Conference noted::windows95

    As for MS insisting on OSR2 being on new computers, I received my new
    Gateway a few weeks ago, and it was not installed. I have since
    upgraded, though I did not install FAT32, as (1) I don't need the
    space, (2) There is much talk of incompatible apps, which I would
    prefer not to be the first to experience, (3) a new rumor that FAT32
    will be withdrawn from WIN95. (Note that I can find no objective basis
    for this rumor which has come from within our support staff here.)
    
    For me, the big benefits of OSR2 have been:
    
    1) Painless installation of my Intel EtherExpress16 card which I was
    unable to install at all previously.
    2) You get the 3D Pipes screen saver from WinNT.
    
    Maurice

    "A few weeks ago" was probably too early...
    

    BTW, I found a fairly good FAQ at http://ling.ucsd.edu/~erwin/osr2.html
    
    Explains e.g. how to run the kit as an upgrade (more elegantly than
    what I did).
    

osr2 is up and running on my Samsung notebook  as well.  I'm not
so sure about the build though, where is the build number, my  only
id is 4.00.950 B, from the January MS developers kit.

My upgrade failed, and I lost the disk contents (there was a backup!).
It seems that some of the  files may have spanned regions of the new
fat structure after the Partition Magic step...a few dozen files were
corrupted.

The only lost functionality is directly related to Samsung hardware,
the battery function displayed by bios  on the screen via Fn+F5 just
hangs w/o display for 3 seconds.

Bruce

    In some places it's called 950B, in some others (like the 'VER' command
    at the DOS prompt) it's 4.00.1111.
    

It is not true that OSR2 is "the only version Microsoft allows to be delivered 
with new machines."  It is up to the manufacturer to choose which version to
ship.  Digital continues to ship 95.0a, as recently as last month.

					Steve

    re .6: Well that's what my dealer told me... I guess YMMV.
    

 Having taken a vacation day friday, and reserved some more time for the
 project this weekend, I'm knee deep in osr2 and Partition Magic.  The good
 news is it is up and runs, but there appears to be a very nasty bug in
 Partition Magic.

 With the osr2 installed to support fat32, but formatted for fat16 due
 to osr2 restriction about owning the entire physical device and notebooks
 having a suspend partition not owned by osr2, I was ready for the next
 step.  Bringing up Partition Magic, I reassigned the cluster size to 4k
 rebooted and defragged.  The next scan revealed that many of the Partition
 Magic files were cross linked with system files.

 My guess is that Partition Magic had some files open, so these files did 
 not get their allocation trucated correctly, but the disk allocation table
 showed some of the extents as free, so these got reused during the
 defragmentation operation...

 Since the osr2 kit was still on the hard drive in another partition, I 
 just rebooted and reinstalled the osr2 kit and a couple of layered 
 programs and all worked out.

There is a patch on the www.powerquest.com web site that will take your 
PartitionMagic installation to 3.02.  The release notes say that this fixes a bug 
when resizing an NTFS partition.  

 Oh good, I'll just down load that and write it to the CD kit they sold
 me....

 I just dropped an update in to the IBMpc conference, Partition Magic has
 a problem manipulating the partition on which it is installed.  A fat16
 to fat32 modification with a reduced allocation increment results in
 many of the Partition Magic files becoming cross linked after the next
 defragmentation of the partition.

 Bruce

 I currently have 950B/OSR installed from the November subscription CD,
 the current set has the same build date so I have not re-installed.

 Question:

 On the notebook with PC cards installed, the 950B is rather insistant on
 allowing use of only INT 5 & 7 for the cards!  In 950A on the same machine
 this restriction does not exist.  Does someone have OSR on a machine with
 PC slots that could take a look at the available IRQ that the Device
 Manager will allow to be selected?

 thanks

.11> allowing use of only INT 5 & 7 for the cards!  In 950A on the same machine
    
    Maybe that's all that's left? Go into Configuration Manager and
    check the current list of IRQ assignments. Make sure that all the 
    per device properties have "automatic settings" checked for PnP devices
    only.
    
    Keep in mind that Windows 95 supports PnP (or automatic setting) only 
    if a device is truely plug and play. For non-PnP devices it is 
    "truthfully-tell-me-the-resources-used-by-your-hardware".
    
    I fooled myself telling once setting a sound card to auto but it was 
    not PnP. Worked fine because configuration manager just happened to assign
    the right IRQ until I plugged in another (truely) PnP device.
    
    Guenther

    Start/Settings/Control Panel/System/Device Manager
    
    then single-click on "Computer" to highlight it,
    and then single-click on "Properties". Select "IRQ" for a full list of
    what's using which IRQ in sequence...
    
    Mark

 No, there are are others, I dumped the IRQ usage list when I started.
 This problem does NOT exist on the same machine with OSR1 / 950A.

 thanks,
 Bruce

	Any chance this is a BIOS issue? Perhaps there is a setup page which
	controls which interrupts are available for the PC Card slots.

Larry

 Others are having the same problem with osr2 and PCMCIA irq settings.
 Some of them are asserting that osr2 does not look hard enough to locate
 available resources.

 Has anyone here got osr2 to allow a pcmcia card to run with an interrupt
 other than 5 or 7 ?

 Bruce

    Ultra II with Multi-Media CD-ROM
    OSR2 with FAT32
        
    				IRQ
    
    Digital PCMCIA CD-ROM   	15
    Adaptec Slim SCSI 1460A	11 <- PCMCIA card
    Digital PCMCIA Audio	10
    Xircom CE-10 Ethernet	9  <- PCMCIA card
    LPT1			7
    ESS1688			5	
    
    
    regards,
    
    /Thien

    I've read several discussions about the availability of SR2 over the
    Internet and at computer shows.
    
    I've been mucking with partition sizes and since my system is at ground
    zero I'd like to install FAT32.
    
    Does anyone have any ideas on where I can purchase a copy of w95 SR2
    TODAY?  I'm in the Southern New Hampshire area.
    
    Thank you,
    
    Jason

    Go into any small ma/pa computer shop, tell them what you want, and see
    what kind of deal they'll make on the spot. At the very worst, you
    might have to spring for some small piece of hardware to make it worth
    their while. Perhaps TODAY would be a good day to buy another (large)
    hard drive ;^)

I cut the following information from http://www.pcshow.com, the KGB
Show home page. The next show is this Saturday in Northern Mass.
I don't think OSR2 is officially available for sale but you will likely
find it at the show anyway.

-----
Sat. May 3- Methuen, MA - Valley Expo Center - this show replaces the
Shriner's Auditorium in Wilmington. It is bigger and better and offers
3,000 free parking spaces at the Methuen Mall! Hours 10 AM to 4 PM.
Admission: $6.00. Last show, hall closing, we will be moving to the
Bayside Expo Center in Boston, with the first show on Sat. August 16.
-----

Dave

    re: .20 by CADSYS::GROSS
    
    >> the KGB Show home page.
    
    Interesting slip.
    
    ;-)

Oh! I guess my brain dropped a bit when I filed the info away.
I really thought it was "KGB", not "KGP", and I thought the
name was strange...

Dave

Until recently, we've been shipping 95.0a - not OSR2.  I read that the new
HiNote VP565, etc., come with OSR2, so maybe that's changing.

This past weekend I took the plunge and upgraded my two systems - my personal
Celebris 590FP (now a "5166"), and my office HiNote VP535.  After doing that,
I used Partition Magic to change the disk partitions to FAT32.

The upgrade itself went smoothly on the Celebris, the only glitch I remember
was that it identfied my Matrox Millenium as an "Oak" card (perhaps getting
confused by the onboard S3-864?)  That was easily resolved.  On the HiNote,
I had problems with the sound and PCMCIA bridge drivers.  In both cases, I 
had to restore the drivers I was using before (and in the case of the PCMCIA
bridge, this was from the original Win95 CABs.)  I also had to reinstall
the port replicator drivers.  Hint - do NOT attach the HiNote to the port
replicator before reinstalling the drivers!

On the Celebris, the partition conversion was complicated by the fact that I
had split my 2.1GB disk into three partitions.  Partition Magic can't merge
partitions, so I had to do various combinations of file shuffling and
partition resizing, but I got it done.  Somewhere along the line, a couple
of directories (including the one with PM!) got corrupted - I don't know what
to blame for that.  Luckily I had done a backup and nothing got lost.  The
HiNote converted without incident.

My source for OSR2 was the MSDN Professional (level 2) subscription I have.


I've been discovering some really cool things about OSR2.  The addition of
OpenGL, and its corresponding screen savers, is interesting.  I especially
like the 3D Maze screen saver, though it's too distracting to use on a 
regular basis.  There's a lot more power management options, including the
ability to spin down the disks at a specified interval (rather than a BIOS'
fixed setting), and a checkbox to turn power off to PC Cards (though I wonder
if this will work with the old PC Card bridge drivers...)  I also like the
built-in QuickRes - you can now change resolution and color depth on the
fly.

				Steve

> There's a lot more power management options, including the
> ability to spin down the disks at a specified interval (rather than a BIOS'
> fixed setting)

I experimented with this, but gave up after my system sometimes failed to spin
the disks back up. This was on a desktop system, not a notebook, so I didn't
particularly care.

	Mike

Well, so far I haven't noticed a problem, but I haven't given the disks many
chances to spin down.  I discovered this feature accidentally, as I walked in
to find the disks spun down and was puzzled as I knew I had that disabled in
the BIOS!

				Steve

    My disks spin down _and_ up without any problems so far.
    

    I think I read somewhere that if BIOS does this sort of disk control 
    transparent to Windows 95 the disk most be able to spin up within 
    4 seconds or else you get a file system exception.
    
    Does this disk spin-down/up in OSR2 thingy work for SCSI disks too? 
    
    Thanks
    Guenther

>     I think I read somewhere that if BIOS does this sort of disk control 
>     transparent to Windows 95 the disk most be able to spin up within 
>     4 seconds or else you get a file system exception.

That might have something to do with it. It worked fine mostly, but on two
occasions it failed, and gave me a blue screen - the only way out being a 
reboot. I didn't give it any more chances after that!

Hmmm. I may be remembering this wrong, but I've a feeling on the last occasion
I didn't even hear the disk *try* to spin up. That seems to indicate some other
problem. Mind you, what with the fan(s) and the CD-rom its a bit hard to tell
just what is spinning and what isn't.

	Mike

>>    Does this disk spin-down/up in OSR2 thingy work for SCSI disks too? 

Don't know about the OSR2 thing working for SCSI but the Adaptec software I got 
with my board has a power management utility that I can tell it to spin down 
any device that has been inactive for some length of time.  That time can be
disk activity or system activity.  You can even tell it to spin down at a 
specific time of day.  

The disadvantage of this is if the second device is spun down and you click
on, lets say "My Computer" (or anything that polls devices) the system locks
up until the spun down disks are spun back up.  It also spins them up when
shutting the system down!

bjm

I have a problem with a DEPCM and Win95 OSR2, it was working fine 
before OSR2, now if get's recognised when I plug it in, and asks for 
the drivers, I insert the drivers v2.0 diskette (as I have a Rev A 
card) and it says "The selected location does not contain a driver 
for your device"

any ideas? I'm desperate to get this working having spent 4 hours 
yesterday trying combinations of the v4 and the v2 drivers.

Help!!

Greg

 This was clipped and lifted from 
    
     http://www.users.cts.com/king/s/serwin/osr2.html#upgrade


17 Mar 97 Method 2: (courtesy Tom Porterfield) 

This method is more difficult than method 1, but is preferable in that
it tells the setup.exe to perform an upgrade installation. This method 
can only be used if you have your OEM number from you certificate of
authenticity on your manual (format: XXXXX-OEM-XXXXXXX-XXXXX): you
will be prompted for this during installation. 

1) Start up the OSR2 setup as normal, from within Windows95.

2) When you are presented with the License Agreement dialog box, stop.
   Don't click anything yet.  Resist the urge to click "Next."  Just stop! 

3) Open Start Menu (CNTRL + ESC) and click "Run."  Type "Notepad" and 
   click "OK".

4) Open the file "setuppp.inf" in the directory WININST0.400.  This
   directory and its associated files were created by the OSR2 
   setup program.

5) Find the line in the file with the text "[data]".  Add the following
   line after it: "OEMUP=1".  The text should look as follows:

[data]
OEMUP=1

6) Save the file and exit Notepad.

7) Switch back to the OSR2 setup (using Alt+Tab) and continue with OSR2
   installation.

.32 has worked a treat for me.