Steve Harris is the Director of Technology at JBS Jacaranda Business Systems, and an OS/2 user since Warp 3. When he's not working or lurking around the Comp.OS.OS2 newsgroups, he likes to spend some time with his wife, and their two dogs, touring around the big blue room, also known as the Canadian wilderness.

OS/2 Newsbeat

COMP.OS.OS2

John Poltorak has set up a new mail list dedicated to the subject, appropriately enough, on running Sendmail on OS/2. Anyone interested can subscribe by sending an email to "majordomo@eyup.org", with "subscribe os2-sendmail" in the first line of the message.

COMP.OS.OS2.ADVOCACY

Probably everyone has heard this by now, and it has generated a great deal of discussion in the ADVOCACY newsgroup, but the July edition of Australian Personal Computer magazine is distributing a full version of Warp 4 on their CD. Apparently, the only difference with the full store-bought version is that you can only install from CD, as it will not make the floppy disks.

I think Brad Wardell, of Stardock fame, is going for the record of longest/largest threads ever! At production time, there were three HUGE discussions (read battles) raging, allegedly regarding comments made in articles which were posted on the Stardock website. Brad hangs around the newsgroup, and occasionally lends his points of view to the discussions, triggering another flurry of activity.

COMP.OS.OS2.ANNOUNCE

Good news for classic gamers! SNES9x, the Nintendo 16-bit console emulator, and Retrocade, the classic arcade emulator, have been upgraded. Both new versions can be downloaded from: http://emuos2.vintagegaming.com

Abbotsbury Software in conjunction with Hauppauge Computer Works, Inc have released version 1.42B of the WinCast TV driver set. According to the post, "(t)his release of the driver should enable all of the basic features of the Hauppauge PCI TV cards (848 / 878 based, not DTV). We will now turn our attention to improving video quality". This version of the drivers also fixes some problems with the 1.42A drivers. The package can be downloaded at: http://www.os2tv.com/downloads.phtml

IBM will begin the beta testing program for its new Host On-Demand Version 5 software. Details are available at: http://www.ibm.com/software/network/hostondemand/beta . Host On-Demand is one of IBM's range of Java-based, web-delivered host access solutions, and supports a broad range of client and server platforms, including OS/2 Warp, WorkSpace On-Demand, and Warp Server for e-business.

COMP.OS.OS2.APPS

Apparently Symantec has released an update, dated June 19, to IBM AntiVirus for OS/2 at http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/download.html .

Some excellent threads exist in this newsgroup for those looking for OS/2 applications. Threads this month included discussions on the best OS/2 word processor, spreadsheets with Excel compatibility, and OS/2 accounting packages. It's worth a browse-through at least once a month by every user, just to see how other users make use of existing OS/2 applications. And if you can help with someone else's troubleshooting, so much the better.

COMP.OS.OS2.MULTIMEDIA

While not exactly new, SoundBlaster Live! seems to be creating a good deal of interest in this group. A recent post requesting opinions on soundcards for OS/2 resulted in a number of recommendations, though Win/OS2 support is only available through the generic WinOS/2 audio driver, and the drivers are not supported by Creative Labs in any way. Check out Netlab's project site for the latest builds (http://www.netlabs.org/)

COMP.OS.OS2.NETWORKING.MISC

Daryl Pilkington (email: darylp@pc-therapist.com.au) is interested in people's experiences with gateway firewall products. He writes: "I would like to create a turn-key Internet Gateway with the following: VPN, (e.g. InJoy Dialer, Firewall), http proxy, (e.g. SQUID, Xitami), SOCKS server (any suggestions?), DHCP, (e.g. Warp Server, WS4eB), DDNS, (e.g. Warp Server, WS4eB). I'd like to use Warp 4 rather than a server product due to cost, but all comments welcome."

COMP.OS.OS2.UTILITIES

Some great advice on automatically handling SYS 3170 execptions from a couple of helpful users, for anyone leaving their computer on 24/7:

REM This prevents popups from failures like empty floppy drive
AutoFail=YES
REM This prevents popups of applications errors.
REM The trap info ist stored in C:\popuplog.os2 instead
REM and the application is terminated.
SuppressPopups=C
REM This reboots the machine if a non recoverable error occurs.
ReIPL=ON

That's the news for this month. If I left out your favorite topic, or you know of another newgroup which should be covered in this article, please let me know.

Previous Article

Home

Next Article