Virtual OS/2 International Consumer Education

January 1999

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December 23, 1998 Source: Thom Davis (ccompute@neo.lrun.com)

Centari Computers is proud to announce that we have a new product added to our OS/2 Line up.

The ALS-300 Express PCI Sound Card

Product #SCM32P
Price $40.00

This PCI sound card comes with OS/2 drivers directly on the CD along with Win3.1 drivers for Win-OS/2 compatibility.

Avance ALS300 PCI Sound Chip + AC97 CODEC 90dB+, PCI v2.1 Compliant.

Wave engine with wave sample downloadable.

Sound Blaster Pro compatible, MPU-401 and digital Game Port Support.

Support Full Duplex, Direct Sound, and Positional 3D sound.

External Connector: Line-out(0.5W/110dB amp.),Line-In, Mic, Game/MIDI.

Internal Connector: Modem-In, CD Audio-In,Video-In.

Software Bundle including: OS/2 Drivers & Win98, Win95, WinNT4.0,MS-DOS Utilities, DEMO Program.

These are good all-around Sound Cards that free up a ISA slot, which in newer computers is a major commodity.


December 23, 1998 Source: Hinnerk Becker (hbecker@bigfoot.com)

Assistant/2 (the successor of Extended Clipboard/2) is a WPS extension which is designed to make work with OS/2 more comfortable in various ways.It can now be downloaded from ftp://ftp.bmtmicro.com/bmtmicro/assist10.zip.

Extended Clipboard

EClip offers new and improved functions to use the clipboard more efficiently. Because extensive changing between source and destination is no longer required, the clipboard becomes an even more universal aid. With EClip it is possible to copy all needed clips into the clipboard first and paste them into the destination application later.

Drag&Drop

With Assistant/2 you can Drag&Drop pieces of text from one application to another. This works with almost every PM-application which supports the clipboard as well as with windowed VIOs. If you drop a piece of text on the desktop, Assistant/2 will create a clip object that is compatible with Extended Clipboard. If the dragged text is an URL it can create a URL object.

Macros

Keyboard and mouse events can be recorded with the integrated macro recorder. It is also possible to write a macro with any text editor or to edit an already recorded macro. Since macros are special text clips, everything that you can do with text clips is applicable to macros as well. Especially the hotkeys make macros a very powerful feature. Dynamic macros can be used to generate macros on runtime. So it is possible to insert the current date into your application or to change the case of selected letters! Other macros included: Open text as URL, add text to file.

Hotkeys and Hottext

You can assign a hotkey or a sequence of keys (hottext) to clips and macros. If you need a certain clip frequently, assign a hotkey (hottext) to it. The clip will be pasted and macros will be played everytime you press the hotkey in a PM application. The mousebuttons and Win keys can be used as hotkeys, too.

Popup Menus

Create flexibly configurable popup menus which are accessable from almost every PM application by hotkey (mouse button). The structure of the menu is read from the folder you have chosen.

English and German versions are included and registrations for Extended Clipboard/2 are valid for Assistant/2 as well!


December 23, 1998 Source: Oliver Poggensee (Tyra2@gmx.net)

The Config.sys editor Tyra/2 is now available in version 1.30.

You can download it from here:
http://www.online.de/home/os2

Tyra/2 is an easy to use OS/2 config.sys file editor.All of the statements in your config.sys file are displayed logically in a notebook. You don't have to worry about the correct spelling or what parameters are available. Most commands can be set up with just a click of the mouse. For all commands, there are help pages available with a description of the command and what parameters can be used with that particular entry in your config.sys file.

New in this release:

This is the last version which you can purchase for the low price of 25USD for a lifetime registration! With the beginning of the next release, which will be version 1.40, I will change the price to 9USD for a single licence, 11USD for an update and 49USD for a lifetime licence. So take the chance to get Tyra/2 for the low price. You can expect version 1.40 in the mid of February 1999.

You can download the newest version of Tyra/2 from this sites:
http://www.online.de/home/os2/

ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/incomming
will be moved in the next time to:
ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/util/config

And in the next days at:
http://www.bmtmicro.com/catalog/tyra2.html


December 23, 1998 Source: Steve Wendt (stevew@hartnell.cc.ca.us)

Novell has released a patch for Netware Requester for OS/2 2.12:
ftp://ftp.novell.com/pub/updates/nw/inw411/os2pt2.exe


December 23, 1998 Source: Steve Wendt (stevew@hartnell.cc.ca.us)

MR/2 ICE 1.52 (Mail Reader/2 Internet Cruiser Edition) has been released (12/18/98):
http://nick.secant.com/mr2ice.htm


December 23, 1998 Source: Steve Wendt (stevew@hartnell.cc.ca.us)

EMX 0.9d has been released:
ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/incoming/emx09d.zip

emx09d.zip (for upload only); please unpack; contains:
  INSTALL.DOC   emxdev2.zip   gbinusrc.zip  gnudev2.zip   gppdev1.zip
  README.DOC    emxrt.zip     gccsrc1.zip   gnudoc.zip    gppdev2.zip
  bsddev.zip    emxsrcd1.zip  gccsrc2.zip   gnuinfo.zip   gppsrc1.zip
  bsddoc.zip    emxsrcd2.zip  gccsrc3.zip   gnupat.zip    gppsrc2.zip
  bsdsrc.zip    emxsrcr.zip   gdbsrc1.zip   gnusrc.zip
  emxample.zip  emxtest.zip   gdbsrc2.zip   gnuview.zip
  emxdev1.zip   emxview.zip   gnudev1.zip   gobjcdev.zip

Proposed directory for placement: /pub/os2/dev/emx/v0.9d

WarpCast Moderator's note: EMX is a development package that makes porting Unix apps to OS/2 much easier.


December 23, 1998 Source: Steve Wendt (stevew@hartnell.cc.ca.us)

PMSANE 0.41 is on hobbes:
ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/incoming/pmsan041.zip
ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/incoming/pmsanrun.zip

PM frontend for SANE for OS/2 (Scanner Access Now Easy). Works with HP and Microtek scanners and integrates with your preferred image viewer application. Mustek support included but not completely functional. Also included - English and German versions of the online help.

This release includes changes to INSTALL.EXE and scanner recognition.

Requires NEW PMSane Runtime package - PMSANRUN.ZIP (22 Dec 1998).

Proposed directory for placement: /pub/os2/apps/graphics/scan


December 23, 1998 Source: Steve Wendt (stevew@hartnell.cc.ca.us)

NetRexx 1.148 has been released:
http://www2.hursley.ibm.com/netrexx/

==================BEGIN FORWARDED MESSAGE==================
>Date: Tue, 22 Dec 98 13:04:38 GMT
>From: "Mike Cowlishaw" <mfc2@vnet.ibm.com>
>To: ibm-netrexx@hursley.ibm.com
>Subject: NetRexx 1.148

This release makes significant improvements in importing
classes and in the SELECT instruction:

* The SELECT instruction now allows a CASE keyword, which
  lets an expression be evaluated once and then tested in
  each WHEN clause. For example:

  i=1
  select case i+1
    when 1 then say 'one'
    when 2 then say 'two'
    when 3 then say 'three'
  end

  See the NetRexx Supplement for details.

* An explicit class import will now disambiguate short
  references. For example, after

     import java.awt.List

  a reference to the class List would refer to that class,
  not the class java.util.List (introduced in Java 1.2).

* Several improvements in code generation, including the
  treatment of small integers as, for example, type byte
  without need for explicit casts.

* The format method in the Rexx class has been corrected
  to completely follow the ANSI X3-274 definition and the
  NetRexx specification.

--
Mike Cowlishaw, IBM Fellow, IBM UK Laboratories
http://www2.hursley.ibm.com


December 23, 1998 Source: Wolfram Wenke (WWenke@dgw-datennetze.de)

OS/2 users who need the Euro symbol in Win-OS/2 should contact their IBM representative AND send the following form to IBM:
http://www.europe.ibm.com/euro/contact/index.html

At present there is no plan to add this to Win-OS/2 it seems, so a little pressure could help to change this.


December 23, 1998 Source: John Wubbel (jwubbel@worldnet.att.net)

The Pediatric History and Physical Profile, Version 5.0 will be released on January 4, 1999. This version is the same as Version 3.1 however it has been enhanced to take advantage of the new IBM DB2 Universal Database for OS/2 V5.2. In addition, the Pediatric H & P, and all third party software supporting customized solutions in the medical practice is Year 2000 ready.

The Pediatric H & P is an Advanced Function Data Capture Facility for pediatricians wishing to document patient encounters and database patient history and physical profiles.

The IBM DB2 UDB offers a rich array of utilities for managing data securely. Backup, recovery, and data replication with user friendly graphical front-end screens are just a few of the features that impart confidence in running your business without failures.

For product specifications, visit our web site at:
http://www.PediatricNetwork.com


December 23, 1998 Source: Mark Mellin (mmellin@plinet.com)

Stardock has released the English FixKit#1 for Object Desktop 2.0. This will upgrade OD/2 2.0.0 to Level 2.0.1 (20 December 1998).

The MDIFF patch file is about 195Kb, and can be currently found at:
http://www.stardock.com/update/update_objdesk15.html

as:
ftp://www.stardock.net/updates/Objdesk/od20fk1e.zip

2.0.1 changes:


December 23, 1998 Source: Markus Schmidt (m.schmidt@emtec.com)

Zoc, an OS/2 and Windows telnet/modem communications program) has been updated to version 3.11.

AVAILABLE ONLINE:
WWW: http://www.emtec.com/
FTP: ftp://ftp.us.emtec.com/zoc
Support BBS: +49 911 3781200 (login as ZOC)
BMT Micro: http://www.bmtmicro.com


December 23, 1998 Source: 21warp-owner@mensys.n

Okay guys & girls!

We placed the order with IBM:

Dear IBM,

Our company is specialized in mail-order sales of OS/2 Warp
products. Our customers asked us to start taking pre-orders for a
new version of OS/2 Warp (version 5?).

We started taking pre-orders, only from people entering their data
on our web-site. We suggested a price level of US$ 100 excl. tax and
shipping.

We so far accepted over 6000 orders and based on these orders expect
a total of 7000 orders this year and at least 13000 next year.

So please accept our firm order for 7.000 copies of a new OS/2 Warp
version for a total of US$ 700.000 and our expected order for at
least 13.000 copies for a total of US$ 1.300.000 next year.

Our feeling is that this is of course only a small subset of
potential customers. At the recent HCC fair in the Netherlands which
attracted over 115.000 people we noticed a growing disappointment in
Microsoft products and a strongly growing interest in alternative
operating systems such as Linux and BeOS. A renewed OS/2 could
attract many new customers and could help IBM with their sales of
OS/2 to large accounts. Interest in Java-solutions would grow if
there was more diversity in operating systems.

Non-delivery of a new Warp client will also mean that the people
and companies who now pre-ordered a new Warp 5 Client may stop
using other IBM/Lotus products such as Notes, DB2, TX Series,
MQseries, SmartSuite, etc.

If you wish we can send you a list of comments from our customers
about suggested functionality for this new Warp version.

Regards,

M.B. de Jong
General Manager, Mensys B.V.

Kind regards,

The 21Warp Team, Dutch Division


December 22, 1998 Source: Armin Schwarz (ASchw@worldnet.att.net)

Now available:

OS/2 Software Development Kit for the AIMS RadioTrack FM radio card. Listen to your favorite radio station and control the radio right from your OS/2 computer.

This freeware SDK contains the following:

With this kit you can include support for these FM radio cards from within your own application or you can design a cool-looking FM radio program with "skins", station scanning, station memory, timer functions, you name it.

The OS/2 community now has the opportunity to create a radio program that is better than the one shipped with the hardware. Take this challenge and make your program available as freeware or shareware. Programming the radio card is easy with this SDK.

RXRTCTRL.ZIP can be found at:
http://home.att.net/~ASchw/homeapps.html

At that site you will also find a comprehensive list of OS/2 FM radio programs for a variety of other computer FM radio cards.

The AIMS RadioTrack card can be found at:
http://www.aimslab.com

Follow the AIMS Shop link.


December 22, 1998 Source: Per Johansson (hawklord@one.se)

FTP, TFTP, LPRfiles and Telnet have been updated 1998-12-11. They are at:
ftp://service.boulder.ibm.com/ps/products/tcpip/fixes/v4.0s2/latest/apps

The stack has been updated to version 4.02w 1998-12-16. It's at:
ftp://service.boulder.ibm.com/ps/products/tcpip/fixes/v4.0os2/latest/stack


December 22, 1998 Source: (davidwei@cybermail.net)

Hello there, I'm now providing free WWW/FTP hosting for 3 OS/2 users...

Why only three? Well... I'm giving out 100MB storage space for each one... :) and there are some restriction to this offer...

And the following is what I offer.

......

Here's how someone can become one of the three people...

Gimme your basic idea on what the page will be, or show me the page (URL or whatever...), and I will decide which three from the entries I will host...

:)

Being honorable.

Why am I doing this? Partially because I wanna test out my server, and partially because I'm feeling good for the moment... :)

The only pitfall is that I'm still optimizing Xitami... so some config might change a bit after a while...

Comments?

And yes, I'm considering giving away 5 megger hostings... but still have not made my decision... :)

Thanks... And roll on with OS/2! :)


December 22, 1998 Source: Samuel Audet (guardia@CAM.ORG)

New version of CD2MP3 PM!
http://www.cam.org/~guardia/cd2mp3pm.html

CD2MP3 PM 1.10

An Interface for CD and WAV to MP3 conversion.

Featuring:

1.10


December 21, 1998 Source: BMT Micro, Inc. (bmt@wilmington.net)

BMT Micro, Inc. and Falcon Networking, Inc. Announce Merger

WILMINGTON, NC. -- 20 December, 1998 -- BMT Micro, Inc., a leading software reseller, announced today that it has entered into an agreement and plan of merger with Falcon Networking, Inc, a Florida based internet service provider with interests in web based publishing and design, programming, and networking services.

Under the terms of the merger, Falcon Networking, Inc. will move operations to Wilmington, NC. The details of the merger were resolved over a period of months and have been approved by the principles of both companies. The merger and relocation of Falcon Networking is anticipated to be complete by December 31st and is currently underway.

"This merger will allow both companies to greatly enhance their core services and at the same time form a creative environment that will immediately benefit our customers and clients." says Thomas Bradford, President of BMT Micro. 1998 has been a year of dramatic growth for BMT Micro due to the diversification of our product mix and the enhancements we've made to our services. Falcon Networking and BMT Micro have worked closely together for 2 years and bringing the companies together will allow our resources and talent to be used most effectively."

"As our two companies worked together on various projects over the last couple of years, it became clear that that the talents embodied in the staffs of the two companies meshed in a way that would benefit from an even closer relationship," said Dirk Terrell, President of Falcon Networking. "By bringing our people together, both companies will grow in ways not possible as separate entities. This merger will allow us to provide even better service to our customers."

BMT Micro, Inc., founded in 1992, is a privately held software reseller located in Wilmington, NC and has the distinction of being a pioneer in electronic commerce.

Falcon Networking, Inc., founded in 1996, is a Florida-based internet service provider specializing in web publishing.


December 21, 1998 Source: Timur Tabi(timur@tabi.org)

The webpage for the OS/2 Programming Device Driver mailing list now has space for freelance driver programmers to list themselves. If you know how to write an OS/2 device driver, and you're interested in doing freelance or contract work, or maybe even a full-time job, you can have your entry added for free to this list.

The URL for the web page is:
http://www.tabi.org/timur/os2pdd.html

This offer is also good for companies who have OS/2 driver programmers available for hire.

So if you're an OS/2 driver programmer, or you're looking to hire one, please check out the web page. The list is on the bottom.

Of course, if you are an OS/2 driver programmer, you should already be subscribed to the mailing list :-)


December 21, 1998 Source: (davidwei@cybermail.net)

The SECOND X'MAS Release of ThermoProtect! :)

Now ThermoProtect V1.10 is available on http://hobbes.mnsu.edu/pub/incoming/tp-110.zip

and later it will be moved to http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/util/mboard/tp-110.zip

Freeware now and forever! :)

New Version Highlights:

*ThermoAlarm did not indicate which input was being guarded, thus sometimes when a bad parameter is entered, there could be some "unprotected" inputs. Now all the guarded input will have a '*' symble at the end of the line, so it will be easy to tell if you missed anything or not.

[Below comes from V1.09, repeated because V1.09's news is likely to be deleted due to the short time between V1.09 and V1.10 :) ]

*NEW! ThermoAlarm, now ThermoProtect warns you with graphical and audio warning when fans' speed and/or temperatures are exceeding the preset tolerance. And it will PINPOINT *WHICH ONE* is going wrong.

*COMMAND LINE PARAMETER IS NOW CHANGED, PREVIOUS USER PLEASE READ THE COMMAND LINE PARAMETER SECTION!!*

*All setup via command line, for maintance free installation.

REQUESTS!
If anyone has access to Winbond's W83782D chip's datasheet, please contact me, I'm trying to make ThermoProtect compatible with the W83782D chip.

Error/Bug Reports:

If this program is giving you a Vendor ID but saying that it can't identify the chip... please do the following...

*MAKE SURE you do have a enviromental monitoring chip of some kind.
*Check if the output from ThermoProtect is making sense or not (ie +5V entry showing +8V is NOT making sense... :) )
*Check your motherboard manual and record down the model and the make of the monitoring chip.
*Record down the Vendor ID.
*E-Mail me the data... :)


December 21, 1998 Source: Terje Flaaronning (terje.flaaronning@eunet.no)

The first early alpha version of IPSMon is now available and can be downloaded from:
ftp://ftp.iq.to/pub/ips/utilities/

From the readme file:

IPSMon is a monitor utility for the IPS (InetPowerServer) FTP module. It's not yet feature complete, but is included here as a preview of what is to come.

IPSMon will show you a list of all the users logged onto your IPS based FTP server, and some info about what each is doing. For the future more features like the ability to kill individual users or do server maintainance will be added.

IPSMon is written in 100% pure Java, and should run on any Java 1.1 enabled platform with Swing installed. It should also work on the newly released Java 2 platform, but has not yet been tested on it.

---

IPSMon is written by Harald Eilertsen.
© 1998 Harald Eilertsen

For bugs, suggestions or comments, contact
Harald Eilertsen at haraldei@ifbt.ntnu.no


December 21, 1998 Source: Doug Tan (dougtan@softhome.net)

Latest update (2 Dec 98) on Opera/2 from Project Magic (http://www.operasoftware.com/alt_os.html):

------- Start -------

OS/2

Well, I actually get tired of telling you all that "more info is coming soon". I haven't had any 'real stuff' update in ages, other than the problems with the resource files are still the same they were back in March this year.

I really hope that we will find a solution to this soon, regardless of how it will look and feel.

So in essence, nothing new on the OS/2 side, but if you know of someone who might be interested in helping out -- preferably someone in (Northern) Europe -- please let me know at magic@operasoftware.com. - Helmar Rudolph

------- End -------

It appears to me that progress on Opera/2 is very slow and the chances of Opera/2 becoming an actual reality is still far from certain. I know there are many talented OS/2 programmers out there and many more OS/2 users who would just love to see Opera/2 hit the market. So please, if anyone has programming skills to volunteer or could help in any way, do mail Opera at the given address.


December 21, 1998 Source: Dr. Martinus (nb2@gmx.net)

Hi,

The Notebook/2 Site has again received some updates, and I would like you to look at it and let me know if you have any suggestions. The site includes now more than 220 notebook computers and a lot of other useful info.

The Notebook/2 site is at:
http://www.os2ss.com/users/drmartinus/notebook.htm

Cheers!

Dr. Martinus


December 21, 1998 Source: John LeMay (jlemay@pclansolutions.com)

Many thanks to everyone who replied - and there were at least a couple hundred! Unfortunately I could not reply to all of the email I received regarding the site, so instead I thought I would post my decision here. Instead of selecting one person to handle the site, I have decided to create a zip file including the latest revision of the html docs and upload the file to Hobbes. I will have the file uploaded by the first of the year. Keep an eye on the incoming directory - I'll name the file aweos2site.zip.
Hobbes: http://hobbes.nmsu.edu


December 21, 1998 Source: John Youells (jyouells@lifestream.microserve.com)

There has been a new gradd driver release this week (up from 0.77) BBS Video Build Level 0.079.

They can be found at:
ftp://service.boulder.ibm.com/ps/products/os2/videopak/graddbb/graddbb.dsk


December 20, 1998

PMView v1.04 is now available at ftp.bmtmicro.com

English version: ftp://ftp.bmtmicro.com/bmtmicro/pmvw104.zip
German version: ftp://ftp.bmtmicro.com/bmtmicro/pmvw104de.zip
French version: ftp://ftp.bmtmicro.com/bmtmicro/pmvw104fr.zip
Spanish version: ftp://ftp.bmtmicro.com/bmtmicro/pmvw104es.zip

1.04 was released to fix the following bugs in 1.03:

There is a memory leak in the routine that interpolates pixels to the screen. Each time PMView paints its window, it eats up a certain amount of memory (relative to the area of screen that needs to be painted). Consequently, PMView sooner or later exhausts all system memory resources. (This bug only appears when the the "Use interpolation when scaling" option is enabled).

Transform/Size: When resizing an image the resulting image sometimes does not get the requested size.

Printing: Printing an image on several pages does not work correctly. (When printing an image on 4 pages, pages 1, 2, and 4 are okay but page 3 is garbled).

However, from my own experience, it introduces a NEW bug. If you resize an image, even if the "Keep Proportional" check box is checked, the image will be distorted to match the size you select unless you select "Custom."


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