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I am really intrigued by your dealings with the Japanese.
Anyway. IBM is going to have a Warp 5 client when it's time and when it's ready. They always do. Bet you a case of beer and a box of cigars?
I read with interest your problems concerning (a) installing OS/2 on an Aptiva, and (b) FixPak application problems. Personally, I'm just not up for headaches anymore. I've reached the point of many typical users who just want things to work. If someone sold a computer with OS/2, Windows 98, Linux and Partition Magic all preloaded, ready to run out of the box, with all hardware issues resolved in advance, I would GLADLY pay extra for such a machine just to avoid many of the hassles you discussed in your various articles. Take care.
Just finished reading your FixPak frustrations article. We are still running Warp 3 with no FixPaks, with little or no problems (except those of my own making. We run 7 x 24. We have FP35 not loaded (called procrastination) and will get latest FP when we reformat in the near future. One of the main reasons we have stayed with Warp 3 is that no has shown me any good solid business reason for going to Warp 4. And after reading the Possi list for the past 2 years, OS/2 forums, etc. with all of the problems that have occured with Warp 4, I'm not too sure we want to go that way. Now in defense of Warp 4, probably most of the problems are tweakers pushing their systems to the edge, which you normally would'nt do in a business environment (well maybe they would). In your case that doesn't sound like it, and you have a lot more expertise than I do in this area. But I'm from the old school, "if if ain't broke don't fix it," mentality. The next system we buy, will come from IB or one the several other sources that pre-load OS/2. I'll bet if one of IBM's banking customers was having the problem you had, it would have been solved in a flash.
P.S. Keep up the good work!
For users booting multiple operating systems. I use Win NT 4.0, OS/2 (Warp 4), Linux and DOS as it is rather easy to screw up an operating system (and I have done it of course) I looked for a safety net and found it in Drive Image by PowerQuest. It allows you to make an image of any drive (total or logical) on your system. I have two drives (one SCSI and one IDE) and it works fine on either. If you screw up a drive, just copy back a good image that you have made (and it goes rather fast) and you are all set. It gives one a great sense of comfort. I save my images to IOMEGA JAZ drive DISKS and in some cases to spare space on one of my hard drives. It is also good of course for data as well as operating systems. I highly recomment it. It has not failed me in several years through several versions.
My experience with FP10 is pretty much the opposite of yours. I have had trouble with past FixPak's, particularly the IBM1S506.ADD not working on my older 486 based systems. But FP10 installed flawlessly (on my Pentium II Clone) and the system appears to be running faster and more reliably than it was with FP5 (which was the last FP I was using). I'm usually very cautious about applying any type of update on any platform. I figure why fix it if it ain't broke.\
I have waited anxiously to hear from users about their experiences with FixPak 10, since I have not been able to install the FixPak successfully on my P200 Mhz clone with Adaptec AIC7870 .ADD driver for my SCSI drives, scanner and tape backup.
I had FixPak 9 installed. I followed all of the detailed instructions. I also tried the FixPak on a completely fresh install of Warp 4 from the CD. The problem seems to occur with an EXE file called something like smstart*. Anyway, no matter how I cut it the FixPak just won't install. So I started all over again with a fresh install and just added FixPak 5, since, apparently, FixPaks 6-9 have bugs in the install program, supposedly corrected in 10.
I also tried installing the FixPak on a much older 486 with a Pentium over drive chip and a VL bus. Not only did the FixPak not work, the system doesn't even recognize my IDE hard drive or my SCSI tape. There may be some other issues on this older machines, but still, it worked perfectly before I tried to install the FixPak.
I was thinking that I possibly received defective media (diskettes from IBM), so was considering ordering a new set of diskettes. Any thoughts?
(Regarding your Editorial) I have twice been honored to beta test versions of OS/2. I have been using OS/2 since playing devil's advocate with the 2.0 beta and finding OS/2 still standing on its feet. The details of that exploit have been published in IACT's Spring 1998 issue. Most recently I had the opportunity to attempt the beta for Aurora. I was largely unsuccessful, but was able to provide a little information to IBM with regard to this very touchy beta. I have come to a crossroads, however, in my use of OS/2. It has failed me in such a way that I have become significantly discouraged. I await the new release, and am hoping that it will run on my equipment and provide a solution to my most recent problem: I came to a point where I needed more drive space. 8.4gb drives were the same price as what I paid for my 2.4gb, so I bought one. Little did I know that I was heading for the twilight zone. OS/2 does not support this size drive except via a patch. There was a patch designed for the new addressing scheme necessary for such drives...but when applied, I found that my CD-ROM was now inactivated...thereby ending all attempts to install Warp 4 on the new drive. I still have the 2.4, and currently it retains the installed Warp in an HPFS partition. But I can't access it without doing the 3 disk thing, and that is not how I want to run my computer. Any suggestions? My equipment: Pentium 133 48mb RAM, 256K Cache RAM, 8.4gb Maxtor and 2.4gb WD drives, Creative Soundblaster 32x CD-ROM (worked fine before the change), 2mb Video RAM, Soundblaster 16 sound card, USR 32vbps modem. Since all this stuff worked fine until the addition of the large drive problem, I do not believe it is the equipment. I, too, have had to forego the blatant use of FixPaks, and am now not able to utilize one anyway since I have no viable access to an OS/2 partition, hence there is no way to "upgrade" the phantom OS lurking on the 2.4gb drive without having it up in some fashion in order to upgrade. I saw a 6.Xgb drive, but at the time of purchase for the 8gb I saw no sense in purchasing it. When I went back, considering this as an option, all the 6.x drives were gone. I am at my wits end and do not have any more time to beat my head against the wall. I am very seriously considering Linux, but presently am subjecting myself to almost daily abuse via Win95. It is a good reminder why I went with OS/2 in the first place and NEVER had a system solely dependent upon Windows, but now with OS/2 presently out of the picture until the next upgrade, I am growing increasingly frustrated with the wait. Thanks for listening.
I could not help but chuckle at your indignant frustration at loading OS/2 on an Aptiva. If you had only sent me an e-mail....
Two years ago I loaded OS/2 on my Aptiva 2134 and, looking back, as a combination of blind faith and ignorance, managed to carry out the task with very few problems. My blind faith was in the fact that the machine was advertised as an IBM compatible, so I assumed OS/2 would work OK, and the ignorance was genuine!
I took a different approach to you. The first thing I did was to erase W95. I then carried out a standard OS/2 install into D partition, formatting my disks with FDISK and setting up a boot manager partition along the way. The install completed without incident and I then reloaded W95 into C from the backup/restore CD IBM had included with the machine. I also decided to put my internal (US Robotics) modem on to COM3.
I hit the following problems. Firstly, the Crystal Audio drivers shipped with Warp 3 were down level from the hardware installed in the machine. Secondly, Warp had no driver for the SIS video chip set. Thirdly, I had to find a way to tell Warp about COM3. Fourthly, I was restoring W95 into C which had moved because of the Boot Manager partition.
Fortunately, two years ago in the UK IBM was still trying to make Warp successful so the first two problems were fixed by installing the proper drivers and the third (3,3E8,4) with the assistance of IBM's help desk. (By the way, you will find this latter problem solved today at, of all places, IBM's Internet support site, www.ibm.net). The fourth was also solved using a small trick given by IBM's help desk which I cannot now remember.
Now a few constructive comments for you on your scanner based on what I have learned the hard way. Like you, I initially bought a HP (Scanjet 4P) scanner and found out afterwards it would not even run in a WIN-OS2 session, so I had to install it under W95 - this was the only reason I kept W95 on my machine!! If you stick with your HP you should look out for the following problems:
1. The Windows printing subsystem is fairly rudimentary. What this means relative to scanned images is that if you want to print a page, Windows sends the page to the printer, irrespective of whether or not your printer has enough memory to take it. So if you are trying to print a detailed image, only part (depending on how much memory you have in your printer), will print and Windows will piously put out a message blaming your printer! To fix this, export the image back into an OS/2 application (e.g. FaxWorks) and print from OS/2. The OS/2 printing subsystem is a professional piece of work which paces (in the SNA sense) the output to the printer: i.e., it breaks up the image data stream into pieces small enough to be handled by the printer buffer and sends the output a piece at a time.
2. If you are working in OS/2 and you want to photocopy a page to include with a letter or add a hard copy sheet into a fax you are sending, you will have to bring down OS/2, boot up Windows, scan the image, export to OS/2, take down Windows and bring up OS/2 again. Even using the setboot command this is a painful process and is what eventually led me to dump my Scanjet 4S and get a native OS/2 supported scanner.
To address items 1 & 2 above in your case let me make the following fervent suggestion. Put on a pair of trousers with reinforced kneepads, go back to the store whence you bought your scanner and beg! There are three software suppliers who provide OS/2 scanner support: Impos/2 (Germany) CFM TWAIN (Germany) and STi (US). Ask for a replacement from the list of scanners these three support. I can assure you with all my heart that this short term humbleness and pain will genuinely result in long term pleasure!!
I read with interest your editorial for this month's OS/2 CONNECT about Aptivas and OS/2. I too recently purchased an Aptiva (E3N -2153) and also installed OS/2. I did much the same as you, created a small partition for Windows 98 for "a couple of programs I run". One small difference though. I created the partitions as 1.6 GB for Win98 and the remaining 4.1 GB for OS/2. I used the new large HD support drivers in IDEDASD.EXE to create new boot floppies to install from. The included README offered a config.sys option (SET COPYFROMFLOPPY=1) which allowed me to install to a 4.1 GB drive and still allow the fresh install to boot.
As far as drivers are concerned, fortunately this model of Aptiva uses the Crystal CS4237B chipset, so I used Crystal's generic OS/2 drivers. My model uses the ATI Rage Pro chipset and I did not find any ATI drivers for this card. Fortunately the new GRADD drivers support it just fine. I am very pleased as well with how well OS/2 runs on this system. I will be watching SciTech for their drivers for this chipset.
As far as the IBM Aptiva list for OS/2 supported hardware, I think I have a pretty good idea why these models (and others) are not on the list. IBM has let their lawyers out of their cages again to run amok. I don't know about your model, but mine says very clearly on the front "Designed for Windows 98" and I have already had a run in with the IBM PC company on this. They will ONLY support this Aptiva with its installed OS (in this case Win98). This is why this model (and probably yours) are not on the list. If they were, that would imply that IBM supports this configuration, and that sent the lawyers all in a tizzy.
Stupid part about it is, OS/2 runs better on this system than the supported OS...Windows 98. And like you say, with a 6.0+ GB drive, IBM could have installed both OS'es and let the users decide. There is plenty enough room for it.
P.S. Windows 2000 beta 3 did NOT like this computer at all and would not even install.
Hey Tim, bet you that you could have gotten IBM to install and configure OS/2, for a price. IBM is use to having experts install systems, or having the customer pay IBM to install the system. That is how they make money. You know, that green stuff that allows you to stay in business. Have a good day.
I agree that there is still much hope for OS/2 especially in the light of Xfree86, and the Ports that have already happened.
OS/2 however already has deep roots in UNIX, as most of the commands at the prompt are the same.
I truly would like to see IBM do a turnaround, as it appears they are attempting to do. Here at my BofA account I have found that they do not plan to fix what is not broken. Meaning OS/2 is used in many facets and stands in the gap where NT won't.
Nations/BofA have committed to keep there system that are running on OS/2 there. Because OS/2 works.
Also recently, Dell signed a deal with IBM, and now Dell and Compaq are pushing OS/2 Server and Workstation.
Go figure.
There is still some oil in the lamp.....
MONOPOLY BLUES (follow-up)
One of the things I do before buying new hardware is to go to the OS/2 Device Driver Pak Online Page, and ensure there are drivers for the hardware I am buying.
Also if you go to Indelible Blue, they have a hardware section that lists what they bundle in there systems. Pretty nice stuff; they are a little pricey though.
Sad to say, Hard Knocks is sometimes the best teacher.
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