Here in alt.msdos, Straydog <asd@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> spake unto us, saying:
>I spent considerable time with OS/2, both warp 3 and warp 4. Most of
>the boxes I tried (about a dozen) would install Warp 3, but Warp 4 would
>only install on one of the boxes.
Interesting, since Warp 4 is two years newer and has a lot of drivers
(especially video drivers) that Warp 3 does not.
Both will have issues with newer IDE drives (as both OSes predate large
IDE disks), but Dani wrote a replacement driver many years ago which is
free, easy to use, and completely solves the issue.
Same with Windows' 0x0E and 0x0F partition types.
The newer eComStations distribution solve most of these problems, of
source, since it's a modified release of OS/2 Warp 4.52 and doesn't
have the disadvantage of being over ten years old.
>I'll tell you some additional dirty little secrets about OS/2. They
>have a ton of fixpacks. You need certain ones, not others, to get
>Mozilla to run, if you can keep it from cra****ng,
Mozilla variants (Firefox, Seamonkey) run just fine on Warp 4 with the
application of a single base FixPak -- IBM public FixPak 15 for OS/2.
That's what I'm using here. No network updates or other fixes are
required at all.
>plus fairly stiff hardware requirements (go ask on netscape.mozilla.os2,
>or whatever it it, for help).
I use it quite happily on a PPro/200 with 64MB. This box has a bit
more RAM (192MB), but it wasn't Mozilla that needed it.
>Another one: IBM released subversions of Warps all in the same boxes
>so you couldn't tell which was later (maybe if you looked at file dates).
>I have three boxes of Warp 3, each box has its own OS plus applications.
There are *no* Warp 4 variations that were sold as packaged clients.
Even the Upgrade version (sold in a different box) is the same as the
full Warp 4 client. Same CD-ROM and part number. I have both.
The only Warp 3 variations I'm aware of are the standard ones which
were clearly labelled on the boxes. These are:
* OS/2 Warp 3 (red-spined box) without WinOS2.
* OS/2 Warp 3 (blue-spined box) with WinOS2 (also called "fullpack").
* OS/2 Warp 3 Connect (blue-spined box) with WinOS2 and compete LAN
sup****t (ethernet drivers, etc.).
There was one upgrade slipstreamed in with the 1st Warp 3 variant --
the initial release only sup****ted SLIP dial-up networking, but later
Warp 3 red-spine boxes contained PPP dial-up as well.
>Guess what, applications from box 2 will NOT work with OS from box 1.
>Only applications from box 1 will work with OS from box 1. Etc for
>other permutations.
There is no license enforcement or other technical reason why OS/2 apps
from one Warp 3 package should not work on another.
>I tried a few DOS programs in the DOS windows of OS2 and they were
>crap. Particularly graphics. Want to do anything fancy? You might
>need autoexec.bat and config.sys files with 200 lines of configurations.
The previous poster appears to be spreading serious misinformation.
I've used a wide variety of DOS programs including a variety of major
applications and games in OS/2 VDMs (mostly via vanilla VDMs using the
default emulated DOS kernel, not using a VMB (Virtual Machine Boot))
since 1992. I got into OS/2 specifically to run/juggle DOS software.
Examples of programs which I have used here under OS/2 include:
Geoworks Ensemble, New Deal Office (all versions)
Executor/DOS (all versions)
SEA 3.0 Graphics Viewer, QuickView Pro graphics viewer, PictView
Graphics Workshop, Improcess
MPXPlay, DAMP
NeoPaint (all versions), PC Paintbrush 5+
Telemate, Qmodem, Telix, Terminate, {COMMO}
SLMR, OLX
MAME (various versions), Retrocade 1.0 and 1.1, Appler, DVE
FTE Text editor, QEdit, TSE, TDE, Boxer
MS Word 5.5, Wordperfect 5.0, 5.1, 6.0, 6.1, StarWriter 6
FoxBase 3.0, Lotus Agenga, Information Palace, PC File 5 and 7,
Norton Commander, PC Valet, FileJet, XTree Gold, Stereo Shell
4DOS (of course!)
QuikMenu III, GAZE,
Quicken (all versions through 8)
MicroCAD, bCAD, Draft Choice, EasyCAD
Quattro Pro, Lotus 123 3.x and 4.0, AsEasyAs (all versions)
US Atlas 2 and 3, World Atlas, Skyglobe
Compton's Contem****ary Encyclopedia (uses a nice DOS GUI)
Games like Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem, Descent, etc.
The only programs I've ever encountered over the past 15 years which do
not work are the following:
* Tools like Partition Magic and Ghost which explicitly detect any
OS/2 or Windows environment and will not run.
* The Fusion Mac emulator for DOS (it seems *really* picky).
* The original Doom after beta 666 (broken sound code, fixed by the
Doom Legacy folks in their advanced versions).
* The GFVM filemanager. Not sure what its issue is.
* Some very old programs which used VPCI memory management.
>In the Windows 3.1 loaded OS/2 the file manager was buggy.
IBM had the source for Windows 3.1, and they actually fixed a number of
bugs in that platform (included a well-known calculator bug) before they
included it in OS/2 Warp 2.1 as the WinOS2 subsystem.
>The only thing that installed, ran, and uninstalled well was StarOffice
>5.1 for OS/2. Interestingly, StarOffice for Windows9X has good webbrowser
>capability. Sadly, the StarOffice for OS/2 is so buggy as a web browser
>that it crashes (window closes) on 98% of the websites I tried it on.
StarDivision actually created StarOffice on OS/2, and platforms like
Windows and Linux were added later.
I've been a paying customer of the StarOffice product since the OS/2
version of StarOffice 3.0 was sold (I'm a registered user of 3.0, 4.0,
and 5.0), and all versions up through 5.1a (the free version that was
distributed just after the Sun buyout of StarDivision which included
OS/2, Windows, Linux, and Solaris versions on the same disk) will work
just fine under OS/2.
The DOS versions of StarWriter also work under OS/2. I've not tried to
run the Windows version.
I used to use StarWriter 5.1a in web mode as a test browser for my web
site (along with various other weird browsers including AOLPress 2.0,
IBM's own Web Explorer, and Internet Adventurer), and I don't recall
StarOffice's browsing function ever having stability issues.
>Also, OS/2 is not crashproof. The only good thing about a crash is that
>all you need to do is reboot.
A lot depends on the nature of the crash and the specific software and
settings being used. OS/2 Virtual DOS Machine does allow DOS programs
more access (optionally, not by default) than Windows does, and that
can result in a locked system, but that one of the risks you assume if
you decide to bypass techical safeguards and give DOS programs direct
nonvirtualized access to hardware.
In general, OS/2 is fairly stable. My record up time here is over 100
days, though I normally reboot periodically to make backups.
>Other bad things: no defrag. checkdisk only from boot disks. And,
>several more.
Checkdisk can be run at boot time with the /F option if an issue
occurs. Otherwise, it's not possible to run it with the /F option
on the boot filesystem from the OS that booted from that filesystem.
This is a safeguard.
HPFS is somewhat fragmentation-resitant (not frag-proof) -- it's not
based on FAT, and is far more similar to NTFS and ext2fs in that it
doesn't need regular defragging in order to be efficient.
There are numerous technical papers on the net about HPFS.
>If you can't get the CDrom drivers to install warp 4, you can "make"
>one hundred 3.5 floppy disks at XDF density, and then you have to swap
>the floppy drive out of the "make" box and put it into the "install"
>box so head alignment and spin speed is right.
Warp 4 has sup****t for all standard IDE CD-ROM drives and most SCSI
controllers. I don't know anyone who has had to install from floppy
since the Warp 3 days, and even that was a rare occurrence.
In addition, while the option to install from diskette is certainly
there (and all of the diskette images can be found on the CD-ROM),
you can make those diskettes from the same machine that you install
on, and I've never heard of "head alignment" or "spin" issues outside
of the standard concerns that apply to any 10-15 year old hardware.
>Last big bad news. The TCP/IP stack is not robust (warp 3). hackers
>can send a malformed packet and crash the stack. OS still runs fine,
>but you can't redial in and set up ppp (not all Warp 3s have ppp,
>some only slip).
Interesting. I remember when Windows was vulnerable to the Ping of
Death and other things which left OS/2's BSD-derived network stack
largely unscathed.
>You have to reboot the OS to redial in. I've had this happen lots of
>times.
Sounds like pilot error to me, frankly.
>I've had plenty of experience with Linux, Red Hat, vers 4.2, 5.2,6.2,
>7.x, and the workstations (bad news if you don't have the right cdrom
>drive).
So have I. I started with SLS 0.99, then Morse's Slackware Pro 2.1,
then Yggdrasil, Slackware 3.1, Red Hat 4.2 through 7, Mandrake 5
through 9.x, and many other distros over the years.
I use DSL, Puppy, Mandrake (not Mandriva), and Coyote still. It's a
very nice OS. But it doesn't touch OS/2 as a DOS platform. :-)
--
-Rich Steiner >>>---> http://www.visi.com/~rsteiner
>>>---> Mableton, GA
USA
Mainframe/Unix bit twiddler by day, OS/2+Linux+DOS hobbyist by night.
WARNING: I've seen FIELDATA FORTRAN V and I know how to use it!
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
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