OS/2 eZine - The Best OS/2 Reading Anywhere!

16 December 2001

From The Editor

Season's Greetings

I wish you and yours the best of the holidays. I hope you like the festive little snowman and pine tree on the eZine logo this month.

Into Java - The End

Thanks to Simon Gronlund for his long-running Into Java series which comes to an end this month. I hope everyone will send a quick thank-you to Simon. I've really enjoyed his series over the years, and learned quite a bit about Java programming to boot.

Take the GCC 3.0 Survey

If you are a developer, you should take the GCC survey at the top of the GCC article in this issue. The developers are very interested in your feedback.

Convenience Pack 2

If you are interested in what will be in Convenience Pack 2 (Warp 4.52), there's an IBM slide presentation at Serenity Systems (http://www.serenity-systems.com/cgi-bin/ncommerce3/ExecMacro/SSI/Mcp2/MCP2.d2w/report?img=1&magnify=1) website. Quite interesting reading.

Windows XP and OS/2

I've spent a bit of time with Windows XP this last month getting new XP clients to work with OS/2 servers. I'm not going to talk about XP here, but there is one tidbit I wanted to pass along. If you use Netbios networking, you're going to need to switch to Netbios over TCP/IP as XP no longer includes straight Netbios in the standard installation. The nice thing, is that once you switch your OS/2 server over to Netbios over TCP/IP, XP picks up the OS/2 server right away.

When I switched the OS/2 server to Netbios over TCP/IP using Network Adaptors and Protocol Services, there was one little hitch. In the \IBMLAN\IBMLAN.INI file, for whatever reason it didn't update the

net1 = NETBEUI$,0,LM10,34,100,14

line which caused an impressive collection of error messages at startup. It should read TCPBEUI$ rather than NETBEUI$. Apparently straight Netbios is available on the Windows XP CD as an add-on (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q301041), but we didn't bother looking into that option.

eComStation Coverage

There is another favourable eComStation review at OSNews.com (http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=369&page=all). Don't forget to read the reader comments, they are as entertaining as the article itself.

Open Source OS/2

John Dvorak of PC Magazine (http://www.pcmag.com/article/0,2997,s%253D1500%2526a%253D18493,00.asp) devoted his column in current issue of PC Magazine to the possibility of open-sourcing OS/2. Although everything I have heard says that this isn't a possibility, it is a good idea. If you like the idea, there is an online petition (http://www.PetitionOnline.com/OS24FREE/petition.html) you can sign.

Interesting Website of the Month

While not at all OS/2 related, The Wayback Machine (http://web.archive.org) is the most amazing feat of internet development I have seen yet. Go there, type in your favourite URL, then pick a date from the past. I was shocked to see my company's old websites dating back to 1996 (http://web.archive.org/web/19970112022535/www.djtech.com/Aurora/index.html-ssi) there, complete with pictures and binaries. Just make sure you have JavaScript turned on or the links won't work. How does it work? They have a web robot that constantly scours the web looking for updated sites, and then it stores copies of them like a massive library for future generations to see. They've stored over 100 terabytes of data so far.

Damn Evil Spammers

A pox on whoever added my email address to a Chinese language spam list. Like I don't get enough spam that I need to get spam I can't even read!

This Issue

This issue, as thoughts turn to the holiday season, Robert Basler has a suggestion for your new year's resolution, Pete Grubbs looks at the press' effect on the OS/2 community and talks to Joachim Benjamins of Mensys, Platon Fomichev & Andrew Zabolotny talk about GCC 3.0.2, Isaac Leung explains the ins and outs of bugfixing at big corporations, Douglas Clark is back with a bonus two big installments of his series on ODBC and Simon Gronlund anchors the issue with his final Into Java column.

Please Support the OS/2 eZine

Thanks to our sponsor Blueprint Software Works (http://www.blueprintsoftware.com/netdrive/) last month Mike Engle got a copy of NetDrive for OS/2. Please support the eZine by clicking through and examining our sponsors products. It really does help, and you never know, you might find something you really need.

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The OS/2 eZine is committed to serving the OS/2 community by providing accurate, useful, and timely information every month. We will deliver user-oriented hardware and software reviews, thoughtful editorial comment, and 'how-to' articles which will include useful tips for both the novice and the experienced OS/2 user.

Robert Basler (mailto:editor@aurora-systems.com) is the president of Aurora Systems, Inc. (http://www.aurora-systems.com) and a dedicated OS/2 user since he tired of rebooting Windows 3.1 twenty times a day.

This article is courtesy of www.os2ezine.com. You can view it online at http://www.os2ezine.com/20011216/page_1.html.