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Information on configuring OS/2 Warp for Dutch cable modem users (@home) is available at:

http://members.home.nl/cwr/WarpHome.html

(Sory, the information is Dutch language only.)

The Warped site has been updated with a review of Styler/2, an OS/2 Desktop Enhancer, formerly known as SmartWindows. So, if you're looking for a way to upgrade your Desktop, visit The Warped Site and find out what we think about Styler/2.

http://users.pandora.be/luc.vanbogaert

THIS WEEK'S FEATURE continues the series on PPWizard, the powerful HTML editing tool, with a tutorial on designing an actual web page from the Focus on OS/2 site.

The article can be found at:

http://os2.about.com/compute/os2/library/weekly/aa112499.htm

The rest of the site, which now contains 1074 links, is at http://os2.about.com.

Trevor Hemsley, the OS/2 coder, has just moved house and is not in a position to update the client just yet.

The current build 443 client will work just fine at RC5-64. However, it does not yet have the CSC code in it, so you can't use OS/2 for the CSC contest just yet.

The OS/2 perproxy will be OK for RC5-64, it can even fetch CSC blocks but I think, as has been said, not return them via the master.

Currently I have left my OS/2 box cracking RC5-64 using the Team Warped proxy, and my Win32 box at work cracking CSC using a d.net proxy.

This works well, and I can't tell how I'm doing 'cos d.net stats are broken anyway ;-)

A new public release of Links, a text-mode browser for OS/2 and Unix, is now available for download from:

http://artax.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~mikulas/links/

I just downloaded and compiled and so far I'm impressed.

If you own a Cirrus Logic video card then you may want to know that it appears that you will have to pay to get your drivers now! It appears that Cirrus Logic farmed the development of their drivers out to another company, and that company is now wanting $5 per download of any Cirrus Logic driver for any operating system. So hold on to those Cirrus Logic driver disks that you have, or else it may cost you to get them off the web. Cirrus Logic's web site is:

http://www.cirrus.com/

If you follow the video driver link off their site you will see what I mean.

Here is another link for cable modem users, including a blurb for OS/2 on the main page:

http://www.cablemodemhelp.com/

The OS/2 info:

http://www.cablemodemhelp.com/os2.htm

PPWIZARD has gone through a "few" more revisions since my last update. The main changes are:

• Macros now support "positional" parameters
  
• Many new PPWIZARD header files and other downloads, example of creating HTML pages from WPS URL objects/folders (see http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~dbareis/bookmark.htm)
  
• Can now easily create "html" pass through macros say to validate nesting of table tags without the need to specifically handle each possible tag parameter.
  
• New #DefineRexx and #OneLine commands.
  
• Workaround to Regina's "clause length" feature.
  
• Macro and macro parameter "transformation" facilities allow you to have a single value and modify the way its substituted, for example allow you to store a value such as "1234" and use it in different places as "1234" or "1,234".
  
• Macro and macro parameter names have been case insensitive, this is now the default and they can be made case sensitive.
  
• Bug fixes
  
• Better error reporting and in some cases validation of data.
  
• Better debugging support.
  
• Heaps of other changes.
  

For more information on the changes, have a look at:

http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~dbareis/ppwizard/changehistory.htm

WHAT IS PPWIZARD?

For those that don't as yet know, PPWIZARD is a generic preprocessor. Although most people use it only for HTML, it is also great for rexx code. You can now create header files contain code which you can if you wish conditionally generate (maybe you require different error handling for a particular common routine). It is generic in that it can be used to process any "text" files in any languages, if PPWIZARD's default processing gets in the way then there are many #Option's to change it.

For more information (and to see online examples) on PPWIZARD have a look at:

http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~dbareis/ppwizard.htm

I just checked my RC5-64 participant summary page at http://distributed.net/ and got a message about new client upgrades:

Warning! Warning! Warning!

You must upgrade your clients to build 446 or newer if you want your CSC work to be counted. Although some older releases and betas may appear to fetch and flush successfully to the proxy network, the work is being ignored at the keymaster level.

Do NOT delete your CSC buffers when upgrading your clients. Doing so is unnecessary and only causes more network traffic. If your previous client (release, beta, etc.) successfully fetched CSC blocks, they are still good and there is no need to delete them and re-fetch.

If you run a personal proxy and wish to participate in CSC, you must download a new v311 proxy. Please download them from here http://www.distributed.net/proxies.html

Warning! Warning! Warning!

That explains why I suddenly dropped 94 positions in the ranking... :(

The bad news are: there is no OS/2 client listed. And I don't know who ported the previous one (Dirk?).

For those who haven't got a clue on what this is all about, RSA promoted a contest to break the RC5-64 encryption. The Warped Team is #3 in the ranking.

I have received a new entry in the MAMERun Joystick Device Driver Contest from Vesa J., A Joystick driver that has support for the Gravis Gamepad Pro. Also, check out Vesa's proposal for an extended joystick standard under OS/2.

What is it?

Write your own joystick device driver for OS/2 and you could win $125 plus valuable prizes and earn the respect and gratitude of OS/2 gamers around the world! With the many new games available and the advance of game controllers there arises a need for a better joystick device driver than IBM's advanced joystick device driver. Support for new controller features, such as 8+ buttons or USB, will greatly enhance the OS/2 gaming experience for gamers as well as developers.

For rules and other information check out:

http://home1.gte.net/stefanj/contest.htm

I am looking for additional sponsors for this contest. If you would like to contribute please go to:

http://home1.gte.net/stefanj/sponsor.htm

Any questions can be sent to me at Stefanj@gte.net

A new beta (version 1.3.8) of my translator is now available.

You can downlod from:

http://home.t-online.de/home/C.Arnold/translator/

The direct link is:

http://home.t-online.de/home/C.Arnold/translator/trans138.zip

The file contains no dictionaries but these are downloadable from my site (the file is import.zip). It contains about 90,000 items in English/German. Other dictionaries are importable also.

The program is usable in German and English.

SciTech Display Doctor 7.0 for OS/2 BETA 11 is now available! You can download this new beta release from:

ftp://ftp.scitechsoft.com/sdd/beta/os2/sdd-os2-7.0.0-b11.exe

This new version is a self installing executeable file for OS/2, so you simply need to download the file and run it.

Changes in BETA 11:

• Brand new installer for professional version. Hopefully all license registration problems will be fixed by this new installer.
  
• Added support for selection between small and large fonts and icons for PM (WinOS/2 support is coming).
  
• Added support for listing both 32768 and 65536 color depths in the system properties page. Also fixed problems with WinOS2 display incorrect colors if 32768 modes were selected.
  
• Fixed line clipping problem for Y-major lines as seen in the Java WireFrame demo program (and also in the Speedy benchmark).
  
• Fixed line clipping problem for horizontal and vertical lines when dragging windows off the edge of the screen and back on again.
  
• Fixed memory detection problems for Cirrus Logic 543x/4x chipsets, causing hardware cursor to disappear for some 2Meg boards.
  
• Fixed mono bitmap and text functions causing scrolling and BitBlt corruption on Cirrus 543x/4x chipsets.
  
• Fixed lockup on booting with Cirrus 5434 chipsets.
  
• Fixed text corruption problems and other acceleration problems with the Intel i740. Still working on solving some corruption problems with high resolution and high refresh rate modes in 16/24bpp.
  
• Fixed screen corruption problems for Cirrus 543x/4x chipsets when running high refresh rates with high color depths.
  
• Fixed hardware cursor glitches at 1600x1200 on Matrox Millenium boards.
  
• Removed support for monochrome bitmap acceleration for the original S3 Virge chipsets, which have hardware corruption that we cannot work around. All Virge chipsets later than the original do not exhibit this problem (ie: Virge/DX, Virge/GX, Virge/VX etc).
  

Pretty Pop Software released Goose 0.86, today.

Goose is a `Checking Updated Homepage' utility.

Updated topics are:

Version 0.85 (21.Nov.1999)
a.Fixed the inconveniences.

Version 0.86 (25.Nov.1999)
a.Fixed the problem caused when disabled proxy server.

You can get a copy from Pretty Pop Music and Software:

http://prettypop.tsx.org/

I'd like to announce the release of ServerConfig/2 v1.7.

Version 1.7 has fixes for FirewallConfig and IPSConfig.

Home page:

http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~dm898/soft.html

ServerConfig/2 is a PM configuration utility for Apache web server, the InetPowerServer/2 and the IBM TCP/IP Firewall!

Dear Friends!

My work is going on. I will try to place my new version of SysInfo/2 (PM selfmade clone of wellknown NU 3.0 for Win 95/NT SysInfo ) on HOBBES soon. Version number will be 0.50. Right now you can download SysInfo v0.038 from:

http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/util/system/sysinfo0038.zip

This is a list of enhancements and differences from the current (0.038) version:

1. First page (Total info) is almost complete (Dos Support - corrected, FixPack&Build Level - added, Multimedia&CDROM - addded, HDDs info - added)
   
2. 2nd page (Memory Info) - refresh is added
   
3. Problems with opening of read only *.INI files that prevent SysInfo/2 to start - corrected
   
4. Last page (Device tree) - almost done. Information is shown in Win95 style and now you can find all info about any device you selected + total resource usage summary (IRQ, DMA, Ports, etc.) - also like in Win 95
   

The SysInfo/2 project roadmap is:

1. CPU&FPU benchmarks will be added to 1st page (may be, based on SysBench source)
   
2. Disk&CDROM benchmarks will be added to 3rd page (may be based on diskbench source)
   
3. "Details" buttons will be added to all page (to display, save & print information summary in a text form)
   
4. PCI devices will be displayed from PCI helper information, not from DevManager, so you will see in Device Tree some PCI devices that are not known/not installed in your OS/2 system.
   
5. Command line parameters will be added to use SysInfo in *.cmd files
   
6. MMIO information page will be compleated.
   
7. All help will be written.
   

And also... ;-(( From SysInfo/2 v. 0.50 a time limit will be added. And from v. 0.90 (I think, after doing step 5) from the roadmap shown above) SysInfo/2 will become a shareware program. I think, the price will be small and not become a problem. ;-))

Now, I ask you to try my current SysInfo/2 to find any bugs not listed in the corrected list shown above. I am interested in testing my SysInfo/2 on new CPUs (Pentium II >400Mh, Athlon, Pentium III) and on new VideoCards (all that are supported by SDD Beta 9). Please, take part in beta testing phase! Taking part in this phase will guarantee you a free ordering of SysInfo/2 in future.

Also you are welcome to do national translation!

True Basic Inc has recently released version 5.3 of its True Basic programming language.

A demo version of the new Bronze edition (US $39.95) can be downloaded from the developers' web site.

The Silver version (developers edition) and the Gold (cross platform "professional" version) have also been updated. Amongst new fuctions in this version is TruAPPS[tm], a platform for running TB programs on the web.

More information can be had on the True Basic Inc. home page:

http://www.truebasic.com/

DH-Grep-PM v1.07 is now available from:

http://www2.southwind.net/~dwhawk/

This PM version of grep is designed as a user friendly application. The often cryptic command line options have been replaced with easy to use menu selections. The output of the search is sent to a PM window and the user has easy access to all of the information that was found by the program. To reduce the overhead, the results are buffered until the search is completed and then displayed in the PM window.

DH-Grep-PM is shareware and costs $10.00 (US).

Registration covers all 1.xx releases of DH-Grep-PM. If you have registered DH-Grep-PM and have not received an email notice of this update, I need to update youremail address in my mailing list. Send me a message with the email address used with your original registration and your new email address and I will update my list.

New in DH-Grep-PM Version 1.07

Fixed logic bug that caused DH-Grep-PM to abort if the 'Browse' button was pressed when the search path was invalid. The search path is now checked prior to starting the 'Browse'.

Fixed logic bug that did not allow search to start when the 'Start' button on the 'Search Parameters' dialog box was pressed and the 'Search Pattern' line was empty, but the files only option was also selected.

Added 'Hard code word wrap' menu item under "File" on the menubar. This option adds CR-LF pairs to each line in the display window to make the current word wrap permanent. This should make it easier to print the search results.

Tyra/2 the Config.sys analyzer and editor is now available in version 1.70.

New in this version:

Added support for timezone settings. More than 300 countries and locations around the world are availbe with their settings for the tz variable.

Added a Fastsave option. Fastsave saves the config.sys file only, without showing the new config.sys file and all the dialogs.

Added some functions to determine that the config.sys file is bootable and compatible with the OS/2 install und update programs. These functions are called at every save. The limitations in OS/2 are as follows: Config.sys should not be greater than 64000 Bytes, Config.sys should not have more than 600 lines and a single line should hot have more than 1024 characters right from the equal sign.

The Change History function has been redesigned to avoid problems with the 600 lines limitation. The Change History will now be written to an externally file and not inside the config.sys file.

Tyra/2 is year 2000 tested and profed.

Added some entries to the Config.sys Descriptions.

On my website is a small utility available that can speed up the start time of Tyra/2 and any other VXREXX written software. This is done by preloding the Vrobj.dll file and holding it in the memory.

Tyra/2 is availbe in English and in German.

Bug corrections:

Fixed a problem with the Check Paths function. The function reported that you can delete the bootdrive entry (i.e. C:\) from the the SET Path variable. It is only needed by the Setup.cmd from any GRADD based graphiccard driver. Without it the setup.cmd will fail with an error message "Can't find BOOTOS2", you have to add the bootdrive to the SET Path variable.

Fixed all reported errors.

Tyra/2 is shareware and you will have 31 days to test it. If you are an author of a piece of OS/2 Freeware you can get a key for free.

You can download the newest version of Tyra/2 from this sites:

http://www.opweb.de/

ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/incomming/tyra170e.zip
(will be moved in time to)
ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/util/config/tyra170e.zip

And in the next days at:

http://www.bmtmicro.com/catalog/tyra2.html

I have just uploaded beta 4 of MAMERun to Hobbes:

http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/incoming/

Final expected placement is:

http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/apps/emulator/

You can also find it at the MAMERun Homepage:

http://home1.gte.net/stefanj/mamerun.htm

Whats New Beta 4:

• Added the ability to set custom configs for each game.
  
• Fixed various bugs
  
• Tested for compatability with latest release of MAME (v.36b10)
  

What:

MAMERun is a FREEWARE PM front end for the DOS version of MAME (Multi. Arcade Machine Emulator). A front end is a program that makes it easier for the user to interface with his application, which usually has a command line interface. MAME is a very popular emulator that allows you to run thousands of classic arcade games on your PC (if you own the ROMs). You can find the MAME homepage at:

http://mame.retrogames.com/

The Official (and very good) OS/2 PM port of MAME was done by Marty Amodeo and is at:

http://emuos2.vintagegaming.com/

Requirements:

OS/2
MAME for DOS (I used version .36 beta 10)
DOS Support installed
RexxUtil
joystick device driver (for joystick support, download from hobbes or DDPAK)
ROMs (DO NOT ASK ME FOR, OR WHERE TO GET ROMS!!)

CDS, Inc. today released Back Again/2000 for OS/2 Warp and Warp Server. Back Again/2000 is the newest backup and recovery utility for OS/2 Warp/Warp Server and is available for both OS/2 Warp workstations and servers. Special upgrade prices for existing Back Again/2 customers are available, and users of competitive products are eligible for special pricing as well. For more information, see:

http://www.cds-inc.com/

Due to Name Conflicts. The #Computing-OS/2 Chat Room was not made Permanent as expected.

Instead the Room #OS2Computing was made permanent...

Come out and meet others that use the OS of Choice....

Junk Spy PreRelease 5 Ready for Download

A new PreRelease of Junk Spy (http://www.sundialsystems.com/junkspy/), Sundial Systems' junk email elimination tool, is ready and available for download.

"This PreRelease version includes lots of features suggested by our PreRelease testers" notes Randell Flint, President of Sundial Systems. "We've found that real testing in the field is a valuable source of feedback."

"Thanks to our PreRelease users, this is a near final release," adds Rollin White, Junk Spy's Development Manager. "I'm happy to say, we fixed all the bugs reported."

Junk Spy examines your email as it's downloaded from your mail server, and before it is sent to your email program. It uses a database of clues and detectors that are automatically updated through periodic updates.

"Junk Spy's TCP/IP Wizard has also been dramatically improved" says Randell Flint. "We knew there were lots of TCP/IP issues out there and testing proved most valuable in this area."

Using Junk Spy will save you both time and frustration usually spent wading through junk email. It's another solution from Sundial Systems - "Sundial Has The Answers".

Xitami 2.4d5 is now available from:

http://www.xitami.com/

The new beta release 2.5b1 is also available now.

Xitami is a small, fast, and powerful multiplatform Open Source web server available for OS/2 and many other operating systems.

Changes in 2.4d5:

• Closed a security problem with the LRWP agent. Versions prior to 2.4d4 have a denial-of-service problem with LRWP that lets people crash your server by telnetting to port 81 and entering garbage. You can upgrade to 2.4d5, or disable LRWP by adding [LRWP]enabled=0 to your defaults.cfg file.
  
• We have upgraded the LRWP agent to LRWP/2.0 to close the security holes. You must define applications in the defaults.cfg [Lrwp- Application] section before they can connect to the server.
  
• We have upgraded the logging agent to support the extended logging formats of Xitami 2.5. To avoid conflicts, use extended logging for all log files or for none at all.
  

If you are using LRWP on an Internet server we recommend you upgrade to protect against attacks on your LRWP ports. If you use Xitami without LRWP, we recommend you disable LRWP in any case, and upgrade to 2.4d5 after testing the new release carefully. Some users have noted problems the new logging functions.

For info and downloads please see www.xitami.com. For help and suggestions please join the Xitami discussion group by mailing xitami- request@isonline.com with 'subscribe' in the message body.

This announcement is sent when Xitami is available from xitami.com. Our mirror sites will need a few days to catch up to this version. When in doubt, please read the messages at the mirrors carefully.

Before upgrading your Xitami installation backup your entire site and test the new release carefully before putting into production.

If anyone's interested there's a good article about a company called Microsemi that is using OS/2 in the latest issue of PCWeek on page 41.

The article mentions that they're using OS/2 and see no need to switch to anything else. They're using the full OS/2 offering too: OS/2 Warp Server, the 4.0 client, DB2, WSOD and Lotus Smartsuite. They currently have about 35 desktops and are very happy with the performance.

Hopefully they'll be a link on the PCWeek web site soon.

Those with an interest in Java on OS/2 should take a look at this. Interesting for an OS with no future!

Check out:

http://www.ibm.com/java/jdk/other/portingplans.html

to confirm.

A new version of mySQL/2 is available. This is a quote from the developer:

I have compiled some new binaries for OS/2 based upon the 3.22.26a sources and they are now available for download -- -

mysql2-3.22.26a.zip <-- full binary/install suite mysql-client-3.22.26a.zip <-- client only binaries

Currently, they are available from http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/ but soon may be available from the mySQL homepage. (why the client only binaries? well, you can use them with the earlier releases of mysqld)

The binaries are produced from a straight compile of the mysql-3.22.26a sources without additional modifications, compiled with the current pthread library and now uses the EMX GNU readline library (so editing in mysql client works)

What these binaries are not: Fully stable - proven - tested.

Ahh well... the same was true with my previous binary releases. ;)

Footnotes:
There does appear to be an intermittent file locking problem on Aurora SMP - so use with caution. Otherwise, for other versions of OS/2, since there is little new code, this should work much like the previous version without some of the annoying bugz(tm). The full "native" compile may be impractical. WC10.6 cannot sensibly handle 64bit ints, WC11 is MIA, and I don't have enough time.

antony@curtis.tele2.co.uk

Bochs2, the OS/2 version of Bochs, is now in sync with the Linux vesion of Bochs.

What is Bochs?

"The program bochs is a highly portable x86 PC emulator written in C++, and runs on most popular platforms. It includes emulation of the Intel x86 CPU, common IO devices, and a custom BIOS. Currently, bochs can be compiled to emulate a 386, 486 or Pentium CPU.

Bochs is capable of running most Operating Systems inside the emulation including Linux, Windows'95, DOS, and recently Windows NT 4. " Kevin Lawton, Bochs Software Company, http://www.bochs.com

What features are available in Bochs2?

• 80486 CPU instruction set and FPU instruction set
  
• VGA color graphics emulation, using PM, DIVE, and Fullscreen
  
• 1.44M 3&1/2" floppy disk
  
• AT/IDE hard drive via image file or direct access
  
• non-enhanced keyboard support
  
• CMOS functions
  
• PS/2 Mouse (emulation not complete)
  
• IDE CDROM (emulation not complete)
  
• Printer via image file or direct
  

What Bochs2 is NOT:

• a DOS emulator
  
• a Windows 95 / NT API emulator
  

Where can you get Bochs2?
ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/incoming/bochs2.zip or
ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/apps/emulator/bochs2.zip
http://www.guisoft-corp.com/download.html

I recently spoke with the author of RAR/2 and asked him when we can expect the full version of RAR 2.60 to be released. (The current version, as many of you know, is command-line only and does not support useful features like Estimated Time Left and priority control.)

Here's what he had to say:

"Number of RAR/2 registrations is extremely low last years, so I need to concentrate on Win32 version and it is difficult for me to continue developing of the separate RAR/2 version. It is much more simpler to support command line version only. It is pity, but OS/2 lost end users market."

RAR/2 is an archiver for OS/2 and many other platforms. The RAR web site is:

http://www.rarsoft.com/

After a few months of poking around the structure of HPFS, I combined all of the testing programs I wrote into one program, which does the following:

1. Show system area usage
   
2. Show free space discrepancy
   
3. Show formatted HPFS SuperBlock and SpareBlock
   
4. Show bad sector count
   
5. Show drive dirty status
   
6. Set or toggle drive dirty status
   
7. Dump sectors to file
   

These seven things can be done one at a time, or during one program run (though doing all seven at once is of dubious utility). As one would expect, the standard disclaimer applies: Use this program at your own risk. It has been tested on every HPFS partition I have (nine partitions ranging from 130MB to 3GB), but that's it. It should work on any partition size that OS/2 and HPFS support, now and in the future.

The program is being released into the public domain, with all of the source code. The archive can be downloaded from:

ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/incoming/hpfsut01.zip

When archived:

ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/util/disk/hpfsut01.zip

I've recently uploaded "WNice" to Hobbes. It is an addon-dll for WatchCat 2.1, which gives an interface to the enhanced kill by Holger Veit and to the priority changing facilities of Sharon Dagans "nice" package.

Right now it is here:

ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/incoming/wnice.zip

later it should be here:

ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/util/process/wnice.zip

In the French "PC magazine" of Novembre 99, P 14, there is an article about StarOffice and StarPortal. And the end of the page:

"La version 6 devrai sortir pour le printemps 2000, et elle sera compatible avec Windows, Linux, Solaris, OS/2, et, fait nouveau, avec Mac OS."

Translation:

"Version 6 of StarOffice should be released in Spring 2000 for Windows, Linux, Solaris, OS/2, and, a new addition, Mac OS."

Usually, French magazines never speak of OS2.

Desktop Clock - freeware, configurable clock for your Desktop.

You can configure date and time display and add your message to display with date and/or time.

When started, Desktop clock becomes (and remains) the bottom window - behind all other windows on your Desktop.

Features:

• Various date and time display formats
  
• User's message (stopped or scrolling from right to left)
  
• Selectable color, size, font and fontsize
  
• Manual in INF format.
  

To download Desktop Clock 0.90, visit:

http://Goran_Ivankovic.tripod.com/