for IBMC, and CommonView

Products which are sold, and include run-time DLLs from other products, may encounter problems. For example, suppose P2P includes DLLs which are part of the Glockenspiel CommonView product; those DLLs are installed on the user's machine in his libpath and are used by P2P. Now suppose that the user buys another product which includes the same Glockenspiel DLLs, these new ones are installed on the libpath, maybe overwriting the P2P ones, or maybe being put on the libpath before P2P's. Now when P2P runs it will use the new ones. This may cause problems. Further, suppose that the P2P ones were advanced ones with new features, and the second product the user installed had older versions lacking the new features. Now P2P will not run because the features are missing; worse, the P2P ones may have been overwritten and P2P has to be re-installed; then the P2P ones may not work with the user's second product (worst case!) in which case the user cannot use both products on his machine at the same time.
 * P2P:There are two potential areas where we could hit this problem -
 * IBMC:Ibm C has a runtime DLL called CRTLIB.DLL. P2P does NOT use this, instead we have a system (designed by Andy Key together with DCL) in which all the ibmc run-time routines are kept in our own-named DLPCRT.DLL which thus uniquely named will not clash with any of the user's CRTLIB.DLLs. This was done because many applications are written in C (and the particularly name CRTLIB is common to many C compilers other than IBM's) and a clash was considered quite likely.
 * CommonView:Glockenspiel's CommonView, as used by P2P, needs 4 DLLs, called -
 * GLFS31DP.DLL
 * GLCV31DP.DLL
 * GLSH31DP.DLL
 * GLTD31DP.DLL
 * P2P DOES use these, they are installed by the Install program and exist in the C:\P2P directory along with all the other EXEs and DLLs. If the user installs another product which uses the same DLLs, the problems described above could occur. It was considered unlikely that a user would install another product written using CommonView and hit a clash problem. P2P uses CommonView 3.0 Beta 3 DLLs which are very recent.

Subject: IBM Multimedia Hot Lines The numbers for the ULTIMEDIA TOOLS SERIES order hotline are: USA: 1-800-877-7771 UK: (0285) 641175 ActionMedia Support USA: 1-800-241-1620

Subject:Wiring details for P2P NULL modem cables The wiring for a NULL modem cable for use with P2P is thru PC/PS Async port is as follows: 25pin(F)       to    25 pin(F) -                ---  2(TD)           to    3(RD) 3(RD)          to    2(TD) 4(RTS)         to    5(CTS) 5(CTS)         to    4(RTS) 7(GND)         to    7(GND) 6(DSR) & 8(DCD) to  20(DTR) 20(DTR)         to    6(DSR) & 8(DCD) F = Female 9 pin             to             9 pin -                            -       3(TD)              to             2(RD) 2(RD)             to             3(TD) 7(RTS)            to             8(CTS) 8(CTS)            to             7(RTS) 5(GND)            to             5(GND) 6(DSR) & 1(DCD)   to             4(DTR) 4(DTR)            to             6(DSR) & 1(DCD)

Subject:TCP/IP checklist for P2P/2 v1.0 only DEVICE=C:\TCPIP\BIN\INET.SYS   ;assuming that TCPIP is on C: drive DEVICE=C:\TCPIP\BIN\IFNDIS SET SLIP.COM=COM1    ;com1 is the default ifconfig lo 127.0.0.1 This is described in P2P/2 Using Guide v1.0 in Appendix A pp4. - Make user that Slip is enabled within the TCPIP itself. - Initially just let P2P to use TCPIP and not anything else for test purposes.
 * Go to TCP/IP Config panel (from Call Mngr select View - Configuration and then TCP/IP) and check "Use Slip" and "Enable" are ticked. Afterwards click on Defaults. Also check the internet address is correct.
 * Check that the following statements in CONFIG.SYS.
 * Check that SETUP.CMD in TCPIP\BIN directory has the following line:

Subject:Address Book Format

P2P Address Book format (and content) are not consistent with any other product like: Time and Place/2, Lotus Notes, (using Vendor Independent Messaging interface) WPSHARE93 style (as on OS2TOOLS), VM Names file style. Address Book Synchronization/2 Lotus cc:Mail (VIM) In P2P defence, the address book interface was coded to allow for using various formats. P2P can accept interface DLLs (called Database Support Modules) which allow it to access other address book formats. The problem is not design but the fact that no other DSMs have been written.

Subject:Camera Awareness

To make sure that the AVK knows that you have a camera attached, run the ActionMedia II Configuration Program and ensure that you have selected the correct camera type under Capture Settings.

Subject: Information on VideoLabs FlexCam Camera

From the FlexCam box... ---  FlexCam Desktop Color Video & Sound is a high resolution, integrated color camera and microphone. FlexCam's video output is  industry standard NTSC or PAL. And Flexcam's low noise, directional microphones deliver top-quality, line-level stereo audio. FlexCam's  60 degree swivel "head" and 18" flexible gooseneck offer precise   camera positioning. And the adjustable focus lens gives you razor sharp,   real-time color video from a quarter-inch to infinity.   Our experiences...   --   We used our Flexcam for the first time yesterday and we were amazed!   We've replaced our bulky camcord that we use with P2P with the FlexCam   and we were able to have 5 of us in the picture at all times. What was   really amazing is the level of detail you can get when you point the   Flexcam down onto a coin or at a large open room. We really were   amazed that for �500 we could get such a high quality camera. We haven't   used the mics yet, but if they're even half the quality of the video   image, they'll be better than anything we have to date. We'll be using   the FlexCam for video conferencing or for showing foils, etc. when we   can't get the images online. Contact VideoLabs. Inc at : 5270 West 84th Street, Minneapolis, MN 55437, USA. Tel +612 897 1995 Fax +612 897 3597

Subject:Poor Still Pictures If you have problem with the quality of still pictures then consider the followings:
 * Ensure that the 'Enhanced Still' option ticked.
 * When you are happy with the image you have captured, select Save as and where you see the ComboBox, 'Save file as type:', select 8 bit per pixel OS/2 bitmap. This means the image will show up better on the display. If you select 24 bit per pixel OS/2 bitmap, the package/app. that you use to display the image, should have the option to Halftone / Error Diffuse the image.

Subject: Cannot get the following applications to be mirrored to P2P Chalkboard App 1:Micrografix ABC Flowcharter

This is a Windows app. and currently P2P cannot mirror full-screen WIN-OS2 applications. App 2:Lotus 123 for OS/2, Version 2.0

When trired to mirror a Lotus spreadsheet into P2P chalkboard, doing s brings down Lotus with the following error message: SYS3175 A program in this session encountered a problem and cannot continue. A program generated an access violation at 15e1e1e3. The solution is to add the following line to the CONFIG.SYS and reboot SET P2P_MIRROR_BUTTON=OFF or SET P2P_MIRROR_BUTTON=FLOAT For some reason, Lotus OS/2 apps all behave this way. This will prevent the chalkboard from trying to subclass the application frame to add the extra mirror icon and will cure the problem for both 123 and Freelance.

Subject:Interrupts for ActionMedia MCA and Token Ring cards: Audio=Video=10,  Capture=11 Token Ring =3

Subject:P2P, 720C and Token Ring PCMCIA card P2P was demonstrated on a 720c with PCMCIA Token Ring adapter at Business Computing 93 and had no comms problems at all. In this case, we were using software video but this looked great once we figured out how to get the screen into 256 colour mode (we tried logic and installed the SVGA driver but when this failed someone told us that the VGA driver is the one to use !?)

Subject:WACOM Tablet

Installed P2P (selected WACOM TABLET) and as a result, could not use IBM MOUSE but the WACOM TABLET is OK. What can I do?

The WACOM tablet driver *replaces* the existing mouse driver. To support multiple pointing devices, you need Pen PM. Other 'solutions' require undocumented/unsupported features in MOUSE.SYS. Try OS2TABLT FORUM... Or request the PenPM package? This will give all the required support. Look at PENPM_B FORUM for more details. Not only does this gives full TABLET support for OS/2 and can also use seamless Windows Apps. Also try: DEVICE=C:\OS2\MOUSE.SYS TYPE=IBMMOU$ STYPE=TABMOU$

Subject: WACOM Tablet

Let P2P Install programme do the necessary setup and modifications for for you. The entries made to the config.sys file have to be in a certain order so that the WACOM tablet may be used in conjunction with the mouse.

Subject:Table of known Good initialisation strings:-

Hayes V Series Ultra 144     AT&FX0E0V0S0=0&D2 Hayes V Series Ultra 9600    AT&FX0E0V0S0=0&D2 Hayes Optima 288             Same as Hayes Ultra 96 IBM 7855                     AT&FX0E0V0S0=0&C1\Q2\R2\N3&S0 Miracom Courier HST          AT&FX0E0V0S0=0&A0&B1&H1&R2 Smartlink SM7714             AT&FX0E0V0S0=0&C1&K3&S0 Psion-Dacom PDM50F           AT&FX0E0V0F0S0=0&K3 Twincom 144DFi               AT&FX0E0V0F0S0=0&K3 WaveRunner                   AT&FX0E0V0\V0S0=0 IBM 14.4 credit card Data/Fax AT&F0TX0E0V0 Tricom Tornado 28/42         AT&FX0E0V0S0=0S2=43S12=50&R0 Tricom TravelPorte FAST      Probably same as above Motorola UDS, V.32b42i       AT&FEVYXS0=0&C1&D2&R&S\V\Q3%B ZyXEL U-1496 Series modems   AT&FE0V0X0 ZyXEL series consists of: 1)U-1496+  2)U-1496E+ 3)U-1496E  4)U-1496B+ 5)U-1496B Zoom FaxModem VFX 14.4Kbps   AT&FE0V0X0&C1&D2&R0S03=013S25=005   V32.bis   US Robotics Sportster,        AT&FE0&N0V0X0Y0&A0&C1&D2&K2&R2&H1   14,400 FAXMODEM,   External Version,   CCITT V.32 bis + V.42 bis   Switch settings for the US Robotic Modem   (situated on the rear of the modem) are as follows:   SW 1,3,5,6,7,8 DOWN   Sw 2,4 UP   Switch descriptions:   1 UP ..... Data Terminal Ready normal     DOWN ... DTR override   2 UP ..... Verbal result codes     DOWN ... Numeric result codes   3 UP ..... Suppress result codes     Down ... Display result code   4 UP ..... Echo offline commands     DOWN ... No Echo, offline commands   5 UP ..... Auto answer on ring     DOWN ... Suppress auto answer   6 UP ..... Carrier detect normal     DOWN ... Carrier detect override   7 UP ..... Load NVRAM defaults     DOWN ... Load factory defaults   8 UP ..... Smart mode     DOWN ... Dumb mode AT&T 3810                    AT&FE0V0X0&D2\D3\Q3&R0S0=0 Motorola 14.4 Cellect PCMCIA AT&FE0V0X0&C1&D2\Q3\D1S0=0 Hayes Optima 2.88 V.FC       AT&FE0V0X0&C1&D2S0=0 IBM 14.4 D/F PCMCIA          AT&FE0V0X0&R0S0=0 Intel 14.4 D/F PCMCIA        AT&FE0V0X0&C1&D2&R0S0=0 Intel 14.4 EX                AT&FE0V0X0\V0S0=0 Intel 400e SatisFaxtion      AT&FE0V0X0\V0S0=0 Megahertz 14.4 CC3144 D/F    AT&FE0V0X0&C1&D2&R0S0=0 PCMCIA Microcom QX4232bis           AT&FE0V0X0\D2&S0S0=0 Practical Peripherals 14.4   AT&FE0V0X0&C1&D2S0=0 Racal Datacom ALM3226        AT&FE0V0X0&C1&D2&R0S0=0 Subject:Modem Call Clearing

The call clearing phase over Modems is rather longish sometime, even if the Call Mngr reports that there is no call active. The best indicator is to check whether OH (onhook) is active/lit, if so then the modem is ready for i/g + o/g calls. Subject:Types of UARTs in Your PC Under OS/2 simply type: MODE COMn: BUFFER It is highly recommended to enable extended buffering by simply typing: MODE COMn: BUFFER=ON  ..... where n comport number. Under Windows use MSD (or the IBM equivalent, eg:QCONFIG) for UART determination.

Subject:16650 UARTS When high quality fast modems and high speed UARTS (16550A) used then use of P2P over modems is quite acceptable. Delays depend upon data far less than on P2P. P2P compresses that data before it is sent to the modem, all that is "missing" from P2P code is error correction but good quality modems will provide adequate error detection and correction. We recommend use of Modems with V42/V42bis.

Subject:Chalkboard Mirroring

Under OS/2, seamless Windows apps do not have either the mirror icon added to the title bar or an extra menu item added to the system menu, what can I do? You may like to consider using the floating chalkboard refresh button to give a "remote" way of refreshing. This button can be positioned anywhere on screen and when pressed will cause the chalkboard to remirror its current target without pulling the chalkboard app into the foreground. Subject:P2P/PCMCIA Modem on a ThinkPad OS/2 v2.1 doesn't recognise the modems either so the operating system call which tells P2P what modems are available doesn't report the PCMCIA modems....... Subject:P2P and Novell Lan Work Place

Novell TCP/IP Winsock.dll doesn't support asynch comms and as a result P2P\Windows doesn't operate on this package. This problem has been logged with Novell by Hursley in Feb/94. However if one uses Novell patch lwp189 together with a special BORLSMT.DLL obtainable from IBM, then P2P would run over LWP v4.2.

Subject:XGA-1 and XGA-2 cards P2P/2 Chalkboard in a machine with XGA-1 or XGA-2 graphics cards configured for 640x480 at 256 or 64K colours, has problem with the mouse. To get over this, configure for 1024x768.

Subject:P2P Packet Sizes P2P uses different packet sizes for different network types. This is hard coded internally and cannot be changed by the user. Fast Networks(eg. Lan) packets around 60KBytes Medium Networks(eg. ISDN) packets around 6KBytes Slow Networks(eg. Async) packets around 0.5KBytes

Subject:Chalkboard Printing

When printing bitmaps from Chalkboard using 4029-042 Postscript printer, ensure that PPDS drivers are active, otherwise it takes a lot longer to print and also with far lower quality.

Subject:IBM ISDN Coprocessor - ISA Model

IBM ISDN Coprocessor ISA version and the software (ISDN Coprocessor Support Program v1.2) is supported by Comms Manager v1.0, therefore P2P may be run on this configuration.

Subject:Modem Cable

P2P requires pins 2-8,15,17,20 and 22 to be connected between PC Commport and the MODEM in a one to one manner.

Subject:ISDN Software Requirements

To run P2P/2 with IBM ISDN card, the following SWs are required:
 * Comms Manager v1.0+
 * NTS/2 v2.11+
 * ISDN Coprocessor support program v1.2+

Subject:Chalkboard Cut/Paste

When dragging a Marked box out of P2P/2 v1.0 Chalkboard in order to do Cut/Paste into another object, the object gets corrupted. This only occurs in systems that running XGA or IA/A 32 bit graphics engine. To get around this bug either redraw the Chalkboard or edit dlpchalk.exe and change offset 0x36158 from 01 (dotted) to 00 (solid). P2P v1.0.1 has a built in workaround for this.

Subject:Video Free Format

If this message is displayed by P2P Video: >>Cannot show remote view because the remote Video has not free compatible >>formats Then ensure that the ActionMedia video and P2P software emulation are enabled.

Subject:Green Bar on Video

If a Green bar appears on P2P Video this is due to downlevel ActionMedia Capture card. Change/upgrade the hardware.

Subject:Comms Line

If the communication link goes down during a call, then P2P cannot recover from that call. This means that the call needs to be made and the required applications shared again.

Subject:ActionMedia Software

Most ActionMedia problems are due to downlevel SW, it needs v1.2 or later.

Subject:Chalkboard Mirroring

When mirroring, ensure that the window that is being mirrored is not covered by the Chalkboard. The areas that are covered do appear as blotches in the Chalkboard.

Subject:Video Performance

P2P Video data transmission and reception may be affected by the performance of the machines, that are used with. For example, it is quite unfair to connect Mod95 to Mod40 and compare the video performance of these 2 machines.

Subject:ActionMedia - Black Line

If Video out of ActionMedia is suffering from a black line down the right hand side of the P2P AM-II video window. Then in ActionMedia Configuration program, under Configuration/Displays, there are a couple of spin buttons marked Horizontal and Vertical.Tweaking the Horizontal value, say to 10, should get rid of the bar. Note that there is a bug with AM Configuration and you need to change save something else in order for the new Horizontal value to be saved and used next time.

Subject: Trumpet TCP/IP

We believe that Trumpet doesn't work with Token Ring cards but works with with NE2000 type cards.

Subject:Software Comport

P2P can use Software Comport, as long as no other application is using it.

Subject:Chalkboard Formats

P2P/Windows v1.xx Chalkboard only pastes/copies CF-Bitmap and text formats from system clipboard. DIB-Format will be supported in P2P v2.xx.

Subject:Novell NETAPI

If using Novell NETBIOS (NETAPI.dll) under OS/2 and Comms Manager is also on the same system, then ensure that the NETWARE directory appears before MUGLIB\DLL on the LIBPATH line in the CONFIG.SYS file. Otherwise P2P/2 will try to use the one in the MUGLIB\DLL directory which will malfunctions.

Subject:Helper Address

For NETBIOS messages encapsulated in IPX/NETX packets to be transferred across a Novell gateway (connecting two unlike LANs, eg: Token Ring and Ethernet), the network administrator needs to setup 'HELPER ADDRESS'.

Subject:ActionMedia Card part numbers

Part numbers for ActionMedia cards are as follows: ActionMedia Display Adapter (MCA) = 69F9732 ActionMedia Display Adapter (ISA) = 69F9730 ActionMedia Capture Option       = 69F9734 Subject: Local video vanihes temporary

If the self-view temporarily drops out when Video app is active but still the remote can be seen, this is probably due to loose electrical connections. Xck that everything is tightly screwed on.

Subject: Video Freeze

If video freezes for sometime (eg:5 to 20 seconds) while drawing/pasting on the Chalkboard, this may be due to:
 * Slow 386 SX machines
 * Lack of memory
 * Bridges between PCs
 * Ethernet networks get heavily loaded when the usage gets above 30%.
 * Video data has lower priority within P2P wrt Talk, FT, Clip and Chalkbroad data. Therefore if for example chalkboard is used (eg:free hand drawing) then obviously this higher priority data is transferred wrt video data.
 * Set compression to None in the communication sub-system panel. This will improve the performance if software emulation is used.

Subject:TCP/IP

We recommend to use TCP/IP, for getting thru an enterprise LAN networks. Other protocols (eg:NETBIOS) need bridges that can be programmed to know where the users are situated. This however requires some naming convention so that one LAN cannot flood another LAN with packets that are destined for another user on another LAN.

Subject:TCP/IP Packages

We have tested P2P with the following TCP/IP packages:
 * IBM TCP/IP v2.11
 * Chameleon
 * SuperTCP/NFS v3R2
 * Lan Work Place v4.2 (needs Novell lwp189 patch and a special module from us)
 * PC/TCP from FTP v2.2
 * Ungermann-Bass protocol stack v16.62
 * Trumpet v1A (only over Ethernet card)

Subject:NETBIOS

P2P network resource usage is similar to IBM Lan Req.

Subject:Remote Debug?

Can P2P be used for remote debug? ie:Is it possible to "take control" of the other person's system? No, one needs DCAF (IBM Distributed Console Acces Facility).

Subject:P2P Games

Can you play a computer game with a remote person with P2P? The answer is No. Subject:No P2P Icon after Installation under OS/2

What is the cause of not getting the P2P icon on the OS/2 Desktop after installation?

This is normally due to a corrupted OS2.ini file. Sometime it is possible to edit OS2.ini file (eg: JPOS2INI utility) and remove the references to P2P and re-install again and get the Icon.

Subject:No P2P Icon after Installation under Windows

What is the cause of not getting the P2P icon on the Windows Desktop after installation?

This is normally due to lack of available low memory. Free as much as possible and check this under an appropriate tool (eg: below1mb.exe)

Subject:DDE and Chalkboard Mirroring

Is it possible to have DDE support and Chalkboard mirroring with an application running in the Windows Dos prompt?

The answer is YES, provided that the app is windowable then P2P should mirror it to the chalkboard. With regard to DDE, if the app supports DDE then P2P DDE should also work. If both DDE and mirroring used at the same time, beware, the system performance is impacted.

Subject:Mirroring of WINOS2 Apps

P2P does not support mirroring of WIN-OS2 apps to the chalkboard if WIN-OS2 has been installed to run in full screen mode only. If however WIN-OS2 has been installed so that it can be minimised to a window then mirroring is possible. If Win-OS2 has been installed to run in full screen mode, it is still possible to mirror Windows apps but these should be run directly from OS2 desktop rather than from within Win-OS2. This is done by using the program template. Subject:IBM Value Point PCs

Note that most PS/VPs are shipped with unbuffered UARTs and this probably will cause P2P\Windows to malfunction at speeds of 9600bps and higher. Lowering the speed may cure the problem.

Subject :ActionMedia Error Message "01090626" at poweron

The cause is due to downlevel ActionMedia card. Subject :ActionMedia This card is a power hungry card and possibly it extracts more power from PS/2 +/-12V power rails than is allowed.

Subject:DLL Names & Functions ???vsma.dll - ActionMedia II ???vsmn.dll - Software Video dlplsmi.dll - IBM ISDN Comms borlsmv.dll - SCii ISDN Comms ???lsms.dll - APPC/APPN ???lsmt.dll - TCP/IP ???lsma.dll - Async ???lsmn.dll - NetBIOS ???lsmx.dll - SPX/IPX Subject: LAN Bases Installation and Execution This is only supported under P2P for OS/2 and the procedure is as follows: 1. Unpack all files from diskettes to a LAN drive. UNPACK a:*.* Note that unpack is an OS/2 utility. 2. Copy dlplrun.scr to dlpinst.scr 3. next type INSTALL and follow the installation instructions. P2P/2 was installed on my C:\ drive, only taking some 260KB and my config.sys LIBPATH was also modified to reflect where the rest of P2P files were. System SW: OS/2 v2.1, LAPs v2.11, OS/2 LAN Requester v1.91

Subject: Data Security Does P2P encrypt & decrypt data?

The answer is no. You need to rely on your communication devices to do the encryption. Subject: Low Memory Error while running P2P/Windows Video

Sounds to me as if you have not replaced the KMVLWL.DLL file from the ActionMedia II device drivers. The original one selfishly gobbles up 150K of low memory resulting in frequent "Not enough memory" errors. On disk 3 of the P2P for Windows package, you will find a replacement and instructions should be in the README.TXT from disk 1.

Subject: P2P video size

Q1) What is the size and color capability of the captured video image?   ===== I think that I read somewhere that the size is 128 x 120 x         256 colors.  Can someone clarify this??? A1)  Here goes for a confusing answer ! The video is captured from AM-II as 128x120 pixel frames in YUV9 format. At first glance, this appears to suggest 512 colours but the card does fancy processing on the images and gives you a resulting image that looks pretty much like a 16 or 24 bit per pixel image (IMHO). Video sent to other AM-II users is compressed using the RTV algorithm then decompressed for display by the AM-II hardware in the receiving machine. The situation here becomes rather complex, however, since the displayed image does not look like 128x120 on your PM or Windows screen due to the fact that the AM-II mixes its video plane with VGA or XGA and that these 2 planes have different pixel sizes.

Imagine 2 similarly sized sheets of squared paper with different square sizes overlaying one another. The top sheet represents the PM desktop and the bottom one the AM-II frame buffer. A block of squares drawn on the bottom sheet shines through to the top sheet but occupies a different number of squares at different coordinates from the top sheet viewer's perspective. (Does this help any ? It's difficult to explain without drawing a diagram. Call me on P2P if you are still confused).

For a 128x120 (AM-II pixel) image, the perceived video image sizes (in desktop pixels) are below. The 2 values for AM-II resolution give the size of the whole "bottom sheet" depending upon whether or not you have checked the "High resolution" box in the display controls dialog. Remember that this "bottom sheet" represents the same physical screen area as the PM desktop (the "top sheet"). PM desktop  AM-II res    AM-II res    Apparent image size (PM pixels) (high)       (low)           (high)      (low) 640 x 480  512x480      256x240          160x120     320x240 1024 x 768  410x384      256x192          320x240     512x480 For example, with a VGA display showing AM-II video in low resolution mode, the 128x120 AM-II pixel image looks to the user like 320x240 VGA pixels (ie quarter screen).

If using software video, the captured images are all 128x120 and use either 256 grey levels (if you select mono images) or 256 colours. These images are displayed using PM (or Windows GDI) and appear either as 128x120 PM or Windows pixels on the screen or stretched to fit the supplied video window. Q2) Is it possible to zoom the chalkboard so that a complete image can be viewed   ===== It has been my experience that the size of the image you see         is less that the real image and is dependent upon the         resolution of the display.  My 8514/VGA appears to show about         25% of the total chalkboard capacity.  I can find no zoom         feature.  What is the size of the chalkboard in pels? A2)  There is no way of zooming in or out in the Chalkboard. In all cases, the chalkboard contents are shown pixel for pixel on all connected machines so if different resolutions are used on different machines in the same call, people see different percentages of the chalkboard area.

The chalkboard scales dynamically as you use it so if you draw off the edge of the currently defined area, the chalkboard size increases to accommodate the new drawing. I'm not sure what the maximum size is but, on version 1.0 at least, it was enormous ! (Tip - don't zero the scroll bars on 1.0 and draw in the top left. Your machine is likely to page forever trying to allocate memory for an enormous image. This is fixed on 1.0.1 as far as I can see).

If you get lost on a large chalkboard, Ctrl-Home moves your viewing position back to the centre and, if you are really desperate, someone else using the "sync" control will retransmit the chalkboard contents to you and move your viewing position to have the same centre as theirs.

Subject:How PROTOCOL.ini is examined

Looking at the code, the algorithm is as follows: open CONFIG.SYS and look for line containing PROTMAN.OS2 use the string starting /I: to locate the IBMCOM directory read PROTOCOL.INI from the IBMCOM directory. However it is recommended that you use LAPS.exe to view/change/delete the contents of PROTOCOL.INI.

Subject: NLS versions for P2P/2 and P2P for Windows

Languages supported for the new releases are French, German, Italian, Spanish, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and Kanji.

Subject: XGA Cards & P2P

AM-II will work with both XGA and XGA-2 though you are limited to 640x480 resolution if you use an XGA-2 with one of the new ISO displays.

Subject:LIST OF DOCUMENTATION AVAILABALE IN THE US FOR P2P.

SC331195-00 PERSON TO PERSON FOR WINDOWS, INSTALL AND USING GUIDE SC331101-01 PERSON TO PERSON FOR OS2, INSTALL AND USING GUIDE SC33-1196-00 PERSON TO PERSON FOR WINDOWS, QUICK REFERENCE SC33-1013-01 PERSON TO PERSON FOR OS2, QUICK REFERENCE GC330927-02 PERSON TO PERSON PLANNING GUIDE.

See your dealer or contact IBM Multimedia on 1-800-877-7771

Subject: Chalkboard Questions

Q1 - When you share a chalkboard to a call for the first time, do you transmit an empty Chalkboard, or simply some instructions is sent to the destination to launch a Chalkboard. - just sends instructions Q2 - When C/Brd is partially updated, do you transmit whole of the c/brd or    just the updated area. - just the updates Q3 - What sort of display drivers would you suggest for the user to use for optimum picture sharpness and faster transfer of images thru C/Brd: OS/2 Display drivers Tseng "       " S3    "       " Cirrus "      " -        don't know. Obviously there is a trade off between picture quality (bits per pel) and transfer times. The more bits per pel the slower any updates are.

Subject: Chalkboard Palette Manager Support Chalkboard has palette management support which you may prefer to use if you are dealing with high quality images and your machine supports it (typically XGA or Super VGA only). To enable this feature add the following to your CONFIG.SYS or enter it at an OS/2 command prompt from which you start chalkboard: SET P2P_PALETTE=ON To disable this feature remove this line from CONFIG.SYS or enter at the command prompt: SET P2P_PALETTE=OFF Please note that palette management may produce disconcerting effects if you have modified your desktop colours.

Subject: ActionMedia ISA Interrupt Settings The AMII ISA version does not use Interrupt for transferring data, to and from the PC bus. This is achieved thru I/O address which are set by the E1 handbag type jumpers and the settings are described in the Hardware Guide that comes with the card. Subject: AM II and Expanded Memory It is recommended to use Extended memory with Actionmedia cards thru HIMMEM.sys device driver.

Subject: Intermittent Failure in VP machines The cause may be due to half size Token Ring card, if it is not fully installed in the adapter slot. Also plugging the LAN cable carelessly can unseat the card

Subject: P2P and NETBIOS Kit supplied with TCP/IP V2.0 P2P does not work with this NETBIOS and also causes system lockup if the TCP/IP NETBIOS is not installed as a sub-directory in the TCP/IP directory.

Subject: AM video output 2 P2P Video application only works with Composite video output #1 and not #2. The #1 is the one further out on the AM card bracket.

Subject: How on earth do I make P2P work with PVM? Below are the "optimum" values to define to Communications Manager for TCP/IP comms, SNA/LAN comms, PVM/LAN comms and NetBIOS re-director.

Choose the first set of values if you have the normal 4 Mb/s IBM Token Ring Adapter, choose the second set of values of you have a 16/4 Adapter regardless of whether the adapter is configured to run at 4 or 16 Mb/s. The 3rd/4th cols are for the two TRN adapters in a PVM/LAN gateway. -IEEE-     4M    16M     PVM/LAN GW   Maximum number SAPs                  5    126        5    7 Maximum link stations              36    200      255  255 Maximum number group SAPs           0      0        0    0 Maximum members per group SAP       0      0        0    0 Maximum number of users             5      5        5    5 Transmit buffer size             2048   2048     2048 2048 Number of transmit buffers          2      2        2    2 Receive buffer size                96     96       96   96 Minimum receive buffers            49     50       50   50 Number of queue elements         1000   1000     1000 1000 NetBIOS---     4M    16M Maximum link stations              30    128      254  254 Maximum sessions                  128    128      254  254 Maximum commands                  128    100      152  152 Maximum names                      32    128       20   20 Query timeout value                 1      1        1    1 Transmit query count                6      6        6    6 Maximum transmits outstanding       2      2        2    2 Maximum receives outstanding        1      1        1    1

Subject:NETBIOS - Lack of Resources When a couple of people try to run Person To Person/2 off a LAN server, they get a message telling them that resources have run out Because of the large number of DLLs in P2P, each person running off the LAN places a load of about 25 file opens on the server. As the standard LAN server configuration only permits 64 file opens, they soon run out. Try increasing the number of file opens; a figure of 256 will let up to ten people access P2P, a couple of thousand will make the server logon limit the first barrier rather than the file open limit. Alternatively, get each user to install P2P for local use on their own disk and just make the site directory shareable. Doing this makes P2P faster as well.

Subject:Jummy Video over LANs When I make a call that crosses a LAN bridge etc the video seems very jumpy and uneven. The solution is to do with frame rates. If the user is using a network with a slow link in it, for instance; imagine you have two users on separate LANS communicating over a slow bridge, then although you can set the P2P framerate as high as 15 frames per second, you will not necessarily get this. In fact what you will get is uneven video delivery. You might get a few frames quickly, followed by a wait of say a second. What I recommend the user do, is to estimate how many frames a second he is ACTUALLY getting on average, this can be done by counting how many he sees over say a minute, and reducing the framerate on P2P to this amount. At least then the video delivery will be even. An example is for ISDN; the ISDN maximum selectable framerate is about 2 frames a second but when you first install P2P, the default is about 1 frame a second.

Subject:Drawing Straight Lines Why is there no tool for drawing straight lines on the chalkboard? You can draw straight lines by drawing an unfilled box and making it very thin or erase the parts that you don't want.

Subject:SYS1804 System Error Message When I try to start P2P I get the message: SYS1804: The system cannot find the file. This message may occur because P2P is not being executed from its own directory or because the ".;" has been removed from the libpath statement in config.sys.

Subject: My ISDN calls seem to fail for no reason.

This sort of thing can happen if you unplug the ISDN cable from the line. If a user running P2P is not in a call and for some reason tries unplugging then reinserting ISDN cables, it can cause problems if they then try to call someone. This is because the ISDN card may need reinitialising with the ISDN exchange. If they experience such problems, and calls are failing, they should restart P2P and try again. This problem occurs because we cannot detect when a cable has been removed, unless a call is in progress, in which case the call is dropped.

Subject:Unsmooth Video Window

I have noticed that the video is less smooth when I overlap another window over the video window. If you partially obscure the video window, the video subsystem has to work much harder working out where not to display video. To ensure smooth video, avoid partially obscuring the window.

Subject:Large Address/Phone Book

I have a large phone book (more than 500 entries) and manipulating it is very slow. Is there anything I can do?

Yes; split your phone book into several logical elements, such as alphabetically or by department, taking care to keep the size of each element well below 500 items.

Subject:Calculation of ActionMedia Frame Rate

How can I calculate the ActionMedia II video frame rate that will be achieved given a particular link bandwidth or, conversely, how can I calculate the bandwidth used by a given AM-II video rate?

In general, with low quality video selected in AM-II VSM config panel: 1 fps = approx 3.5KBps = 28Kbps This scales linearly with frame rate, so: bandwidth = approximately (28 * frame_rate) Kbps Note that this is for each video stream so the total bandwidth used will be twice this if, for example, 2 users are viewing each other.

Using the above figures, the following values drop out: Max rate over ISDN (64Kbps full duplex channels)    = approx 2.3fps Async (9600 baud = 960 bytes per sec.) = approx 0.25fps Beware of bridged LANs or TCP/IP connections. In multi-hop communications situations, the maximum frame rate is governed by the minimum bandwidth link. Just because you are pumping out TCP/IP onto a 16Mbps Token Ring, there is no guarantee that one of the hops to the final destination is not being carried at 110 baud over a piece of wet string !

Over a normal LAN, video rates on 486 machines are limited to 15fps (if you have an NTSC camera) or 12.5 fps (PAL camera). Rates will drop back if running on a 386 machine (8fps is reasonable) or in a multiway call (where the frame rate depends upon many factors involving the machines in the call and the network topology).

If the high quality option is selected in AM-II configuration, then the frame size increases to around 5.5KB. The remaining calculations are left as an exercise to the reader! Subject: Problems with starting the chalkboard I just installed P2P/2 v1.02 on my mod 95. I'm a new user of P2P, and I'm noticing a problem when I try to start the chalkboard. Even though I have 24M of RAM and the hard drive where my SWAPPER file lives has 90M+ of free space, it seems like I still have to shut down practically every application that's open before starting the chalkboard in order for the chalkboard to start up successfully. In the cases where I don't, a couple of different things happen: after hearing a beep, I have to hit CNTRL-ESC repeatedly until I get a popup that says that Person to Person is not responding to system requests. After selecting ENTER to end it, I then see the popup that indicates that there were insufficient system resources (memory?) and to shut down some applications and try again. After clicking on OK, one of two things happen: either my desktop gets blown away and then comes back (the good case), or my desktop gets all hosed up (PM windows garbled, unable to access task list, etc.), and I have to reboot (obviously, the bad case). I'm using an Image Adapter/A with a 6091 monitor.

Using an IA/A makes a huge difference ! In their wisdom, the writers of the original IA/A OS/2 drivers set a very low limit on the number of bitmap handles that the driver could cope with (I can be nasty since all these guys have now left IBM :-) ). In most cases, this limit doesn't pose a problem but the person who wrote the chalkboard decided to use up 49 (or was it 52 ?) bitmap handles, immediately blowing the IA/A driver out of the water.

Although I can't be sure that this will work, you may like to try the latest version of 2.0 IA/A display driver. Well, I've got the 32-bit device driver installed, and P2P works *much* better. I kept all of my normal applications active, and had no problems at all starting up the chalkboard.

Subject: What is H.320 and H.260 standard?

H.320 is a hardware standard from the CCITT (now ITU or something?) which defines audio/video/data (lip-synced) across ISDN lines and ensures interoperability between different suppliers video conferencing equipment (actually it doesn't since no-one thought to architect the protocols to be used on the data channel. Each manufacturer uses a different link layer packet protocol resulting in no-one talking data to anyone else - work is ongoing to sort this out, though - see T.12x proposals for more information).

H.320 is a wrapper for several other standards - H.261 for video, H.221 for multiplexing onto ISDN channels, G.7xx for audio, etc...

If you want to see H.320 in action with P2P for Windows v1.xx, take a look at the PictureTel Live-PCS100 system. This uses P2P software and their codec and gives an idea of the kind of thing to expect.

Lakes (P2P v2.xx) will support H.320 audio/video with the BT VC8000 card (ScreenCall) though only in the UK under ISDN2.

Subject: DDE pasting LINK between Word and Excel

I recently tried to paste DDE links between two systems running the same version of P2P using Excel Version 5.0 for Windows and Word for Windows 6.0. Both systems are running DOS 6.3, Windows 3.1, and P2P version 1.0.2. I tried pasting Excel to Excel, Word to Word, Excel to Word, and Word to Excel. In each case I could paste the information, but could not paste a link.

Apparently to paste a link in Excel, you must first select a region of cells and then paste the link. Also the App. generating the link must have this function. Word 6 and Excel 5 have this feature.

Subject: Multiple Address Books - Copy/Paste Entries

How do you easily move/copy a name/entry from one book to another? How do you move/copy multiple names/entries from one book to another?

Looks like you have to "Export..." the address books, edit the files using a text editor and "Import..." the resulting file as a new address book.

Subject: P2P AMII and Fast (Pentium) machines

To run P2P/2 Video over AMII card in Pentium or fast 486 machines, please add the following to the AVK.INI file in \AM2\DRIVERS: [Board 0] Wait Retry=2000

Subject: Async support and SPEAKER.DRV

Looking on Compuserve I see an append that warns against use of SPEAKER.DRV as it is a badly behaved device driver and may well cause problems with any program trying to use the COM ports. This append came from Microsoft technical support staff.