Lone Peak Automation Announcement

2004-02-09 22:39:00 -- Eugene Gorbunoff [VOICENWS, Armin Schwarz]

We would like to inform you that Lone Peak Automation has decided to immediately release all of their shareware products as freeware. The programs included are UPS Monitor, a series of programs that interface to a large number of uninteruptible power supplies and HOUSE/2, a home automation program using X10 devices and supporting three popular X10 controllers.

All registration limitations will be removed and programs will be fully functional once the work is complete. The UPS Monitor programs are already available and the HOUSE/2 programs will follow soon.

We want to take this opportunity to thank all of the OS/2 and eComStation users who have registered these products in the past. You have made these products possible through your support and we will not forget you.

Lone Peak Automation will NOT cease operation nor will we abandon our products. Lone Peak Automation will continue to support our products as needed. We will do our best to solve any problems that may arise. Registered users will obviously get priority for this support.

Any new users who find our programs useful and would like to see accelerated development and/or support are invited to contribute to the development effort on a purely voluntary basis.

Over the last few years, Lone Peak Automation has released a number of new and unique programs for OS/2 and eComStation. Just a few samples:

Cumulus is a weather station program that has been running non-stop for over two years and reports weather to the Citizen's WeatherNet on the internet. You will require to purchase your own weather station but Cumulus is free and available upon request. See our new website for information.

We have recently released free REXX libraries and utilities for image conversion and processing and also released a utility to read EXIF image data from digital camera pictures. You can now easily do batch processing on your digital camera pictures with just a few simple REXX commands. Samples and full documentation is included.

IBM Discontinues DDK Updates!

2004-02-09 21:31:24 -- Eugene Gorbunoff [VOICENWS, Tom Lee Mullins]

As of January 1st, 2004 updates to the OS/2 Device Driver Kit have been discontinued.

Some of the files are for pcmcia drivers. These files are the source for device drivers, such as Cardbus, printer, display, DASD, etc. (use guest, guest to logon);

If one needs them, it is best to download them before they are gone. Some have dates of 12-2003 or 01-2004.

Your favorite office application

2004-02-09 21:23:49 -- Eugene Gorbunoff [www.os2world.com, kimh]

Due to the fact that there is now more office applications available for OS/2 using either 16-bit windows version or together with Odin or using the latest version of OpenOffice Beta for OS2. We would like to ask you what office application that you run.

For those of you that have participated earlier in polls at OS2 World will hopefully notice that we have started to use a new poll script developed by StuffedGuys. Among other this new scripts offers the possibility of submitting suggestions on future new polls and as well a poll archive.

eComStation for petroleum branch

2004-02-05 11:03:30 -- Eugene Gorbunoff [eCo Software, news]

The deliveries of eComStation/Rus to AMT company was continued.

eComStation operating system serves as a base of drilling simulators for oilmen and gasmen which 'Automation Monitoring of Technologies' delivers to russian petroleum companies for personnel education (russian web-pages).

Automation Monitoring of Technologies is working on automatization of technological processes in oil and gas industry in the course of eleven years already and became the leader in this sector of market.

eCo Software is the company which distributes russian eComStation in ex USSR as well creates and promotes its own software solutions.

SViSta virtual machine

2004-02-05 11:01:33 -- Eugene Gorbunoff [www.ecomstation.com]

Early Support Program for Serenity's new virtual machine product family, Serenity Virtual Station(tm). Press-release:

New Virtual Machine Application Launched, Friday January 30, 12:47 pm ET

LEWISVILLE, Texas, Jan. 30 (PRNewswire) -- Serenity Systems International (SSI), Lewisville, TX, has announced an Early Support Program for its new virtual machine product family, Serenity Virtual Station(tm) (SVISTA).

The SVISTA(tm) products will provide the broadest support for operating systems in the industry. "Our support for Microsoft Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and IBM OS/2 as hosting platforms demonstrates that accomplishing this objective is in sight," according to Bob St.John, Director of Business Development for SSI. He continued, "We expect to conclude our Early Support Program and release the retail product in early 2Q04. We are prepared to support the product in service engagements right now."

In the first release, SVISTA hosting platforms include Windows NT4, Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows 2003 Server, Linux 2.4 kernel distributions, IBM OS/2, and FreeBSD. Guest operating systems support includes Linux, Windows, DOS, and IBM OS/2.

The IBM OS/2, Linux, and FreeBSD support is unique in the industry. It offers OS/2 users a new tool to support the implementation new software strategies and activities. SSI is a software OEM and ISV which publishes eComStation, based on IBM's OS/2 operating system.

"We believe there are significant opportunities for the shrink wrap product, but these same products make a great deal of sense in support of services engagements. Our focus in the services area will be on providing server based products. These offerings and technologies could be a significant business solution to service providers with the appropriate skills sets," according to St.John.

In preparation for this support, IBM Global Services will be among the first organizations to provide service, support, training, and certification on the new products. Other organizations with plans to provide services later this year include NorthLAN Solutions, St.Paul, MN, 6PAC Consulting, Hamburg, Germany, and Starfire, Lawrence, KS. Plans for retail distribution and developing the reseller channel would be executed by Mensys.

"We've been working with these people on this project for over a year. They bring remarkable skills, software tools, and account knowledge to our initial engagements. And they will help us develop a channel for fee service providers which will deliver value and savings to the end user organization," according to St.John.

Visual standards of OS/2, Part I

2004-02-04 10:06:12 -- Eugene Gorbunoff [eCo Software, news]

In result of co-operation with developers of new software, Eugene Evstigneev have formulated some important advices related to design of PM applications (russian text).

Additional information:

• Homepage of eCo design

February 2004 VOICE Newsletter

2004-02-04 09:11:39 -- Eugene Gorbunoff [VOICENWS, Christian Hennecke]

The February issue of the VOICE Newsletter is now available online.

In the latest issue you can find:

• 2004 - The year that OS/2 still gets better? -- by Christian Hennecke
• In close collaboration: MySQL and OS/2, Part 1: MySQL installation -- by Wolfgang Draxler
• Office suites for OS/2 and eComStation -- by Ed Durrant
• Bootable -- by Doug Bissett
• Mounting USB 2.0 harddisk case in eComStation -- by Gerrit Schoenmaker
• Remote Printing - Part 2: A "Dumb" Print Server -- by Walter F. Metcalf
• And of course letters, addenda, tips, and the compiled news of the previous month!

PCM Compatibility Testkit

2004-02-04 09:11:06 -- Eugene Gorbunoff [www.os2bbs.com/os2news]

IBM has updated (1/19/2004) the OS/2 PCM Compatibility Testkit to version 4.9. This is a software package that lets personal computer hardware manufacturers (PCMs) perform self-testing to be listed in IBM's list of compatible systems. This is for testers who want to ensure that their hardware products are compatible with OS/2 Warp. Read FAQ to resolve problems.

What's new: The PCM Testkit V4.9 has been updated to support use of USB printer for the Printer Device Driver Test (PRINTDD), replacing support of MIDI files with WAV files in multimedia tests, removal of the LAN Distance and Print Service Facilities tests and the addition of a utility to detect the presence of parallel ports, serial ports, and legacy floppy drives.

Team OS/2 on HobbyTronic computer fair

2004-02-01 08:21:13 -- Eugene Gorbunoff [en.os2.org, cla]

Team OS/2 Deutschland e.V. will exhibit again on the HobbyTronic computer fair in the Dortmunder Westfalenhallen (11.02.2004-15.02.2004). In particular we will show eComStation V1.1 and will give away eComStation Demo-CDs (hopefully already available in german), but as always will have informations for the users of OS/2 Warp as well.

The appearance is organized again by Team OS/2 Ruhr e.V., with lots of help by Team OS/2 Koln/Bonn e.V..

eComStation 1.1 Demo CD with FreeX magazine

2004-02-01 08:20:26 -- Eugene Gorbunoff [en.os2.org, Roderick Klein]

Serenity Systems International & Mensys are pleased to announce that the issue 2/2004 of the german computer magazine FreeX will have a bootable demo CD of eComStation. It will allow you to boot from the CD and access the internet. The FreeX magazine is sold in Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

OS/2 mentioned as OS that won't be affected by worm

2004-01-31 10:27:36 -- Eugene Gorbunoff [www.os2world.com, kimh]

There is currently lots of news sites mentioning OS2 among the operating systems that won't be hit by the new worm Novarg, (also known as Mydoom or Shimgapi).

Here is a few links among the huge amount of articles that has been posted in the first hours:

Toronto Star
• The Age
• NewsForge
• peripherals.about.com

Recruitments on www.os2world.com

2004-01-31 10:24:56 -- Eugene Gorbunoff [www.os2world.com]

OS2World.Com contains information for os/2 specialists looking for vacancy. Scroll down to Recruitments section: "Infosys is hiring computer software engineers", "OS2 Engineer Needed".

OS/2 and the past 2003

2004-01-24 22:46:08 -- Eugene Gorbunoff [www.os2world.com]

Michael J. Snadaker published a short review: "Another year has passed, but it was holding some good developments for the OS/2 users. In my opinion OS/2 is in really good shape these days. The most things happend to the community can be divided in two groups, these are programs and drivers."

GenMAC Driver Project

2004-01-22 17:14:58 -- Eugene Gorbunoff [http://www.os2bbs.com/os2news/]

GenMAC is a personal attempt of Willibald Meyer to design a device driver that offers support for a lot of recent and modern network interface cards (NICs), with a strong accent for gigabit and on-board network cards.

OS/2 uses network drivers compliant to the NDIS 2.01 specifications, a standard developed between 3COM Corporation and Microsoft. However, since the latest versions of Microsoft Windows use the newer NDIS 5.0, most manufacturers tend to lack development of OS/2-specific device drivers. This project will eventually give an answer to this problem by offering a decently-engineered and "universal" network driver with support for the most common modern network cards.

The driver properly supports Resource Manager and APM. It currently supports the following NICs: SIS 900, nForce2 MCP-T, nForce MCP-T, NS-DP83820 Gigabit, and 3Com 3C90xC (including the Mini-PCI versions).

Preconditions of eComStation growth

2004-01-20 14:05:42 -- Eugene Gorbunoff [ecomstation.ru, Max Mozok]

The damage caused by viruses has been growing every year and reached $55 billions already (russian source). The antivirus company Trend Micro published statistics: the damage in 2001 was $13 billions; $20-30 billions in 2002; $55 billions in 2003. The forecasts of experts are very pessimistic.

As you know, eComStation is the 'healthy' operating system (russian text);

Order of OS/2 boot

2004-01-19 18:11:40 -- Eugene Gorbunoff [ecomstation.ru]

Users often dispute about the order of operating system loading. Pavel Shtemenko published boot logs and explanatory notes (russian text).