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WebCam Module / Uploader finally made available at:

http://www.warpseeme.com/

The packet contains a simple updater that runs nicely on even a Geocities account. It has been 100% written according to Warp 4's REXX TCP/IP instructions that ship with Warp 4. The packet also contains a really nice Java updater which is courtesy of http://www.anfyteam.com/ (By Fabio Ciucci).

The WarpSeeMe/2 page has been updated some time ago. Due to a lack of time of the whole staff, I only now managed to sit down and post this news at WarpCast.

For those that don't know yet, WarpSeeMe/2 is a project that stands for developing a new videoconferencing program for OS/2 in order to replace the good but discontinued ones we had such as InterCom/2 and CUSeeMe/2.

Symantec has released new update files for IBM AntiVirus (as of Dec. 3, 1999). See:

http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/download.html

or directly:

ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/antivirus_definitions/ibmav/av30ey.zip

The December 1999 edition of "The Warped Perspective" at OS/2 Headquarters is now at:

http://www.os2hq.com/

This month's edition discusses the Microsoft plan to eliminate DOS (and perhaps Windows 3.X) support from Windows2000, cutting off the market for thousands of small ISVs. The proposed solution? Have OS/2 ISVs license these apps and distribute them as OS/2-compatible solutions, or license the source code and port the apps to OS/2, or even encourage the "doomed" DOS and Windows ISV's to open-source their applications.

Matrox has put out a new version of their Display drivers (ver 2.36.106 - Date Dec 3) and they are available at:

http://www.matrox.com/mga/drivers/files/os2_236.htm

The TCP/IP FixPak UN_0980 was released today. It's for both TCP/IP v3.1 and v4.0, for all languages.

Check the following URL:

ftp://service.boulder.ibm.com/ps/products/tcpip/fixes/v3.1os2&v4.0os2/universal/un_0980/

During Pamela Wallin's interview of Lester Thurow, author of Building Wealth - Rules for the New Economy, last night I was surprised when Mr. Thurow mentioned OS/2 as one of the alternatives to using Microsoft Windows. I was also surprised when he suggested that Apple's OS is "somewhat" superior to Microsoft Windows. Too bad he didn't make the same comment about OS/2!

Some days ago the Odin Team at OS/2 Netlabs released the first public alpha version of Odin since the code is open source.

For those of you who still don't know it, Odin and Odin32 is an approach to get Win32 support in OS/2 (it is no emulator!). The homepage of the project is located at http://www.netlabs.org/odin/

We are very proud to say that the project made great progress, a lot more applications are running with Odin actually, especially slim programs. A lot of Odin users reported applications, which are running on OS/2 without problems, for example:

• Acrobat Distiller 3.01 (PDF-File generator)
  
• SmartDraw (Chart designing program)
  
• CDRLabel (CD labeling application, even printing works very well)
  
• WinHelp (Help system of Windows)
  
• Word 6.0 for Windows NT 3.51 (32bit edition)
  
• ... and more
  

One of the very promising applications is Lotus Notes R5, we are already able to start the application, you can find a screenshot of it at the Odin page (it's mentioned in the "News" section). As you may know we also working on a port of the Opera webbrowser to OS/2. With Odin32 we can actually compile the whole V4.0 Win32-Sourcecode without significant changes in the code.

If you are interested in our progress, check the Odin application database at http://www.netlabs.org/odin/MiscApplications.phtml You are also welcome to add your application to the database!

For impatient users we have daily builds available, note that we don't support any of the Odin versions actually because progress is changing almost every day. We are not that much interested in bug reports because of this reason.

But we still need more skilled developers, the more support we get the faster we are! If you think that you can support our project, get more information about how to join at the Odin page.

That's it for the moment, thanks for all the support so far!

Adrian Gschwend
and the whole Odin Team at OS/2 Netlabs

MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. It allows you to play up to 1876 classic (and some not-so-classic arcade games) from the 70's through the 90's from the comfort of your OS/2 Desktop.

The OS/2 version has been updated to the latest version of the MAME core (.36 beta 10). If you are upgrading from beta 6 or higher, it will automatically update your Quick List and scan for newly supported games the first time you start it up so you don't have to manually rescan everything from scratch and erase your Favorites list.

I took some time to fix several bugs and annoyances this release. The following items have changed since version .36 beta 9.1:

• Updated to MAME core version .36 beta 10
  
• PONG is available to everybody!!!!!
  
  • NOTE: You must disable the joystick to use this game. There is a bug in the MAME core causing the joystick to block out keyboard input and not function properly.
    
• Fixed a stupid, STUPID, bug causing a crash when the ROM search path is changed.
  
• Changed the DIVE initialization code slightly to (hopefully) work better with some ThinkPads and other hardware with flakey DIVE support.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused changes in the joystick settings to not immediately take effect in the middle of a game.
  
• Fixed a bug causing games with looped samples (like Galaxian) to stop playing the samples when the game is unpaused.
  
• Got rid of a few ugly error messages in the Debug.Log when the game is paused and sound is enabled.
  
• Tweaked the Quick List dialog screen to give the window focus to the Favorites list by default.
  
• Fixed the startup sequence when using a game name as a command line parameter so that the loading status screen gets the window focus while it is loading.
  

As always, you can download the latest release from:

http://emuos2.vintagegaming.com/

There is a new help forum for OS/2 users at:

http://computing.net/os2/wwwboard/wwwboard.html

My name is Leif-Erik Larsen, and I am proud to announce the release of Larsen Commander 1.0 for OS/2 Warp!

Larsen Commander is a powerful GUI File Manager and Command Processor that has a look and feel like the classic Norton Commander. The most notable difference is that the Larsen Commander is pure GUI. Still it has a built in command line and a scrollable console monitor.

Larsen Commander combines the very best of two very different worlds - the command line and the file management panels. Both available at the same time, and even in parallel while commands are running in the background!

The product has been in public beta for more than a year. This first official version is therefore proven to be very stable and useful.

You can download it and find more information at:

http://home.sol.no/~leilarse/lcmd/index.html

For some interesting screen shots, take a look at:

http://home.sol.no/~leilarse/lcmd/screenshots.html

Features

With Larsen Commander you can easily and safely perform all the traditional file management operations, such as file copy, -move, -rename, -delete, -edit and -view. In addition you have a large number of additional and powerful features. Here you have a brief list of just some of them:

• Nice, attractive and highly customizable look and feel.
  
• The program actually works very well, and it is quick too.
  
• Powerful and user friendly at the same time.
  
• Built in GUI Console and Command Line with History.
  
• Scrollable console monitor, with various search and navigation capabilities.
  
• Graphical bytes-per-second monitor in file Copy/Move progress window.
  
• Support for Drag & Drop operations to and from the OS/2 Workplace Shell.
  
• Optional fancy menues with icons.
  
• Built in command to show statistic summary of directory trees.
  
• Automatic filename shortening when copy file from HPFS to FAT, and the long filename is automatically restored when file is copied back to HPFS.
  
• Filename completion (ala 4OS2) when pressing CTRL+TAB.
  
• All commands are accessable by keyboard shortcuts.
  
• You can run multiple commands at once in the command line.
  
• Amazing multithreading capabilities: You don't have to wait for child programs to finish before you can continue using Larsen Commander.
  
• Easy creation of Program and Shadow Objects on Desktop.
  
• Smart dynamic filename search by pressing ALT+letter.
  
• Directory Cache with smart CD command.
  
• Command aliases.
  
• User customizable shortcut keys.
  
• Built on optimized C++ library that ensures low memory usage and high speed.
  
• File Columns are no wider than the widest item of the respective Column.
  
• Clone current program instance with all the current state and settings.
  
• Built in command line commands: ALIAS, CD, CLS, EXIT, FINDDUP, HELP, HIST, INFO, POPD, PUSHD, REP, SET, TAG, UNTAG, WHICH, +++
  
• All built in commands takes the well known "/?" and "-?" arguments.
  
• Human editable resource file for language dependent texts and GUI resources.
  
• Platform independent human editable INI-file.
  
• User customizable toolbar.
  
• User customizable menues.
  
• Smart Program Launching.
  
• Snappy bubble help with dynamic keyboard shortcut mnemonics.
  
• Use specific INI-file with command line argument "-iniFile".
  
• All scrollbars are 32 bits so scrolling huge lists are supported.
  
• The .LONGNAME EA is automatically removed when renaming a file.
  
• Preserves the Command and Directory History between sessions.
  
• All built in commands can be disabled on a per-command basis.
  
• User menu for easy launching of frequently used programs.
  
• You can SET environment variables directly in the shell, and they will automatically be inherited by programs that you start from the command line of Larsen Commander.
  
• Full support for volumes larger than 4GB.
  
• Built in Extended Attribute Viewer.
  
• User customizable icon resources.
  
• Extended selection-, filter- and sorting- capabilities.
  
• Full support for long filenames.
  

ftp://ftp01.ny.us.ibm.net/pub/games/

It looks like IBM forgot to delete this FTP site - it appears to include lots of documentation on OS/2 game and multimedia programming. All of these items used to be part of the DevCon CD, but recent DevCons have removed some of them.

I've already downloaded all the files, and I'll be extracting the best parts and uploading them to hobbes.nmsu.edu.

IBM posted this announcement today. It is a follow up to a previous announcement about how they are no longer distributing the older versions of OS/2 after the end of the year.

"Software Withdrawal: IBM OS/2 Warp Version 3, Warp Connect, and Warp Server Version 4 -- Replacements Available (6.9KB)"

Complete details are at:

http://isource.ibm.com/cgi-bin/goto?it=usa_annred&on=999-377

I just released the new version 1.2 of the Sound Blaster drivers install. This new version is based on the latest drivers provided by Creative (2.30.0) in a pack based on Colin Hildinger's package. There are some corrections and new icons for Creative programs, plus it will install WinOS2 sound support automatically. The package includes all software ever made for OS/2 by Creative Labs.

The supported sound boards are:

Sound Blaster 16
Sound Blaster 16 PnP
Sound Blaster 16 WaveTable
Sound Blaster 16 WaveTable PnP
Sound Blaster 32
Sound Blaster 32 PnP16
Sound Blaster AWE32
Sound Blaster AWE32 PnP
Sound Blaster 64
Sound Blaster 64 PnP
Sound Blaster AWE64
Sound Blaster AWE64 PnP
Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold
Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold PnP

You can download it here:

http://www.os2brasil.com.br/novidades/drivers.shtml
or:
http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/cgi-bin/h-search?sh=1&button=Search&key=sb16-32-64-v12.zip+&dir=%2F

Note that this package is not supported by Creative Labs. I cannot guarantee you support either because I have changed only the Install process, and not the driver itself.

There exists a very interesting and simple solution to set a Windows 95 diskless workstation to remote boot from a Warp Server (in other words, the whole Windows OS resides on the server). I have written a short article about that, which can be found at:

http://www.matem.unam.mx/~micho/ripl1.html

I would appreciate any suggestions/comments. I think the whole topic is relatively unexplored and deserves a nontrivial attention.

An anouncement on Betanews (http://betanews.com) informs us that the developers are getting closer to a beta of Opera, a www browser that is being ported to, amongst others, OS/2. The news, taken from an announcement on Opera's web site (dated Nov. 25th) says that the OS/2 port is about 50% done.

The Opera web site is:

http://www.opera.com/

Important Security Alert for Webmasters, Internet Administrators and Users

Verisign Certificate Expiration

Netscape Communicator 4.05 or earlier include a root certificate set to expire on December 31, 1999. Users of these browsers will experience an additional dialog box when connecting to secure sites after January 1, 2000. This is a user interface issue; root CA certificate expiration does not affect SSL encryption. A user may safely click on continue and proceed with secure transactions. This is not a Y2K issue.

In order to eliminate this additional dialog box, the user must upgrade their browser or delete and obtain a new root CA certificate.

This applies to Netscape Navigator 2.02 for OS/2 and to Netscape Communicator 4.04 for OS/2 Warp. Netscape Communicator 4.61 for OS/2 Warp has an updated root CA certificate and needs no action.

For more information, please see:

http://www.ibm.com/software/os/warp/netscape

or click on Release Notes under Help on your browser.

OS2.org has a new design! Faster and with more features. If you are interested, they are:

• sending News via eMail to a friend
  
• print view of news
  
• faster
  
• newly designed discussion sections
  

http://www.os2.org/ [Editor's Note: And of course the SoftWhere list of thousands of native OS/2 programs and development tools can still be found, also with a new look, at http://en.os2.org/software/softwhere.]

Hello,
Pretty Pop Software released PopCD! 2.19, today.

PopCD! is `Pop Up CD-ROM/Removable media/Audio CD Object' Utility. When you insert CD-ROM/Removable media/Audio CD, PopCD! creates its object on desktop and open/play. And PopCD! ejects CD-ROM/Removable Media/Audio CD when you drag and drop object into shredder.

Update topics are...

Version 2.19 (29.Nov.1999)
a.Add CD Track List Menu on Tiny CD Player.
b.Add short-cut key commands on Tiny CD Player.

You can get a copy from...

Pretty Pop Music and Software
http://prettypop.tsx.org/

A preview edition of VisualAge for Java 3.0 for OS/2 is available for download at this url:

http://www7.software.ibm.com/vad.nsf/webdlvajava3?OpenView&Count=5&TargetFrame=webdlvajava3

It is available in separate 10-mb files, or as a single ~110+ MB download.