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VOICE Home Page: http://www.os2voice.org 		January 2003

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OS/2 Tips

We scan the Web, Usenet and the OS/2 mailing lists looking for these gems. Have you run across an interesting bit of information about OS/2 or eComStation recently? Please share it with all our readers. Send your tips to tips@os2voice.org. If you are interested in joining a particular OS/2 mailing list, check out the VOICE Mailing List page for subscribing instructions for a large variety of existing lists - http://www.os2voice.org/mailinglists.html.

Editor's note: these tips are from OS/2-eComStation 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.

Nov 21, 2002 - Our first tip of the month is from Winfried Tilanus on comp.os.os2.apps. Have a problem installing PERL (http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/cgi-bin/h-browse?dir=/pub/os2/dev/perl) under OS/2?:
Oh, that **** o:\ thing! The O: drive is indeed hardcoded, but it is possible to overwrite it with the PERLLIB_PREFIX environment variable. Only the syntax of that one is quite exotic and poorly documented. My config.sys says: 
SET PERLLIB_PREFIX=o:/Perl/lib;f:\Perl\lib
Which means: "translate o:/Perl/lib to f:\Perl\lib"

No normal mind would think of that. Last time I cleaned up my config.sys, I thought (assuming all minds involved are normal): "I have no o:\ so I can remove that path". After that I spend hours on getting perl started again....

Winfried

Nov 27, 2002 - On the xworkplace-user Yahoo list, Andreas Ludwig offered the following tip on how to get to the XCenter properties if the XCenter (introduced with XWorkPlace as a replacement for Warpcenter) is filled with icons:
Come on. Try harder ;-) Just go to the very bottom of the screen (i.e. until the mouse pointer doesn't move anymore) and right click. This MUST work, otherwise there's really a strange bug in you XWPS installation.
Nov 30, 2002 - This is more of a none paid advertisement, then a tip, but a lot of people ask where to find 802.11b wireless cards that work with OS/2-eComStation, so here is a post from the ecomstation Yahoo list from Joachim Benjamins of Mensys:
http://shop.mensys.nl/cgi-bin/db2www/mns_art2.d2w/report?catname=WirelessPCCard

Worldwide shipping for 12 Euro.

Regards,

Joachim Benjamins

Dec 3, 2002 - Next up an exchange of information about setting up helper applications under Mozilla for OS/2 in comp.os.os2.multimedia. Someone asked about making WarpVision a helper app for MPEG files under Mozilla:

William L. Hartzel

The "mime.types" file can have multiple extension per mime type: example: video/mpeg mpg mpeg mp2 mpe m2v m1v vbs mpegv The file "mailcap" does the association of mime type to application: example: video/x-mpeg2;D:\MA\warpvision\video2.exe

Be sure that the mime type you fix is the same mime type that you assign to applications, as the two above are not the same mime type. This would be the mailcap for the mime type above: video/mpeg;D:\MA\warpvision\video2.exe

Mikus Grinbergs
Not counting plugins (which have their own rules), the specification of "helper applications" (to which a downloaded file is passed by the browser) is IMHO __much__ easier via the 'mime.types'/'mailcap' facility in Mozilla/2 than via the "helper applications" panel in Mozilla's preferences.

All you have to do is add two lines to prefs.js, for instance: user_pref("helpers.global_mailcap_file", "E:\\etc\\mailcap"); user_pref("helpers.global_mime_types_file", "E:\\etc\\mime.types"); and then put lines such as William indicated into those two files.

Dec 4, 2002 - There are several IRC clients for OS/2. You can get information on several at the VOICE Meeting page http://www.os2voice.org/meetinginfo.html One which is no longer supported is OpenChat/2. It is now freeware. On comp.os.os2.misc, Dink posted how to use this product even though you can no longer register it:
add 
/REGISTRATION free ware,-726182663,389329788
to openchat.irc
Dec 5, 2002 - : I frequently see people asking about what SCSI RAID controllers work under OS/2. Here is a list compiled by Oliver Rick posted on ecomstation.support.hardware news group. Oliver is the maintainer of one of the best OS/2 Update information sites on the web - WarpUpdates International/Deutschland http://www.warpupdates.mynetcologne.de/:
This is what I know:

mfg model chip bus type driver archive
IBM ServeRAID-4H Ultra160 SCSI Controller ? PCI, 64-bit Ultra160, Quad Channel, RAID IPSRAID.ADD IB04
IBM ServeRAID-4L Ultra160 SCSI Controller ? PCI, 64-bit Ultra160, RAID IPSRAID.ADD IB04
IBM ServeRAID-4Lx Ultra160 SCSI Controller ? PCI, 64-bit, 66 MHz Ultra160, RAID IPSRAID.ADD IB04
IBM ServeRAID-4M Ultra160 SCSI Controller ? PCI, 64-bit Ultra160, Dual Channel, RAID IPSRAID.ADD IB04
IBM ServeRAID-4Mx Ultra160 SCSI Controller ? PCI, 64-bit, 66 MHz Ultra160, Dual Channel, RAID IPSRAID.ADD IB04
AMI (LSI Logic) MegaRAID Enterprise 1600 (Series 471) QLogic ISP12160A/66 PCI, 64-bit, 66 MHz Ultra160, Quad Channel, RAID MRAID.ADD AI02
AMI (LSI Logic) MegaRAID Express 500 (Series 475) QLogic ISP10160A PCI Ultra160, RAID MRAID.ADD AI02
AMI (LSI Logic) MegaRAID Elite 1600 (Series 493) QLogic ISP12160A/66 PCI, 64-bit, 66 MHz Ultra160, Dual Channel, RAID MRAID.ADD AI02
Dell PERC 3/DC (AMI Series 493) QLogic ISP12160A/66 PCI, 64-bit, 66 MHz Ultra160, Dual Channel, RAID MRAID.ADD AI02
Dell PERC 3/DCL QLogic ISP12160A/66 PCI, 64-bit, 66 MHz Ultra160, Dual Channel, RAID MRAID.ADD AI02
Dell PERC 3/QC (AMI Series 471) QLogic ISP12160A/66 PCI, 64-bit, 66 MHz Ultra160, Quad Channel, RAID MRAID.ADD AI02
Dell PERC 3/SC (AMI Series 475) QLogic ISP10160A PCI Ultra160, RAID MRAID.ADD AI02
HP NetRAID-1m ? PCI Ultra160, RAID MRAID.ADD AI02
HP NetRAID-2m ? PCI PCI;Ultra160, Dual Channel, RAID MRAID.ADD AI02
HP NetRAID-4m ? PCI, 64-bit Ultra160, Quad Channel, RAID MRAID.ADD AI02
Compaq Smart Array 431 Controller ? PCI, 64-bit Ultra160, RAID CPQARRAY.ADD CQ01
IB04; ftp://ftp.pc.ibm.com/pub/pccbbs/pc_servers/71p8963.exe
AI02; http://megaraid.lsilogic.com/support/dlcenter/os2-2e04-1.zip
CQ01; ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/softpaq/sp19501-20000/sp19664.exe

Dell used to have own drivers for the PERC models, but last time I checked the ftp server only had archives up to PERC 2 (probably shipped with hardware, no update yet?). Compaq might have a newer archive now.

Dec 6, 2002 - Digital cameras are all the rage these days. And most if not all of these save their images in JPEG format, with information stored inside the image. This is called EXIF data. The next version of PMView (3.0) will read and display this data, but generally under OS/2 there is no way to view or change this data. On comp.os.os2.multimedia, Jurgen Dittmer suggested the following to utilize this EXIF information under OS/2:
You may want to have a look for renpic21.zip on hobbes.

This smart little program reads the EXIF information, renames the file to its date and time and writes the EXIF info to extended attributes. It says, it works for Olympus cameras, I am using it with my Canon Ixus 300 and it works great!

Juergen

Dec 15, 2002 - Frequently people ask where on a large IDE drive OS/2 can be installed. Older versions of Warp 4 had to be fully installed within the first 8GB of the drive as it required the system BIOS to see the partition. Bob Eager pointed out on comp.os.os2.misc that this is not the case with newer versions of OS/2:
Unless:

a) You are using any system based on LVM, and have made sure that LVM has updated the Master Boot Record

or

b) You have Warp 4 (non LVM) and have upgraded to FP13 or later, updated the MBR and boot sector (latter with SYSINSTX), then moved the partition above that line.

In both these cases, the limit is about 1TB.

Dec 16, 2002 - Further on the topic of partition location, Bob Eager continued on comp.os.os2.misc with the following bit about why Boot Manager is required for placing OS/2 above the 8 GB mark on a drive:
No.....the OS/2 MBR determines once and for all whether the INT 13H extensions (necessary to boot above 8GB) are present in the BIOS. Then it leaves a marker in memory. Boot Manager, and the individual volume boot records for OS/2, look for this marker to see how to proceed. Thus, if you don't use the OS/2 MBR the boot sequence for OS/2 won't work correctly. Other systems probably re-determine it at each stage.

Dec 16, 2002 - Here is a tip for users of ProNews/2 from Trevor Hemsley, on comp.os.os2.apps. If you post a long URL to Usenet and it wrapped and messed the thing up, take heed from Trevor, and do the following to prevent wrapping at least for those viewing it in ProNews/2:
You can just prefix the line with the > character and it'll turn off wrap for that line.

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