Re: eComStation [Was: OS/2 2.11 for PS/2 9553]

On Fri, 8 Jul 2005 03:20:28 UTC, "William R. Walsh"
<newgroups1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

->
-> By the way...do you enjoy working with eComStation? I have a copy of Warp 4
-> (bought new from IBM, no less!) but I have been thinking about securing a
-> copy of eCS. Do you think it's a fair value for the asking price?
->
->

It depends on what you are looking for. Warp4 is now almost 10 years
old and will have problems installing on just about any new system,
though with some effort you can update the install disks with a new
IDE and ATAPI drivers and a new kernel to get over the major hurdles
of disk and RAM sizes. You can even make a bootable CDROM version of
Warp4 to install from, with all the last available fixes, using UpdCD
- http://xenia.sote.hu/~kadzsol/rexx/sajat/updcd.htm

eComStation rolls up all the updates in the past 10 years, adds a new
installer and new MMOS2 subsystem as well as it is a bootable CDROM
(which is great for this T42p which has no floppy). Since you have a
Warp4 license you only need to get the eCS update, which makes the
price more reasonable, and you don't have to have Warp4 installed for
the update to install. There are also a lot of GUI enhancers built in
(like eStyler and eWorkPlace). But over all its still just OS/2,
though its minimum required resources is bit more than Warp 4 was.
I'm not sure if it will install on a 486 anymore, but it still can get
by with a lot less power and memory than XP. I still can't understand
why XP would need 6-10 GB of DASD to install and actually run. eCS
installs in less than 1GB.

eCS adds things like LVM ( Logical Volume Manager, the replacement for
FDISK that came out withWarp Server eBusiness in 1999) and JFS
(Journalled File System ported by IBM from AIX supports volumes/drives
up to 2TB again from WseB).

They are working on a Media refresh right now for the latest version
of eCS 1.2. There were problems installing eCS 1.2 on Athlon64
systems and a few other install problems that have been corrected.
The biggest advantage to eCS is that purchasing it gives you access to
all fixes available. IBM charges an annual subscription for this now.
The last free fixpack from IBM for Warp 4 was FP15, and that was
quite a few years ago. You can still get updated kernels from IBM's
testcase FTP site though. People who bought eCS 1.0 4-5 years ago are
still getting free fixes, though a few things considered "new
features" are only available to those who bought upgrades or
Serenity's software subscription.

eCS is also the only way to buy a supported SMP workstation version of
OS/2. IBM will only support SMP on Warp Server eBusiness, which is
still something like $1,600 to buy if you can find somewhere to buy
it. I know most people wouldn't care but I have several dual Pentium
Pro systems here.

Serenity is still supporting development for eCS, not just bug fixes.
There is work being done for ACPI support, new printer drivers,
multimedia codecs, and GUI enhancements. They have also funded a port
of OpenOffice.org so we have a current office suite now that Smart
Suite is pretty much dead. Others are working on things like USB
scanner support, wireless networking drivers, and firewire drivers.
So despite IBM's best efforts there is still life left in the old
girl.

As to whether its worth it for you, all I can say is I have XP (home
and Pro) here and it irritates the hell out of me when I am forced to
use it for something. I also have Mac OSX 10.3.9 here, and though its
pretty, I hate having to use a menu bar to do everything. I still
haven't figured out how to go to command prompt in OSX, and it
irritates me that I have to keep buying new versions of OSX just to
get certain things supported (like a PSD for my Epson 820 printer).
But OSX has better support for video and DVD processing so I use that
for things like that. For me OS/2 just works the way I think it
should, so for me having a supported version is a God send. I guess
when OS/2 nolonger boots I'll move on to OSX, BSD or Linux, but
hopefully not for a couple more years.

Mark

--
>From the eComStation of Mark Dodel

http://www.os2voice.org
Warpstock 2005, Hershey, PA, Oct 6-9, 2005 - http://www.warpstock.org
.

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