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Date:	Sun, 30 Jun 2002 08:51:19 PST7
From:	Peter Skye <pskye@peterskye.com >
Reply-To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Help: basic help

Content Type: text/plain

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Butch Langel wrote:
>
> I downloaded the two warp iu exe floppies. It was my
> understanding that by replacing the two install diskettes
> with them that the partition size limitation was eliminated.

I don't know what the iu exe floppies are, but the early versions of the
hard disk drivers didn't support large partitions. You can update the
installation floppies (or more properly, make copies of those floppies
and update the copies) with the latest drivers.

There's an OS/2 project called UpdCD which takes your original Warp 4 CD
and makes a brand new one containing all the latest drivers and other
fixes. I think at least two guys on this list are familiar with it --
Ray Davison and Rocky Rakijas.

Also, I've never bothered to compare the early drivers' large-partition
incompatibilities between IDE and SCSI. If your drives are SCSI then
you might have less to worry about.

The URL for the latest drivers is

http://service.software.ibm.com/os2dd/free/idedasd.exe

which is different than what it used to be. NOTE that there are other
older versions of idedasd.exe on IBM's web site -- the file above
contains current updates to 25April2002.

This is a self-extracting zip file -- you download it and run it, and it
will expand into the various drivers.

ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/ps/products/os2/os2ddpak/idedasd.exe

The file will run under OS/2 *and* it will run under DOS, so you don't
need to have OS/2 installed before you run it.

> by using the original diskettes and having the partition for
> os/2 installation 8 gig, I can use the remaining for storage ?

4 GB, not 8 GB. 8 GB is a motherboard BIOS bootup limitation and 4 GB
is an OS/2 original driver limitation. You can use 8 GB if you upgrade
the drivers on the installation diskettes.

Butch, don't install using the original drivers -- people sometimes
forget that the drivers haven't been upgraded, and a couple of years
later when they change partition sizes or install a new hard drive the
old drivers end up scrambling their data.

> I would think that the updates for they system come
> after installation and connection to the internet?

That makes sense. But we're talking computers here. They're like
teenagers. They aren't gonna work until *after* you've pounded on them
for a while.

> If I can find some time today, I am going to give it a try.
> The good thing about this installation scenerio is if one
> mucks up, just try it again. I've become the master at
> fdisking and formatting.

Some guys (like me) have two OS/2 partitions. One is a "Maintenance"
partition and the other is a "Production" (my term) partition. Normally
you boot to the Production partition, but for maintenance or bootup
failures you need a different way to boot. Having a second OS/2
installation means you don't have to boot from floppies as your
alternate bootup.

I install my Maintenance partition first with a lower letter. Nobody
else does; everybody else installs their Maintenance partition last with
a higher letter. I use my Maintenance install to "play" with various
drivers and settings to make sure everything works *before* I put them
on my Production partition, and I also use it to fix my Production
partition when it won't boot (the fix is always really simple, usually
it consists of copying something called an INI file from my last
backup). I *strongly* recommend that you too have a Maintenance
partition. Mine is on a 450 MB partition (on this machine anyway) and
takes about 200 MB. There's a utility called BOOTOS2 which can make a
tiny (10 MB) OS/2 Maintenance partition by stripping out the stuff you
don't absolutely need (fonts etc), but when I'm on a deadline and
something goes wrong I don't want to have to stop and fix my Production
OS/2 partition, I just boot to my Maintenance partition and finish my
work, then when I have time I go back and fix the Production partition.
I can't do that with the minimal BOOTOS2 version of a Maintenance
partition, and I can't do that with a floppy boot either.

For safety, you should also add some sort of backup archive to your
Installation checklist. You need to keep copies of some critical files
-- CONFIG.SYS, *.INI, \Desktop\* -- so you *can* fix your system when it
won't boot. I keep about 2 months' worth of these archives, but I've
never needed to go back more than three bootup's worth of files so 2
months is overkill. I think you can use something called the
startup.cmd file to have OS/2 automatically keep an archive of these
files and update the archive automatically every time you boot.

Where are you located? There's a SCOUG OS/2 Help Desk on July 14 in
Orange County ( http://www.scoug.com/calendar/0207.html ) -- you can bring
your machine and get it all tuned up.

- Peter

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