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Text File | 1992-04-21 | 15.1 KB | 314 lines

Installing OS/2 2.0 A Guide for DOS Users Copyright (c) 1992, Stephen Best CompuServe 100033,340 April 21, 1992 This is a guide for DOS (or DOS/Windows) users installing OS/2 2.0 for the first time. What follows is a personal approach for moving to OS/2 2.0 and hopefully will get you up and running quicker than you would be otherwise, and with a new system that really shows what OS/2 2.0 can do. Now I know pretty well every OS/2 stalwart will find something to disagree with in this guide ... but if it helps YOU build a better system then my goal has been achieved. First the disclaimer: I take no responsibility for clagged systems (even if you followed my instructions exactly). This, I stress, is just ONE approach to setting up an OS/2 2.0 system ... other methodologies are equally valid. But this is what I did, and it worked ... A few words about machine sizing: you'll have noticed that the minimum stated requirements for OS/2 2.0 are an Intel 80386SX with 4 megs of memory. My personal opinion is that the CPU speed is not critical (and I get good performance on my 16 MHz 386DX) ... but don't expect to drive large screens without some sort of video coprocessor to move all those bits around. A standard VGA display (640x480 16 colour) uses 150k of video memory but a SuperVGA setup (1024x768 256 colour) requires 5 times as much. So if your CPU has to take time-out to help move all this data around, it won't be available to the applications you're running. As for the memory requirement ... I strongly advise all OS/2 2.0 users to seriously consider aiming for a total of, say, 8 megs (high-speed motherboard or Microchannel bus) memory to give OS/2 2.0 room to move. The actual amount you require will depend on application mix, speed of your disk subsystem etc ... but if you see your hard disk light on continuously, more memory is the easy and cheap fix. Now for the install. My procedure requires you to install OS/2 2.0 twice, firstly on top of your existing DOS or DOS/Windows setup and secondly as a clean install. The first install will get you up and running fast and, if you haven't played with OS/2 2.0 before, you're in for a treat. And IBM has done a great job of providing a transition from your current environment so hopefully you'll find most of your old stuff still intact and usable. Don't expect optimum performance from this install ... we'll get to this later. What's important in this step is to provide a platform to check out your existing DOS and Windows applications, and satisfy yourself that they do indeed run as advertised. For the second install, you will need to re-partition and re- format all drives. This is important for best performance but it also means that you'll have to migrate your old applications manually ... a bit more time consuming but you'll only have to do it once. Ok, so here's the procedure. Please feel free to modify/ignore steps if you feel you know what you're doing. First Install This is the first install of OS/2 2.0 you'll do. You're probably keen to get OS/2 2.0 up and running and this is what the following will help you do. Not a perfect install, but we'll do that later. 1. Backup your complete system to floppies using the BACKUP command that comes with DOS 3.3 (or later). Later you'll use the OS/2 2.0 RESTORE command to (selectively) reload your files on the new configuration. Now BACKUP isn't the speediest or most exciting utility but if you use this you can be sure that you won't lose anything in the transition. If you've got other utilities or a tape drive you may choose to use this as well, but unless you're certain that the software will run under OS/2 2.0, play it safe. If you've got a second hard disk, you can use this instead. Microsoft floppies make great backup material :- ). 2. Open your OS/2 2.0 box and build a small mountain with the floppies: install on top then 1-15 (for 3.5 inch) and driver disks 1-5 at the bottom. You'll notice that there's also lots of manuals/booklets/cards etc ... read all these and you'll be an OS/2 guru! See if you got an OS/2 lapel badge in your box ... I didn't either <sigh>. 3. Stick the install floppy in drive 'A' and press Ctrl-Alt- Delete to start the boot process. Just follow the instructions and load OS/2 on top of your existing system. Do not elect 're-partition/re-format your drive' at this time. Install as much of the OS/2 system as disk space will allow (ideally you'll have 40 megs free and can install everything). 4. Keep inserting those floppies as instructed. See the hard disk light flashing while you're between floppies ... welcome to multithreading! You'll come to a tutorial window eventually ... do the complete tutorial (the OS/2 setup is still working in the background anyway). 5. After you've done the tutorial and the shell has filled out, do a shutdown to save everything. To do this: click the right mouse button anywhere on the blank space of the desktop and select shutdown. (Note: always do a shutdown before powering down your system). 6. Re-boot when shutdown is complete and now give OS/2 2.0 a real workout. Start up your old applications (which hopefully will have been migrated). Kick off a few Windows applications etc and generally satisfy yourself that everything runs. The Workplace shell takes a bit of getting used to but you'll soon master it (though it may take you a bit longer if you write for the computer press :-)). Don't expect good performance yet ... there's a few knobs to tweak and we'll get to these later. 7. Like it? Work ok? Go directly to Second Install. Second Install Welcome to the second install. You've decided that you're ready for the Second Generation of personal computing. The steps that follow will give you a real OS/2 system with better performance. 1. Assemble your OS/2 2.0 and backup floppy mountains. You may want to do some planning on what you need to install, where it'll go etc. This is a good time for leaving behind all those files you've had for years and years and never used. 2. Boot from the OS/2 2.0 installation floppy again but this time we are going to re-partition and re-format ... so anything on your disk(s) will be lost. We are going to install HPFS on all drives and HPFS works best on large partitions. The OS/2 2.0 Installation Guide goes into great detail about Boot Manager and the dual boot option ... but if all your software functions ok under OS/2 you don't need these. 3. Select the re-partition and re-format options and setup the partition(s) as HPFS. HPFS (High Performance File System) is a successor to FAT. It has a TOTALLY different layout on disk and is unreadable by DOS ... but OS/2 fully supports DOS applications reading/writing to it. When it comes to serious disk I/O, FAT just can't hack it. 4. Proceed as before but this time select which components you actually want. There's potential for big savings in disk real estate here ... so if you don't want it, don't install it. Also, there's no de-install function (yet!) and some of these can take a bit of weeding out. Let's go through the list: CD Rom (0.1MB) - you seem to get these files whether you want them of not! Documentation (0.8MB) - the doco for OS/2 lives online so you'll probably need all these. Fonts (1.1MB) - not much of a selection of fonts, but they're FREE! Optional System Utilities (1.2MB) - you'll probably need most of these eventually. Tools and Games (5.7MB) - as the size shows, there's big savings to be had here. On my system, Terminal Emulation (no ZModem), PMChart and Personal Productivity didn't make it to my hard disk and I saved 4 megs in the deal. The Enhanced Editor is very nice but you already get a PM editor (E.EXE) which is adequate for most tasks. DOS and WIN-OS2 Support (4.3MB) - you'll probably want DOS (especially if you plan on initially running DOS applications). The Windows support is an additional 3 megs so if you don't want it, deselect it. HPFS (0.4MB) - as we're setting up a HPFS system, you'll need these. Rexx (0.4MB) - REXX is IBM's 'batch' command language and even if you're a non-programmer, you can do some pretty slick things with this. Serial Device Support (0.1MB) - select this. Serviceability and Diagnostics (0.6MB) - you probably don't need these (but this is where PSTAT and PATCH live if you miss them later). Optional Bitmaps (0.2MB) - as they say, optional. Aim to have 10-15 megs free on your boot drive (the default paging drive) after you rebuild your system. The actual requirement will depend on the amount of memory you've got and the application mix ... but you don't want to be the one to find all those 'low memory' bugs potentially lurking around. 5. Skip the Migration function as you won't have anything on your disks at this stage to migrate. 6. Do a shutdown after the system comes up, as before. 7. Re-boot. 8. If you have any, format your other disk(s) as HPFS (select the appropriate disk icon from the Drives folder). 9. Open an OS/2 window or full-screen session and kick off the RESTORE of all your DOS and Windows applications, files etc. You will not need to restore DOS itself or Windows (apart from maybe some of the mini- apps) as OS/2 2.0 now provides full support. Also you can leave behind all those DOS add-ons (memory managers, disk cache/defragger/fixit/compression tools, task switcher, file manager, Adobe Type Manager etc etc) as the functionality is provided by OS/2 itself or otherwise inappropriate. Note that if you have Lotus 123 3.0, MS Word 5/5.5, Wingz or DeScribe you already own OS/2 versions so re-install these from the original floppies. After all wanted applications have been reloaded, start the Migration utility (in the System Setup folder) to build program reference icons. 10.You can save even more disk space by browsing through the system files and doing a bit of pruning. For example, you may not want QBASIC.EXE and QBASIC.HLP (in the MDOS subdirectory). Also, you can zap MIRRORS.DLL and OASIS.DLL (in the DLL subdirectory) if you won't be running Windows applications or drivers ported with these tools. These four files alone will buy you back well over a meg. Also, if you don't intend on doing any programming, LINK.EXE, LINK386.EXE, RC.EXE, RCPP.ERR and RCPP.EXE (all in the OS2 subdirectory) can go. Hopefully, you'll know exactly what the file does (or did) before you delete it ... 11.Here's a few tips on getting better performance from your new system. Firstly, look at the cache size on the first line of your CONFIG.SYS file ... you may want to increase this to 512K-1024K depending on the amount of memory you've got. Also, because all your hard disks are now HPFS, you can delete the DISKCACHE statement. You'll obviously need to reboot to implement these changes. As for individual session parameters (in the settings notebook), if you've installed the WIN-OS2 capability you can get much better performance by setting EMS and XMS size to zero and DPMI size to (say) 3-6MB (depending on application). If you've got an 8514/A or XGA (or equivalent) turn off VIDEO_8514A_XGA_IOTRAP and turn on VIDEO_SWITCH_NOTIFICATION. There's a whole swag of other knobs to play with but just doing the above will make a BIG difference. Overall, you can expect at least comparable performance (with Windows sessions running fullscreen) to that of Windows 3.0 native. 12.Other than that, all that remains is to customise the desktop, setup folders etc and generally have fun with your new system. Give all those 32 bits in your system some real exercise! Happy OS/2'ing.