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OS/2 Tips

Editor's note: these tips are from OS/2 users and in some cases can not be verified by myself. Please heed this as a warning that if you are not sure about something, don't do it.

Two hints to people installing OS/2:
First of all, BE SURE TO OBTAIN WARPUP! disk from Indelible Blue. I have installed OS/2 many times on many machines and have never had such an easy time of it. Once you've installed the base system, the WarpUp disk guides you from there, listing the the things that can be upgraded, providing hints and concerns and leading you through a smooth process of upgrading. Warpup keeps track of what needs to be installed before what and which items interact. If IBM had come out with something like this early on, OS/2 might have succeeded no matter what Micro$oft did.

Secondly, a fairly obscure issue. If any of you are using the Rodent mouse driver and want to install File and Print (or are having File and Print fail on bootup at the wrksta command): move the Mouse driver statements from your Config.sys file to the end of the file, following the network stuff and everything will work fine. Don't ask me why....

OS/2's built-in peer networking. There's a setting in the work heuristics section of \ibmlan\ibmlan.ini, which will report no more than 2GB free. Share the drive in question, and connect to it locally.

My Smart and Friendly CD TurboWriter RW did not work either, until I did the following:

First find the file called "CDDRV.INF" [with your epm editor] and add cd rom information to the list. My cd rom info looked like you see below.......
"Smart&Friendly "CD-RW6424A" N/A "SAF CD-RW6424A" "TEAC CD-R55S" cdteac enabled N/A

Second thing is to modify your config.sys file line from BASEDEV=LOCKCDR.FLT to BASEDEV=LOCKCDR.FLT '-i"CD RW6424A" you would put your cd information between the '-1"CD Your ID model" quotes.

Sandra at RSJ helped me, it works just fine now........................

Hope this helps you!

1. Create a Folder where you keep hard drive CD images.
2. Open this folders settings.
3. On the Icon/Object page, check the "template" box. On the Menu page
4. Select "~Open as" from the "Available menus"
5. Press the lower "Create Another" button. In the dialog
6. Enter "CD View" for "Menu Item Name"
7. Enter CDVIEW.EXE for "Program - Name" and press OK On the Menu page
8. Press the top "Properties" button. In the dialog
9. Select "CD View" for the "Conditional Cascade" drop down.
10. Close the settings.

You now have a template that can create other directories.

All these folders will run CDVIEW.EXE instead of showing the Icon view. RSJ should impliment this.

You can usually avoid uninstalling MMOS2, if you haven't gone too far wrong already...

- Run selective install
- Tell it you have 0 SB16's
- Shutdown and reboot
- Install the AW37

Step 2 is supposed to erase all references to the SB16 from CONFIG.SYS, WIN.INI and MMPM2.INI. Verify that this has happened before continuing.

It sounds like you have a dodgy cable to your floppy that does not support the change line (reports disk changes). You can try adding the parameters

/A:0 /U:0 /CL:NONE

to the basedev=ibm1flpy.add line in CONFIG.SYS. This forces OS/2 to treat the drive as though it has no change line and poll the drive every time you access it - inefficient but it should get you past this problem. Replacing the cable might also help to correct your hardware problem.

When working with PKZIP self-extractors, it always a good plan to test them before using them. Try:

javainrt -test

Testing is even more important with the patches. No fun breaking a working setup when it can be avoiding.

Lotus SmartSuite for OS/2's install is based on IBM's old Software Installer tool, which is/was a suprisingly flexable install tool. Because of this, there is a way to work around install issues like this one for most products.

*** WARNING *** WARNING *** WARNING *** -- Begin

The following instructions *may* allow you to install a Software Installer product that is causing problems in the installer front end. However, chances are good that your software vendor will not support this install mechanism if you run into problems. Some software uses special install front ends which provide additional configuration outside the Software Installer itself, so using the method described below may not work for all products.

*** WARNING *** WARNING *** WARNING *** -- End

That being said, if you can't install a Software Installer based product by running "INSTALL", try the following:

1) Find a copy of EPFINSTS.EXE on your hard disk. Chances are if you've ever installed any Software Installer based product before, you have a copy of this somewhere on your system already. For most people, the one in your NETSCAPE\SIUTIL directory will do.

2) Insert the media for the product to be installed. Find the file EPFIHOOK.DLL. If this file is present on your install media, use a SET BEGINLIBPATH to point to its directory.

3) Switch to the directory you found EPFINSTS.EXE in and run it.

4) From the resulting "Installation and Maintenence" dialog, select "File" --> "Open Catalog" --> "Host..."

5) In the resulting dialog, enter the path and filename of the catalog file (with a .ICF extension) for the product you want to install. (Note" for Lotus Smartsuite in English, this file is SUITE.ICF).

6) Proceed with the install by following the prompts and dialogs.

Last week I had a similar problem installing Lotus Notes Server v4.6.4, used the above mechanism, and it worked just fine. Note that by using this mechanism you may lose some flexability in what you can select to be installed, and as mentioned in the warning above isn't guaranteed to work with all products, so use at your own risk (note however that products installed in this way can still be properly uninstalled by running EPFINSTS.EXE again and selecting to delete the product from the Install Products catalog).

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I have an old IBM EWS program called ShiftRun, that allows you to specify what to run, if you hold down the Shift button within X seconds. For example my Config.Sys entry is:

CALL=D:\OS2APPS\UTIL\SHIFTRUN.EXE 5 CMD.EXE

You can get it from IBM's EWS FTP site: ftp://ftp.pc.ibm.com/pub/pccbbs/os2_ews/shftrn.zip

After much frustration, I found a way for RSJ 3.06 to work with my Mitsumi 4802TE IDE cdr unit. I was running fp11 and was worried that fp13 would kill my RSJ 2.85 installation (it does), but I could never get 3.06 to work. It would always ignore the drive, even though 2.85 recognized it, and the cddrv.inf entries for the 2 installations are identical.

The trick is that there is a new style of drive examination (dynamic?). This can be suprressed with the -n flag for lockcdr.flt. When I used -n and -i: (with the drive's identification string), I get no errors and the drive is converted to worm. Using -i alone generates errors messages, but works. I have not yet tried -n alone, but that's next.

So I just wanted to confirm that 3.06 can work, and if your drive is ignored, go to -i immediately. Also 2.85 gives a trap d in device driver "A" if you use fp13 (or WSeB, I presume).

The whole catch in this business is you need pkzip OS/2 2.50 with the /nozipextension switch in order to extract the *.exe archive. Once the archive extracted, *any* Dos will do, even OS/2 'S own VDM.

This is already possible in the OS/2 version of PMView. All you need to do is to use a different PMView INI file for the PMINews invocation of PMView.

Have PMINews run PMView with something like this:

"pmview.exe /ini=d:\pmview_pminews.ini"

This should take care of your problem

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There is a much better solution:

using your favourite sector editor, change in BootManager's first sector

1) sectors/cluster, number of FATs, number of root dir entries, sectors/FAT to zero
2) reserved sectors to 32
3) format signature to BOOTMGR

With these changes Win2k will no longer touch the BootManager in any way.

Ian Manners:

If you mean the AWE64, there is software control for volume, treble and base, I use Mixomat for all these functions, available on Hobbs and other archives.

The other thing to remember about the AWE64 drivers, put your coms drivers after your MM drivers :-)

You can leave the sound driver where it is if you use /G parameter on the soundline, if you do what you suggest you lose 1 of the comms ports. I would also change /B:8 to /B:1.... it makes for smoother playback when playing .mov from all sources.

You don't need the /P either that was a switch for the AWE32 it had broken PnP. I also don't use /Q as I like to see how it loads....

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