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2010 eNews 12-31-10 – A Happy New Years to all the eCS people! 12-30-10 – B Martin Iturbide just wrote an awesome article about eCS and 2010. He talks about all the software done this year including Java, Flash and Firefox (to name a few) I highly suggest you read it. You can find the article here. 12-30-10 – A The os2world forums are a great place to pickup on new news, while posting yesterday about that topic of “What are Your real prioritizes”, Paul Smedley announced that Java 6 went Beta!: “As the 30th of December, 2010, the project has entered the Beta stage. You can download it at the netlabs page. The Java 6 for OS/2 port requires your help to fund the project. They require 8,000 EUR and currently they got 2280 EUR. So only 5720 EUR are missing to fund the project. If you are interested in sponsoring Java please click here.” 12-29-10 – A There is a very good discussion going on at www.os2world.com in the forums: Topic: What are Your real prioritizes. I think it gives a good idea to what is important to people, and thus the customer, I hope someone in the eCS group is looking at this thread and takes it to heart. 12-28-10 – B OpenTyrian version 2.1 has been ported (12/22/2010) to OS/2. This is an arcade-style vertical scrolling shooter. Don't forget that you will need This additional Data file - News from OS2.org. 12-28-10 – A ScummVM version 1.2.1 has been released (12/19/2010). This allows you to run several adventure games, provided you have the data files. Games known to work include those based on LucasArts' SCUMM (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion) system, many Sierra SCI and AGI engine games, Legend of Kyrandia, Simon the Sorcerer 1 and 2, Beneath A Steel Sky, Broken Sword 1-2, Flight of the Amazon Queen, and lots more. There are even free downloads available for a few of the games. - News from www.os2.com 12-27-10 – A Was just going to do a few sentences in the VoiceType but ended up doing 90 more sentences. I thought my brain would fall out. I know it will improve what I say to the computer once I am done but gezzz. I am up to reading the Mark Twain story “A Ghost Story”, only 143 more sentences to go. 12-26-10 – B Did many, many updates to the site over the last few days. Moved the site to 0.5 12-26-10 – A Just read up on some good news at the eComstation home site (Click here): Merry Christmas and Happy New Year December 24, 2010 by admin Serenity Systems International and Mensys BV wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year! A short review of the past year: - eComStation 2.0 GA was released at Warpstock Europe 2010 in may. - A lot of work was done in tweaking the hardware detection and additional drivers; - The Intel NIC PCIe driver: this driver has been ported from Linux and is based on the Linux kernel module e1000e. It is released under the GNU Public License and anyone can request access to the source repository. It supports 49 chipsets natively and as such covers 45 more than the Genmac driver shipping in eCS 2.0 GA. - The NVidia Ethernet driver was updated too, now using the same framework as the Intel driver. - Java 6: this port is close to a beta release; follow http://svn.netlabs.org/java for the latest news. - Qt4 has been updated to version 4.6.3 thanks to community sponsoring; see http://svn.netlabs.org/qt4/ for more information and a lot of applications that were already ported - eComStation 2.0.1 will be released in English, German and Dutch. Unfortunately the update will not be available this year, but early 2011. Best regards and happy holidays! Mensys BV 12-25-10 – A Marry Christmas eCS people! 12-24-10 – A Did some more dictation training on VoiceType, did 20 sentences more so I am now up to 50 of 253. I'm looking at around 1 minute per line (this is an average of the ones I miss also and have to redo). When done I am going to back the training up in like 3 places so I never have to do it again. 12-22-10 – B Big news at virtualbox.org, version 4 is now out with lots of fixes and additions. It's still open source so I am hoping one day we will see the same version on eCS. I think with it's ability, it will make some people run eCS as a stand alone OS and run other OS's within it. Not the other way around like it seems today. As a note, the eCS version is at 1.61. I did have a post in forums a month or two ago about this very issues and I was told that someone is currently working on a new version for us. Fingers crossed! 12-22-10 – A I was having some issues with my computer with heat. The computer was acting weird after 15 minutes or so. I kept it off for the last few days as work was busy trying to close out things before the holidays. This morning I opened the computer and found my large CPU fan was blocked by the CD Rom drive cable. I fixed that and cleaned up the insides, changed some fans around so that problem should hopefully never return. 12-18-10 – A The ClipView Suite of Clipboard Utilities for OS/2 Warp and ECS is a very cool program. I never knew it existed until a few days ago while reading the eCS Yahoo Newsgroups. This program lets you copy multiple items to your clipboard. No installer, just download, unzip, and double click on the icon. You can download it from here or the eCS Software link.
12-17-10 – A Installed Links for OS/2, doing a review for this now since the VoiceType is taking longer than I thought...it's coming though.
12-15-10 – A About to work on my first eCS Software review. Thought for awhile on what to do it on and I came to the conclusion to do it on one of the most used programs I have so far. It's small and I have been using it for years, I thought it would be a good start for me since this is my first stab at it. So without further ado...here is my review of Gotcha!
12-11-10 – A Worked more on the website, updated and hopefully have all the links complete. I am also starting on my first software review. As of now, I will be doing a software/hardware review every two weeks. 12-08-10 – B Removing “eComstation Software I use” in the eCS Software” because I am going to do some reviewing on hardware/software and I think it's more important than what is installed on this computer. 12-08-10 – A Started the Dictation part of VoiceType, I'm on sentence 30 of 253. Gah, I did Navigation in around 30 minutes, 30 sentences has taken me that long just from the time to read and re-read when VoiceType could not understand what I am saying. This will take a few days and you better believe I will be backing this up. 12-07-10 - A Not sure why, but decided to install and fire up the VoiceType software that comes with eCS 2.0. I Enrolled and did the Navigation Training. I don't remember it running as smooth last time I did it, of course, I have a much faster computer now also.
Over the next few days I would like to write a review on this. I will keep everyone posted. 12-05-10 - A working on the Website today. See about running some tests on it a posting it in the “My Computer” section of the site. 12-04-10 - B I was excited today to read on the www.os2world.com web site that someone is looking into porting openGL (The new version) to eCS: http://gl2.sourceforge.net/ The project is called GL/2 and I hope it happens, the site looks organized and we sure do need it. Fingers crossed this happens. There is a spot for donations, if you use eCS and you don't care if the kids don't eat lunch for 2-3 days, give them a hand. 12-04-10 - A Installed everything I would normally use with my eCS machine software wise (eCS Software, not things like Windows 3.11 or Java specific). No issues yet and this “new” computer is is just hauling. 12-03-10 - A Got time to get a fan for my computer case, I bought a 120mm fan and only 14dbl at CompUSA. It was $20.00 but worth it. It's so much less noise. Unfortunately it's not as powerful when it comes to cooling the CPU's, it is I get the fan right up to them it does keep them in range, around 94 degrees F. I will monitor it but I think that problem is done. I think I might still look for a Power Unit that produces less noise also since the one I am using is from the old server case. 11-30-10 - C One thing that still is an issue with the hardware is the fans, man are they loud. It is temporary though, I have a plan to install a large 120mm fan to the side of my case then close it off. Getting rid of the old server fans should cut the noise by over half. 11-30-10 - B After all the hardware was installed, and some annoying problems solved. I installed eCS 2.0. I was happily surprised that the install went flawless. The sound card worked, Network Cards worked, the 2.0 USB card worked, everything it going right and going fast. So time to start loading up the software... 11-30-10 - A Even though I have been off for five days I have been working a lot with eCS. Now that I have the new computer it was very fast and unfortunately, very loud and only able to use one expansion slot (PCIX) because the innards were stuffed into a server case. Since it was a major pain to do any upgrades and I had to lean the server to one side (laying it flat just took to much room). I decided to use the old Pent 3 case I have had for 10 years. I was worried that it would not work since the Dual Xeon board is so dang huge. It took half a day removing both motherboards and installing the Xeon Board into the Pent 3 Computer but it did work! I installed the New Xeon board, installed a USB PCI card (3 extra 2.0 USB ports), PCI TV Card (More on this card latter), and most importantly, My PCI Hercules Fortissimo III 7.1. I also used the 123 Gig hard drive as the C (10 Gigs) / D (113 Gigs) as the main and the 250 Gig as E (40 Gigs) / F (210 Gigs). I will mirror D and F Drives as it holds all my data. 11-25-10 - A Happy Thanksgiving! 11-24-10 - A So two items are now at the head of things to “fix” with this computer, one will be easy...the other, not so much:
11-22-10 - A Changed the link “eCS News” to “eCS Software”, there are many good eCS News sites and I don't want to be one of them. I have changed it to eCS Software to show common users good software to have as well as comparable versions to other OS's out there. I plan to keep up on this for myself when my system goes down or I reformat. 11-17-10 - B I thought it would be nice to have a picture of my current desktop. Pretty much like the Pent 3 computer I had but like 20 times faster: Notice the CPU's!
11-17-10 - B Reinstalling with SNAP seemed to do the trick. Now I am running with no problems at 1280x1024. Not sure what happened but everything now is working well. I did try and install the sound card from my old computer, it was Hercules Fortissimo III 7.1 (PCI) but when I did the entire motherboard would not turn on, I mean it seemed to kill it (motherboard). The only way I could get power back to the motherboard was to remove the card and unplug the computer for 30 sec. I would replug it in and it would work fine. I had a ISA Sound Blaster Audigy 2 on loan from my brother and while it did not kill the computer, eCS would not find the card at all. I think I will be looking for a sound card soon. I'm not having eCS without sound. 11-16-10 - B Not that I was out of the woods yet, nope, it's never that easy. After that I had issues with the video card, this one was odd also, I at first installed SNAP but it was not seeing it correctly and even though it had 1280x1024 as an option, when I setup the screen for that, my monitor went out of range. I had to look up in the eCS manual that hitting ALT-F1 will get you to a screen that will let you get back to basic VGA settings. 11-16-10 - A I think I got lucky, otherwise I think I would still be trying to get eCS working on this computer. In the morning, after I burned an ISO of DFSee, I by accident forgot to put the CD in the CD try, so when it booted nothing was in there. All day yesterday when I was trying to get eCS running in step two, I was getting that black sceen with just a cursor at the top right. But without the CD in the try, the computer jumped right into step 2 and asked for the eCS CD. I put it in and it ran though step two with not a hiccup! After step two I made sure the eCS CD was never in during boot up and I have not had the issue since. 11-15-10 - B After the USB issue, I was able to boot up easy to eCS and use the keyboard, everything was working per normal and step one of the eCS install went perfect. I rebooted after it was done and waiting for step two to proceed. Oddly enough, it did not, after booting up I would immediately get black screen and a flashing cursor at the top right of the screen. I could do nothing but reboot. I did this several time, including reinstalling eCS, trying several things in step one and in the BIOS, nothing worked. Becoming frustrated, I got on the eCS yahoo group where there is a fantastic group of eCS guys (gals?). I posted my problem and got a ton of responses. One of the big things that was suggested was to download Dfsee and see if it could assist in finding issues with the HD. I was pretty tired so I started the download and decided I would try again in the morning. 11-15-10 - A Excited, I popped in the eCS 2.0 CD 1 into the CD tray and immediately had an issue with the USB keyboard, when in the BIOS the keyboard worked fine, but once it got to the eCS menu screen where you chose the HD or the CD to install, it would simply not work. After fiddling with it for a few minutes, I learned the USB settings in the BIOS had to be set for legacy USB =ON. Odd, my Pent 3 board didn't need that... 11-14-10 - A I no news for awhile, this is because I was talking to my brother about somethings I was trying to do with eCS on my Pent 3 (Dual) but it was becoming obvious that it wasn't cutting it anymore. My brother, being the cool guy he is (and owner of a software company) had some servers just laying around and gave me one!
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Mainboard : Supermicro X5DPL Notice there is no sound card...I will explain that soon. 11-09-10 - B Haiku (Alpha 2) installed perfectly and works fine. A little slow but it is because I am running a dual Pent 3 computer. Which just shows you how well eCS 2 is because it IS able to run Haiku in a VirtualBox. Here is a picture:
11-09-10 - A Installed the WarpIn version of VirtualBox 1.6.1, installed perfectly. I am installing Haiku, Alpha 2 right now and so far so good. 11-08-10 - B Two good responses, it's always interesting to see that you get: From Silvan: We are still working on the 3.2 port but right now version 1.6 is still current working. So stay tuned till 3.2 is coming. Awesome! And the second post that really helped me for the time being: From Andreas: 1.6.1 is the newest one actually working on eCS. I packaged it into a wpi for easy installation. http://Andreas-Ludwig.info/index.php?page=packages#VirtualBox Later versions have been compiled, but are not working due to lack of updates to the underlying drivers. (Qt4 is available by now, but this is only dealing with the GUI). There is a project at netlabs for porting later versions of VirtualBox. however, as with many other projects, there is a lack of knowledgeable coders... Also good new for me since he put VirtualBox in a WarpIn installer which makes life so much easier. 11-08-10 - A I posted today on os2world.com about my issue with VirtualBox: “Hello again! I am trying to get VirtualBox for eCS working on my eCS 2.0 box and not having any luck because it refuses to allow me to install any OS I try (XP, Linux, etc). I "think" I am using the newest VirtualBox (1.6.1) but I am not sure that is the newest one. I did some looking around and it seems that there is some work being done on it but the last update was: Netlabs News: 6. September – 12. September VirtualBox for eCS (OS/2) * A few updates * See: http://svn.netlabs.org/vbox/timeline Anyone have an installer newer than 1.6.1? The newest Windows version is VirtualBox 3.2.10 on Oct 11, 2010 If there is nothing newer than 1.6.1 does anyone recommend another Virtual machine that runs on eCS. Thanks!” 10-30-10 - B That didn't work well, the VirtualBox loaded fine but when I tried to install any OS it would fail telling me that there was no OS to install. 10-30-10 - A For today's fun I thought I would install VirtualBox (ver 1.6.1) and see what I can do. I am downloading Ubuntu 10.10 and Haiku (alpha 2) right now. 10-30-10 - B Worked on the website a little more this morning. Linked eCS News, changed the site's font to Droid Sans, and hopefully made the site more friendly to cell phones. Going to work on eCS News now so it's ready to go on Nov 01. Site is now version 0.3 10-30-10 - A I got a Nook e-reader on 09-25-10 and love it. No more books filling up my house. Today I finally used the usb cable to connect it with my eCS computer to see what would happen. I was happy to see that the Nook began to charge (something my Droid X won't do) but eCS does not see it as a hard drive so I cannot do anything with it. 09-15-10 - A eCo Market is a new program that acts like Google Market Place. I downloaded/Installed it and I was impressed with it so far. It needs work for three reasons:
09-06-10 - A I woke up this morning, surfing the Internet as per normal, when I got actually board. So I decided to fire up Galactic Civilizations Gold. If your not familiar of the game, the goal of the game is to eventually dominate the galaxy. It is possible to achieve victory through war, cultural domination, diplomacy or by developing overwhelming advanced technology. It's a good time waster, it's not as polished as some games (even back then) but the AL is great and all and all it is fun. You can learn more here. 09-05-10 - A I posted on the www.os2world.com forms: “I have been thinking about this since eCS 2.0 has come out and wanted to hear what others thought, if it was a good (or semi good) idea I would move forward on it. I really love Object Desktop 2.0 and I think I would be hard pressed to use eCS 2.0 without it. With that I am really wanting to email Brad Wardell about opening the OS/2 Version. It would be great to have the eCS team able to add it to the install (if the user wanted), with all the updates (2.02) and any fixes/additions the good people at Mensys/Serenity Systems could muster, it would be a killer app. Of course, this might never happen and I believe this was asked before from Stardock, but Object Desktop 2.0 came out in 1998 and I cannot believe they are making any money from it nor are they using any of the technology today. Heck, I would be so inclined to ask for the entire library of OS/2 software they have created over the years to "donate" to the community. I mean between all the apps and games they put out it would be some real wealth. Anyways, I have had a few glasses of wine but this is something I have really mulled over and I am hoping we could put our heads together and figure out. If everyone thinks there might be even a remote possibility, I would have no problem writing up (a letter to Stardock/Brad Wardell) something for everyone to look at, prof, and then send out. Never know, after 12 years they might just be OK with letting it all go. Thanks!” Lets see what I get as a reply...I think I will be writing up something soon (I hope). 09-04-10 - B I just read this quote about Mensys: “So far 2010 is the best year in terms of sales to companies using eComStation. This has enabled us to even hire more people to get work done. “ Just Awesome! I only hope next year you increase sales 200% 09-04-10 - A I have been reading more about eCS 2.1, kinda exciting to read about some of the new functions: Mozilla: Mensys has provided funding so that Mozilla products like Firefox/Thunderbird will have printing support again (not created a PDF on the desktop). Expect a public release in the coming 2 to 3 weeks. These fixes will go of course into the public source tree so future builds will have printing support as well. USB Stack: Work is still slowly on its way to improve the USB stack. But its a big job. At least another 2 to 3 months before a public release of a new driver package is to be expected. It will contain vastly improved USB host controller drivers for USB 1.1/2.0. USBD.SYS will have bug fixes and new versions of USBKBD.SYS and USBMOUSE.SYS have been made. It only makes sense to release this is a single package. Its after this that we will look at USB MSD support, that requires a whole lot more work. Currently USB 3.0 is not yet worked on since we need more stable base USB support. Currently all USB 3.0 devices should be backwards compatible with USB 2.0. Panorama VESA: Work to enhance Panorama graphics driver is still being worked on. Research in a generic wide screen enabler and a tool to always set MTRR registers on modern machines properly so you always have the proper performance. SNAP in that respect is not receiving updates for a different reasons. Part of these reasons is because we don't have the financial and human resources to support all graphics chipsets and the revisions. Network card support: We just release the Intel NIC driver e1000e.OS2 that should support all current Intel gigabit chipset. We are looking at expanding this beyond to Realtek gigabit and Broadcom Gigabit. A new version of the Nvidia gigabit driver is on its way as well with bug fixes. No wireless support is currently planned as our cooperated customers have a need for wired support. Wireless support is planned to be worked on later this year. Danis506: A new build of the Daniela IDE driver is being tested by a group of people. We hope to release that to hobbes within the next week or so. AHCI driver is right now under development. Time frame is hard to give when this driver is released. At Mensys we hope to receive a binary version of the driver within the next 2 weeks or so. But this binary build is for internal testing only. Flash 10 plugin: Flash 10 required some extensive debugging but we hope to do a release within the next month. Some of the hangs on SMP where caused by a bug in ODIN. Uniaud: Uniaud is still receiving updates and we have pretty good current audio support. OpenOffice.org: In about 2 weeks time we will release OpenOffice 3.2 to the public (people who have an active software subscription can then download it). More: More stuff on the way but as you can see plenty of stuff being worked. And some things have an uncertain time frame when its released. This to make certain the drivers/software simply have a decent level of functionality (that is not crashing). 08-29-10 - A Where has the time gone! It's been a busy month, work wise, with me being gone for two weeks. So not much eCS love. I did get rid of my Blackberry Storm 2 though for a Droid X, no comparison, This new phone kicks butt. 08-01-10 - A The last few days I have been trying to figure out why I get logged out off the Internet after 30 minutes. After posting my troubles on www.os2world.com's forums. I got enough information to get the answer. As odd as it sounds, the problem was my parallel port printer in my BIOS. It was set for IRQ 7. I think this had something to do with it though I am still not 100% sure why. I have been having one or two other small issues also so I decided to reinstall eCS. Shutting off the Parallel port in my BIOS and setting up my IP as a static number has done the trick, I am now on all the time, way over 30 min (2 hours, 4 min atm). Things are running very smooth again and I am taking my time installing every program so I have no issues. 07-28-10 - A So something weird is happening (nothing new there) with my Internet connection. I bootup eCS and can get on the Internet with all my programs. After exactly 30 minutes I cannot surf the Internet or download...but...my GTIRC is working fine, I can see people typing and I can still chat. My eCS box has been running now for 11:50 minutes and I still have IRC going strong, I cannot surf though. 07-27-10 - A At one time, for my IRC fun I used GTIRC, I have it still and finally got it to work, I am hanging out at: IRC Server – Tampa.FL.US.Undernet.org / Port 6667 / Chatzone Oh...and no one has heard of eCS, time to spread the word! 07-24-10 - A I wanted to put a new bootup logo on my eCS machine but I didn't know how. I posted on the OS2world forms and I got some good help, it took me a few times but I got it...I learned a few things also:
06-15-10 - B OpenOffice might be the reason my typing is slowing down, I have change my HTML work in Kompozer, and I have not seen a slow down yet. In OpenOffice the keyboard responce time would be unworkable by now. I will play with it more but if need be, I just installed Lotus Office 1.6. That should get me writing if need be, and its damn fast also.
06-15-10 - A I broke down and just bought a New ATI Radeon X850 Pro AGP video Card with 256 megs of Ram. I decided to upgrade since the current card is a ATI 8500 card (8 years old), the x850 card since it is the fastest card I can get for eCS that is still supported by SNAP with all its features. I only paid $69.00 for the card with shiping. Not bad. I should have it in a week. I am excited! 06-13-10 - C Most of my needed programs are installed again. 06-13-10 - B Not sure what s happening with my keyboard input but t is running very slow, meaning that when I type it is not registering very key stroke, this is very annoying as it takes me twice as long to type anything since I am missing most of the words I type, not sure if I just need a reboot or something else is happening. 06-13-10 - A OpenOffice what I am making my website in now. Its not Adobe GoLive!, but it works. I am obviously making it 100% capable for eCS (Firefox) but I also want to make sure it is very friendly to smart phones. I am not 100% sure if OpenOffice will be my My HTML of choice but only time will tell. 06-12-10 - A I woke up this morning and found the eCS would boot up and give an error of missing os2boot file, I rebooted and pressed F1+Ctrl and went to the eCS maintenance screen and tried using an archived file (I set mine up to backup 9 copies, once per day). None of them worked. For some reason I decided to open up my computer again and check to see what was going on. I found I had an extra 75 gig drive in there I was not using (I remembered it is bad). I took it out and moved my 250gig drive to the middle slot so it had the maximum amount of air flow. When I moved the Hard drive down I also noticed the jump was not in any proper mode, so honestly I have no idea how it worked. I removed the jumpers so it could pick what potion it wanted to be (master). I also added the ATI 8500 AGP card I have there so I can use SNAP instead of Panorama. I am not sure what happened but I decided that it was a hardware problem, I rebooted and reinstalled eCS again. 06-11-10 - A Could not figure out how to get the 2nd CPU running still so posted on the OS2World forums and in 10 minutes I was running both CPU's Again! Thanks for everyone's help! I had to manually add /smp in the config.sys file, so it looked like this: PSD=ACPI.PSD /smp 06-10-10 - A Not as much time to play eCS today as I would of liked, I did install some programs I like to play with like PM123, Z!, PMView Pro, VoiceType, ClamAV, and Links for OS/2. 06-09-10 - B So interesting find, I was playing with Object Desktop 2.0 control panel and I found out what was making my mouse jump... the meter for the swap file. Shesh...I won't even use one I bet. So I took it off and no more mouse jumps. Before I add any more software I am going to work on the website more, it really needs some love. 06-09-10 - A I am updating this website on eCS 2.0! 06-08-10 - F Object Desktop 2.0 from Stardock seems to make my mouse pause every 10 seconds or so, and when it happens it's just for a millisec. Still annoying so I am going to take it off and try the programs what come with eCS 2 (eStyler, Window Themes, etc.), maybe I will like them, if not I will see what I can do to fix the problem. 06-08-10 - E I turned on the ACPI in eCS and rebooted. Everything is working but not sure if the second CPU is up and going. Reinstalled Object Desktop 2.0 and Gotcha. Rebooting, reinstalling OpenOffice 3.1.1. So far eCS is very fast, I “feel” that its twice as fast as Windows XP so far. I am hoping to get back on the Internet once and for all today, then I just have to verify I have both CPU's running. Fun, fun! 06-08-10 - D I cannot find where I change the IRQ, I think it should be 5 not 255. I looked in the config.sys and found nothing. I reinstalled again but this time I went into the BIOS and found the Plug & Play O/S option turned on, I turned it off. Sounds Works!!! I put in the extra two 2.0 usb card in a free PCI slot and it works, I now have sound and two extra usb ports...happy again. Time to work on the network again and figure out why the CPU is not working... 06-08-10 - C This is starting to become annoying: Soundblaster
Live! MMPM/2 Audio Driver v0.8.2
Another device
driver was granted exclusive access to IRQ 255 06-08-10 - B Reinstalling eCS and this time I am not turning on the ACPI, just to see if that helps on startup. I will have to turn it on latter if I want the 2nd CPU to be seen (I think). I am not sure if I said this but I am formatting my single Hard Drive as JFS, It is a 250 gig drive, I am splitting up into a 40 gig (for OS and some apps) and 210 gigs for data, storage, and some apps. Now I get to wait 30min to see if it works... 06-08-10 - A I simply cannot get the computer to see my Hercules Fortissimo III soundcard. This is very weird since I know it works (was in a computer, I just pulled it out) and the card has eCS sound drivers. I have a Soundblaster Live! PCI card I tried once before but since I had 3 gigs of ram it would not work (the manual that comes with eCS 2.0 states this exact problem, it can only work with up to 2 gigs of ram.). I have removed the Hercules Fortissimo III sound card and have put back the Soundblaster Live! Card and removed one, 1 gig sim from my computer (now a total of 2 gigs.) I tried to install it by removing all soundcard data and installing it, on bootup it gave me the error that there was a conflict with an IRQ. Screw it, I am reinstalling and for added fun I am adding my Hauppage WinTV TV card (PCI) so latter I can work on it. 06-07-10 - A Called my DSL carrier and got the numbers I needed to get online. I rebooted my computer and hoary! I'm online! 06-06-10 - D Changing my basic default properties on the desktop such as Enable NumLock at Startup. Not having that was annoying. Changed the resolution to the max that Panorama will support (1280x1024 at 16m colors). I run my Windows machine at 1680x1050 at 32bit colors). I moved the eCenter from the bottom of the screen to the top (OS/2 Default), Turned on Archive Desktop on for every 2 days (9 archives), Changed the Wallpaper to ECS20BGB.BMP, turned off eStyler (Sorry), Disabled ePager (Sorry), and most importantly installed Object Desktop 2.0 (Just Keyboard Launchpad, Control Center, and Stardock Extras Bitmaps). I also went into Multimedia Application Install and Reinitalized MmeCS to reset the sound card. Rebooted the computer then added OpenOffice 3.1 for eCS (Version 3.1.1 of Windows). I read the readme first and found they wanted me to install UniCLip and kLIBC 0.6.3, I did but it seemed that they were already installed. 06-06-10 - C Gotcha! (Version 1.78) Will be the first program I install. This is simply because I want a program to take screen shots and it is the best program out there for eCS (my opinion). Here is a picture of my desktop right after the default install. 06-06-10 - B The install went better then I expected, it installed with no errors and fairly quickly (20 min) I was looking at my warm and comfy home again that I have long been away from. Of course I have three major problems:
Everything else looks good as far as I can tell. Just for some background info, I have a ATI 8500 video card (AGP), Hercules Fortissimo III (Soundcard) (PCI), and 3Com 10/100 Nextwork card (PCI), 250 gig HD, Asus motherboard that supports dual Pent 3 (I have two 1.0 Pent 3 CPU's running). Keyboard and mouse are USB and I have a Sony DVD burner. 06-06-10 - A Today is the day, I am excited to install eCS 2.0 for the first time. It's been awhile for me to have OS/2 / eCS on my computer, I have eCS 1.2 and I could never get it to install because of some hard-drive issue and I said before, I really don't want to mess around with things a lot. I did though and I was so frustrated with it I stopped using eCS two years ago. I never stopped monitoring the eCS web sites though, like www.ecomstation.org, www.os2world.com, www.os2.com, and of course, www.ecomstation.com. I was excited to see Firefox and Openoffice updated and keeping up with the windows version among other projects people were working on. Every time a new revision of eCS 2 would come out I was excited to read it. Why was I excited to read a new version was coming out? I have used Windows and Linux, and I will simply never use Apple products. I just never found myself at home. I started using OS/2 at version 2.1 and if you were back then trying to get that OS to work then you know my pain. I loved it once it was running, but OMG, was it such a pain to get running. I loved it, I loved the OS/2 Workplace and if you have not used it, then you have no idea what I am talking about and you own yourself the favor to go to the eComstation website and try the 1.2 CD (hopefully they will have 2.0 out soon). I have two computers, side by side, among others in my house. For now though I want to focus on these two. The one I am right now writing this text on is a Windows XP Machine. I have a copy of Vista Home edition but it will not install on it, can't find the drivers needed (go figure). My goal here is to have a side by side comparison of real life work I need to get done. When I install a program that I need/want, it will have to be installed on both computers and rated. There are certain programs I need, and some that I want, either way, the programs I chose will have to work on both computers unless there is no getting around something. I will always try and get those programs working on my eCS computer first, then find something comparable to it. An example would be Openoffice, I need that software to do work as I am sure most of you do, since I use it then I will install it on my Windows Vista machine. I will install the newer version on windows and I will make sure of it. I want to build a spreadsheet of these programs in the near future with downloads for both windows and eCS if there is that option. 06-05-10 - A I've
had ideas in my head for a long time now on what I would like to
do for the eComstation (eCS) community. There were ideas that I
could learn to program in REXX, I played around with it briefly,
and then dropped it. I tried Java, dropped it. Gave up on the
whole idea.
I
am excited with eCS's future and I want to show my thanks to the
team of people that make it happen. I cannot program, I cannot
give a million dollars to the cause, but what I can do is learn
eCS and make a website that can show people like myself what it is
about, and help them come into the fold. |
Here
are the specs: