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OS/2 Tips

Editor's note: these tips are from OS/2 users and in some cases can not be verified by myself. Please heed this as a warning that if you are not sure about something, don't do it.

The way to avoid word-wrap is to have a line that starts with two hyphens and a space. The hyphens must be the first two characters on the line; they must be followed by a space.

Here's the feedback I got after asking the same.

"Install EMX runtime and WGET, connect to the internet, and run ONLINE.CMD off of the CD. Rerun WarpUP!. This should allow you to install Feature installer and Java without communicator first being installed."

Yes, the button is gone. - Focus on the error log window and use the Alt+F11 keystroke combination to minimize it.

The properties of a bullet, number, or leading text can be different from
other text in the paragraph.

1. Place the insertion point at the desired bullet or number.
2. Click the right mouse button and choose Text Properties.
3. Click the Bullets tab.
4. Select "Edit on page."

The cursor moves to the protected space immediately to the left of the bullet or outline number.

5. Make the necessary changes.

When you resume working in the text, Word Pro deselects "Edit on page."

You should consider to create a style for your changes, so you can apply this style to the other elements.

As people should know by now, IBM, with their great wisdom, left our beloved Scheme Palette out of Aurora, but the solution is an easy one. Just go to the Template Folder and open it; inside you'll find a template for a Scheme Palette, then just drag it to anywhere you like in your system and you'll have this essencial configuration tool back :)

If you use PMView to create the file, then it's only a question about replacing a file on your disk. Please read the "OS/2 Boot Logo" section under "File Formats". It should tell you all you need to know: "The boot logo file is located on the root of the OS/2 boot drive. The name of the file is OS2LOGO..."

Thus, save your file in "OS/2 boot logo" format. Rename the Then go to your boot drive and do this:

attrib -rhs OS2LOGO
copy OS2LOGO OS2LOGO.BAK
copy YOURFILE.LOG OS2LOGO
attrib +rhs OS2LOGO

I would recommend the following for unstalling java 1.02.

Open the OS/2 Systems folder and the Drives folder.
Select the your OS/2 drive
Expand the os2 drive tree by clicking on the +
Then expand the Install subdir
Double click "Installed Features"
You should see a neatly wrapped package called something like Java 1.02 for
OS/2 - Inventory (no longer on my system so I'm taking a guess that it's named the same as v 1.1)
Select this package and it will offer you the options to uninstall.

Previously with FP 4(or 5?) this program ran quite well
According to Lotus, this is a SOM problem. Here are some tips on trouble shooting. If you installed VisualAge C++ on your system, your CONFIG.SYS file may be set up to use the level of SOM that was packaged with VisualAge C++. For SmartSuite for OS/2 Warp 4, you will need to use the more current level of SOM that ships with OS/2 Warp 4. As a result, you must verify that your CONFIG.SYS file conforms to the following:
LIBPATH: if there is an entry for \IBMCPP\DLL, it must be AFTER
the \OS2\DLL entry
PATH: if there is an entry for \IBMCPP\BIN, it must be AFTER
the \OS2\DLL entry
SOMDDIR: should be set to <bootdrive>:\OS2\ETC\DSOM

A. Troubleshooting SOM
----------------------
SmartSuite for OS/2 Warp 4 products access the OS/2 System Object
Model (SOM) during product launch. Minor inconsistencies in
CONFIG.SYS settings for SOM can cause launch-time crashes in 1-2-3,
Approach, and Organizer for OS/2 Warp 4. There are some general
guidelines for troubleshooting problems with SOM. Below is a list
of four CONFIG.SYS settings you should check if you're unable to
launch 1-2-3, Approach and/or Organizer:
1. The SET SOMIR= statement must NOT reference any *.IR files that
do not exist and must not contain any extra or any missing
semicolons. If any *.IR files are referenced that do not exist
or if you have any syntax errors in the SET SOMIR= statement
prior to the LTOLSO20.IR file name, you will most likely see
an OLE or other error message, or the product will fail
to launch without giving any error. Check your SET SOMIR=
statement and verify that there are no syntax problems
(such as double semicolons), and that all of the *.IR
files referenced in the statement do exist, and that the
statement hasn't been cut off (with a carriage break) by
editing the CONFIG.SYS file using an editor that wraps
lines at 256 characters.
NOTE: Only 1-2-3 will issue the OLE Initialization error.
2. If you have VisualAge C++ installed, follow the instructions
provided in Section 3-B, above, to verify your CONFIG.SYS file is
set up to use the correct level of SOM.
3. If you're using Workgroup Enabled SOM/DSOM you may find the
statement SET SOMSOCKETS=TCPIPSockets in your CONFIG.SYS file.
This SOM environment variable is case sensitive. If this
statement appears in your CONFIG.SYS file be sure it is specified as
shown above. For example, SET SOMSOCKETS=tcpipsockets (parameter in
all lowercase), will cause a failure in DSOM initialization and
may cause SmartSuite for OS/2 Warp 4 product error messages during launch.
4. Be sure you have a SET SOMTHREADPEER=1 statement somewhere in
your CONFIG.SYS file.
Dick Kurtz
OS/2 Fix Distribution, Austin Tx.

Run \IBMINST\NPCONFIG.EXE or failing that, Install.cmd, from the CD-ROM root directory. If NPCONFIG.EXE exists, you can just create a new program object for it.

Use MR2I /Mxxx.CFG to start ICE with the account whose password is forgotten (it won't prompt for the password).

After wading for about 10 minutes thru the US Robotics site, I located a number, 1-888-I-Want-56; all numbers: 1-888-492-6856. and spent at least 10 minutes wearing out my finger going thru their automated system. BUT! finally latched on to a real live knowledgeable support person. When finally connected to live support center, was only on-hold less than five minutes.

He agreed that the upgrade program corrupted the Eprom, and would have to send it in. No charge except my $3.20 priority mailing costs. Told me it would be about 5-7 working days turn around time. I'm not holding my breath on that one.

You can also go to their web site: <http://www.3com.com> and click on US Robotics, and locate the 56K decision tree. This is supposed to tell which modems are upgradable, etc. I did not go this route, so don't know what kind of hoops you have to jump thru to get from point A to point B.

Comm 4.x for Windows does this as well, and since the OS/2 version is just a port of the Windows version..........

Try holding down the <SHIFT> key as you click on the file to be downloaded.
I had this problem downloading *.bin files in the past...

FTP Restart Feature:

The FTP Restart feature allows your browser to request only that portion of the file that was not received, if your connection is disrupted during the download process. This is useful when downloading "large" files like some that are available from the Developer Connection. If FTP Restart is available, only the portion of the file that was not received is sent by the FTP server when the connection is reestablished.

FTP Restart must be supported on both ends (server and client) of the FTP connection in order for it to be enabled for a given download. Most Internet FTP servers today, including the IBM Developer Connection FTP servers, do support this feature. Therefore, the more important consideration is whether the feature is supported by your Web browser. Current versions of the most popular browsers (Netscape Navigator 4.0 or higher and Internet Explorer 4.0) do support this feature.

When this feature is available, the FTP client and server periodically exchange information describing the current position within the file being transferred. If the FTP connection is broken before the transfer completes, the client and server resume from the most recent file position that was successfully transferred when the connection is reestablished.

Note to Users of Netscape Navigator 4.0

Netscape Navigator 4.03 supports FTP Restart provided the size of the file being downloaded fits within the current "Memory Cache" limit. Because the maximum Memory Cache is 99,999 KB, files larger than approximately 100 MB cannot currently use this feature.

To use this feature when downloading a large file, adjust your Memory Cache settings.

On the command line, call DIR with sorting switched off, e.g. like this:
dir /-o
No need to reset the environment variable. But I wish DIR would simply give an unsorted list in cases like this, instead of aborting (as I recall it does). I think this has nothing to do with HPFS386, but I would suspect a memory limitation built into the DIR command or into CMD.EXE. Anyway, it happens with plain HPFS as well.

"Another gotcha is Partition Magic 4 altogether.. IF you fiddle with a drive greater than 8.4 gig with PM4, the extended partition container type will be changed from 05 to 0F, and OS/2 doesn't recognize 0F, and now you
lose access to all those partitions too.. There is NO backward fix except to edit the partition table entry.."

StarOffice is distributed in self-extract RAR. RAR 2.x had problems (exe format) with Aurora (including wide beta), but RAR 2.5 fixed those problems. So, you might try downloading RAR 2.5 and unraring the archive manually, and then install.

I downloaded the latest RAR from hobbes ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/util/archiver/rar25pb3.exe and used the included UNRAR.EXE to uncompress the Star Office 5.1 install file and SO 5.1 installed without a problem.