Re: Selective Install munged

Hi Michael

Michael wrote:
Peter Brown wrote:
Use the \SNAP\gaoption.exe to set the driver into VBE fallback mode
(snip)


Actually I tried fallback last week, just for grins (after finding out about it
from browsing some SNAP doc.) Not sure if screen corruption occurred after that
or not ... it happened rarely, maybe four times total, and I haven't seen it for
a while. I think (not certain) that I had switched from full-screen DVM each
one of those times. I switched out of fallback some days later and haven't
messed with it since. Too many other unfamiliar, broken, or wierd things to
mess with.
Is a Pentium-D dualcore?

You know, I think I misspoke there. It's a Pentium 4. Just one core. Pretty
speedy - 3GHz; 800MHz FSB - compared to this 333MHz Pentium III Warp 3 system
but a single core nonetheless.

Does the Asus P5B-PLUS use ACPI?

Supports it.


Do you have the eCS Software Subscription?

I do not. I figured - incorrectly, it turns out - that 1.2R would work at least
as well on new hardware as Warp 3 has on everything from an 80486-20 to a
Pentium II-333, considering that eCS evolved from Warp. But video is slow - and
sometimes corrupted (the former I sorta expected, since my video chip ain't
supported). Dragging a windowed session must be done slowly to avoid the mouse
pointer's outrunning the window and inadvertantly selecting some random thing on
the desktop!



That sounds like the VESA (VBE fallback) driver. What video card/chipset is involved?


APM is completely worthless (with APM.SYS in Config.Sys, machine
powers OFF during boot. I did *not* expect this killer app.)



That could be acpi related...


LVM functionality
is so ad hoc that a 3-party utility is required (for some things, notably the
simple task of formatting FAT32). If the base OS were inexpensive, then the
ongoing cost of insurance (Software Subscription) wouldn't be unreasonable.



LVM does not perform formatting functions for any filesystem; format does that bit.


Well, fat32 is not an "official" filesystem for eCS or OS/2 but it would be handy if the ability to format using fat32 got built into the fat32 driver package.

However, DFSee (I guess that is the "3-party utility" has a lot more uses than just fat32 formatting a volume across a range of operating systems/filesystems and comes in very handy if you get LVM display a message about non-matching partition tables :-)

I seem to have just cloned a Windows2000 installation to a new drive successfully - to point out another use :-)



I have a suspicion your
system may work better with the ACPI driver installed and it could also
be worth checking if the Panorama graphics driver works better with your
setup.

Certainly worth trying those things, and I would if I could.


Have you updated drivers since installing?

Which drivers? SNAP is the only driver:
I know I use
-AND-
I've seen available for D/L w/o SS
but the build level of SNAP on eCS 1.2R CD is identical to what is offered on
the eCS site for D/L.



As SNAP stopped development and got sold a while back you will not see anything later than the last release but there are a few system updates available that you should apply.

Is your video chipset on any of the lists here? http://en.ecomstation.ru/projects/panorama/


- use the eCSMT Tool to help
with selecting and applying updates. Make this Step 1 despite appearing
close to last in this post.

I keep reading references to eCSMT and I have no idea what that is nor where it
lives. Just this morning I saw it mentioned, several times, in the USB FAQ that
shipped with my eCS 1.2R.


If you do not have a copy on your Desktop then I suggest you login at ecomstation and download the necessary bits and give it a try. It is a handy update tool, complete with a list of possible updates to apply, but do *read* the docs. There is a newsgroup on news.ecomstation.nl


This brings up another gripe I have about eCS:
precious little system documentation.


You should find some eCS specific docs/help in \ecs\book and \ecs\DOC

A lot of docs are the same as for Warp4.5x and live mainly in \OS2\BOOK


Do you know - and this really blew my
mind - it was *by*accident* that I learned that eCS 1.2R contains Windows! I
had wondered why my install had Win Settings even though Win 3.1 had never been
on any partition on that machine. Poke around, learn new and amazing things
(assuming one understands any and all acronyms that are used).



Err...

I seem to recall - long time ago - that I had a copy of Warp3 with Win3.1 included; it was definitely in my Warp4 package.

You should have had the chance to not install win3.1 support during the Install process.

Regards

Pete




A last thought for the moment: Strange things can happen on some systems
when rebooting from a Windows installation to an eCS(OS/2) installation.
I cannot remember the full details but it seems that the mainboard does
not reset data and this can cause problems for eCS(OS/2) with IRQs if
some hardware was using a high (>15) IRQ under Windows. If that is
happening you need to power off between reboots.

Good point. You sure do think hard on things, Pete. In fact I never boot eCS
nor XP without a power-down between. eCS is on a HD that's in a removable tray,
and XP is on a HD in a different tray. Tray must be physically locked in place
or else it doesn't get power, but you and I know that, even when the HD has no
power, the control/data bus - powered by the mobo - does have power, so I don't
simply unlock a drive, pull it out, and slap in the other drive, I kill the
entire system first.


Regards

Pete
.

Loading