Virtual OS/2 International Consumer Education
VOICE Home Page: http://www.os2voice.org 		July 2003

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OS/2 Tips

We scan the Web, Usenet and the OS/2 mailing lists looking for these gems. Have you run across an interesting bit of information about OS/2 or eComStation recently? Please share it with all our readers. Send your tips to tips@os2voice.org. If you are interested in joining a particular OS/2 mailing list, check out the VOICE Mailing List page for subscribing instructions for a large variety of existing lists - http://www.os2voice.org/mailinglists.html.

Editor's note: these tips are from OS/2-eComStation 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.

Jun 2, 2003 - Our first tip of the month is from the JBC Solutions web site <http://www.jbcsolutions.com/hppinst.htm>, the home of Home Page Publisher and other OS/2 and Java development tools. I found it when I encountered an error trying to install Lotus Smart Suite 1.7 after installing eComStation. This tip allowed me to complete the LSS install. It appears that the installer wanted to write to the C: drive which was formatted NTFS and unreadable to OS/2. Adding the suggested parameter to the CONFIG.SYS corrected the problem.:
Installation error EPFIE602

The user may receive the message "EPFIE602 An error occurred while attempting to create a directory. Ensure that you have write access to a drive with adequate disk space."

This error may occur if INSTALL.EXE cannot distinguish hard drives on the workstation. In this case you need to set the EPFINSTDIR environment variable before running INSTALL.EXE.

For instance, if OS/2 is installed on the C: drive you should set EPFINSTDIR as follows:

SET EPFINSTDIR=C:\OS2\SYSTEM
If you don't have enough disk space on this drive you may use another drive and/or directory
Jun 17, 2003 - People are beginning to explore all the choices in eComStation 1.1. The new eCenter that replaces the defunct eComCenter (the renamed WarpCenter from Warp 4) from 1.0, has raised some questions on how to configure it. Here's a post from David Graser posted on the ecomstation.support.misc news group explaining how to get objects added to the trays in eCenter. For a complete list of eCenter/XCenter plugins see http://www.os2usr.org/xcenter/:
This is what Ulrich had to say about this a long time back:
I added a special flag to the widget class definitions. Any widget class that wants to be added to a tray must conform to a couple of extra rules, that's why not all widgets are trayable at the moment. Tell the widget writers to make a couple of modifications, and their widgets will be trayable too.
Martin Lafaix stated the following:
Starting with v0.5.2, to be released later today (I'm updating the online help), the xwp widgets library widgets are trayable.
Thus any widget made using the Rexx Gauge, Rexx Button, and the Rexx Scroller widgets can go on trays.
Jun 18, 2003 - People are always asking about what scanners work with OS/2. There is a compatibility list on the VOICE Warp Doctor site. But most of these are no longer available unless you can find a used or refurbished scanner. Here is some suggestions from Klaus Staedtler, one of the authors of TAME/2, the SANE scanner driver frontend.:
Whenever possible get an higher priced epson (regardless if SCSI or USB, there are even models like the 1640 which have both), as both Sane porters/developers for OS/2 (Franz Bakan and Maeda Haruyuki) have such (Epson GT9500/SCSI, GT9700USB) these are the best supported and tested, also the epson sane backend is the only backend I'm aware where the scanner-manufacturer did some assistance and there is even an epson-kowa company in Japan offering Linux drivers (based on Sane with some specialties not available as open source), so quality is ways better (e.g. compared to non-available for OS/2 USB canon Sane backends)

There are also some so called Photo-models (which have a Transparency Adapter for slide-scans, good enough for randomly doing such, for professional tasks the *real* resolution is a little bit too small, although they say that they can do 3200DPI in reality this hardly produces 1300DPI), starting with Tame 0.9.8 we support switching to this TA on-the-fly

If you decide for USB get one of these models: Perfection 1640SU, Expression 1680, Perfection 2450(GT-9700F), Perfection 2400 (Photo), Perfection 3200(GT-9800), Perfection 1660 Photo.

Klaus Staedtler

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