The eComStation demo CD is available for download. Now everyone is invited to download it and experience this OS, which is a continuation of IBM’s os/2. The focus of eCS is to provide an organization with a set of world class business applications and an application engine which can support multiple API sets. eCS is REXX enabled and comes with support for Java, Windows 3.x (limited 32 bit Windows), OS/2 and DOS applications.
eComStation Demo CD Released to the World
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Why waste the bandwidth
Why be such a close minded wanker?
I thought eComStation was basically a modified and updated version of IBM Sever for e-Bussiness?
For the eComStation people to be able to post this demo, they would need permission from IBM, right?
Does this mean IBM is considering either open sourcing OS/2 or just makeing it available for free?
It’s a modified version of OS/2 Warp 4.52 with latest Fixpack.
Yes they did get permission from IBM. It’s perfectly legit.
I wonder what ever happened to Kim Cheung?
But I am sure it will be good among my OS collection.
Honestly: can anybody make a short introduction to this product?
Thanks!
We OS geeks are a strange bunch aren’t we? :o)
My understanding is that this is a variant of OS/2, but I have no idea what their definition of “demo cd” is. I’m guessing it’s not a live cd. If it needs to be installed, hopefully it plays well with other OS’s. My demo box has a hosed PCBSD install (due to a power outage), so I suppose I have room in my life for one more OS right now. :o)
Good title though… I really don’t know what I am downloading.
eCS is a repackaging of IBM’s OS/2 Warp 4.52 client OS with all current fixes from IBM, LVM (Logical Volume Manager), JFS (IBM’s journaled filesystem), a native PM-based X server, the SNAP graphics drivers from SciTech, and a whole pile of other stuff from third parties (most of it freely downloadable on the net).
The demo disk is a live CD that seems to include TCP/IP networking, a copy of FireFox 1.0.7, REXX, and a selection of small utilities and such (and a card game). Maybe other stuff I didn’t see during my quick perusal late last night. 🙂
OS/2 is a 32-bit x86 OS from IBM with DOS-like command syntax, a very tightly written kernel that supports heavy multithreading and does very smooth task priority switching, comes with a desktop (WorkPlace Shell) which is heavily object oriented and can be extended by third parties, runs both DOS and Windows 3.1 software as well as its own, and has a sizable selection of native software including a few office suites (StarOffice, Lotus SmartSuite, Open Office), a wide selection of mail/news/web clients, and some unique native applications (Embellish, for example, is one of my favorite bitmap/paint programs on any platform).
This is a normal OS/2 live CD.
From supported manual.txt:
“1) This demo version provides very limited access to your harddrive. In this way it cannot cause any harm to your normal system! ”
Btw it runs on MS virtual PC.
Not being funny, but the huge number of headlines shifting through OS News, and the lack of any real preamble makes clicking the links more effort than it’s worth. Less is more.
A better preamble that gives a full, rounded, and short explanation of what’s behind the link would raise the standard beyond your average fan boy forum and make OS News much more interesting and useful.
Anyone get it to work on Virtual PC for Mac? I’m getting a ‘Possible System Failure. The swap file is full.’ error message.
I can’t believe I’m even trying to do this. If the wife comes in and catches me wasting time like this I’ll be in trouble! Worse than being caught with porn…not that I ever have, of course.
Have fun everyone.
Works fine for me – VirtualPC 7.0.2, Mac OS 10.4.2. Can’t get the display above 1024×768 in any decent colour depth, though.
I get kernel traps and reboots (at different places) in both VMWare and Qemu (both win32). I suppose I could try Bochs, but that would be dead slow… Apart from MS Virtual PC (which I believe still has official support for OS/2) anyone know of a VM that will boot it?
…but they decided that it was more effort than it was worth, and the beta program was dropped. Apparently OS/2 uses some x86 tricks that most other OSes don’t.
Operating Systems really interest me… I’m surprised this one got past me. I know I’ve seen mention of eComStation on here in the past (many times I’m sure), but I never realized the articles were about an Operating System. Even though this is OSNews, I thought eComStation was some kind of hardware thin client or something so I never paid any attention to it.
How long has this … ?project? … been around? Is this an official continuation of OS/2 Warp 4?
It is product of Serenity Systems which is partner of IBM.
Wow … $259? Rather pricey. At least for OS geeks who just want to install it and play with it and then go back to their Linux Desktop.
Includes Firefox 1.0.7 – that’s cool.
Detected my wireless card and grabbed an IP automatically – that’s cool. (Yes I keep my wireless access point open. No I’m not concerned about it. It’s off my LAN.)
No 2D hardware acceleration of any kind. Moving the Windows around the screen is extremely choppy. (I assume the paid version has better video drivers. This is just a demo CD and I realize that.)
Didn’t detect my USB mouse which I thought was kind of a basic thing. I had to use a USB to PS/2 adapter and reboot. That worked though.
The OS looks pretty dated. But that doesn’t bother me. Probably just means it’s lean, efficient, and super fast.
Too bad it costs so much or I’d buy it just to screw around.
Unfortunately, their hands are tied by IBM regarding the pricing. I’m sure that Serenity would like to offer it for a lot less, but IBM insist on a fixed fee per sale, as I understand it. (It’s *much* cheaper to upgrade, if you have OS/2 Warp or an earlier eCS).
Regarding the graphics. eCS should have 2D acceleration – I’m pretty sure that it does on my full retail version. It comes with SNAP graphics SE, so supports several hundred chipsets. The new version of eCS, 2.0 (not sure when it’s due out exactly) will have the latest full enterprise SNAP graphics, which adds more chipsets and some more advanced features (I don’t know whether 3D acceleration is on offer though)
It does look a little dated, yes. But it is also very, very lean, and it has a true object-oriented interface, which is a joy to use (after some getting used to, of course).
Heh,
I bought OS/2 v3 and OS/2 v4 from ebay – $50 each
That was a steal
(by the way – they were brand new, in box, shrink wrapped with manuals and all 
)
Lucky bastard
Anything related to IBM is pricy no matter what it is.
I would love to try this out, but the pricing is just pathetic to be honest.
I’m “happy” that OS/2 never really took off. If I get to choose between stuck with MS or IBM, I choose MS any day.
I used OS/2 for some years, and I have to say that Windows is nowhere near the quality of OS/2 in regard to consistency.
I like this demo. The look is a bit dated, but I really like the object oriented design. And I like the fact, you can have background images without having a browser installed
Different themes by drag’n’drop, different colors, different fonts, you name it.
Pretty much everything can be changed thru drag’n’drop. This in something Windows still cannot do after almost 25 years of development.
Gnome can do it – but that’s no surprise. WPS is the model for Gnome.
But remember. Dragging objects are done with right mouse button in OS/2
Is it possible to install this to a hard disk, or is it limited to running entirely off CD ? Can you download and install additional software ?
not bad, but like a previous poster said, a little too expensive for a desktop workstation, i will stick with GNU/LInux until the price comes down below 80 dollars amercan…
SNAP Graphics SE is bundled with eCS, in the future the full package SNAP Graphics ENT will bundles with eCS. It offers great 2D acceleration. The latest nVidia cards is not 100% represented, due to nVidias unwillingness to, well – disclose anything under any situations and non-disclosure agreements.
eComStation is based on MCP 4.52 (Which again is derived from OS/2 Warp Server for eBusiness 4.5x), with a reworked PMSheel and WorkPlaceshell (A huge amount of the WPS-classes has been replaced and/or extended) and SUSE-look-a-like installerfrontend has been developed, including some hardware detection.
The product has given a completely new life to the community – new applications pop-up (Newly created, ported or whatever) all of the time.
It is pricey – that is true – but once you’re hooked, well then you’re sort of – hooked.
OS/2 was useful in the Windows 3.x era but not since.
It was interesting that 10+ years later I would still see banks using it to process my transactions.
I used 2.0 for a while — had a cool Easter Egg, does that count?
The hype to reality gap of OS/2 confirmed forever that IBM makes the worst software, except perhaps for CA.
OS/2 was very good for its day. Unfortunately, it lost most of its reason to be after the introduction of Windows 95. It then lost its relevance to most SOHO users once developers started abandoning the platform.
Would I run it today? It would probably meet all of my needs, but the answer would be no. It is cheaper and easier to just run Linux, and I am going to get better support from the Linux community.
“OS/2 was useful in the Windows 3.x era but not since.
It was interesting that 10+ years later I would still see banks using it to process my transactions.
I used 2.0 for a while — had a cool Easter Egg, does that count?
The hype to reality gap of OS/2 confirmed forever that IBM makes the worst software, except perhaps for CA.”
Sometimes I wonder whether some posters on this site actually understand what computers are used for in the real world.
OS/2 may not have won the OS wars against MS, but it was used in ten of thousands of corporate entities. In the late 90’s I coded Inevestment Banking and Customer Relationship systems in visual smalltalk on OS/2 Warp. Nowadays I build most of my apps using web technologies, and eCS fully supports PHP, MySQL, Apache, Firefox, etc. So I can continue to use it with confidence. Numerous banks and investment companies, engineering firms, scientific bodies did and do still do use it. (I believe that the Russian space agency use it, but I am not 100% sure).
It (either eCS or OS/2) has a purpose and large presence in vertically integrated industries and processes; if you have millions invested in systems that work and don’t need rebooting every other week, then why pull it out whilst support persists?
It is *not* the first choice for gaming or multemedia. Noone in the eCS world is claiming that. But those who enjoy an OS for the clarity of its design and the elegance of the user experience, eCS is something that is greatly appreciated.
And I speak primarily as an OS X user (WinXP at work).
Sometimes I wonder whether some posters on this site actually understand what computers are used for in the real world.
That’s because people who visit forums like these believe that the “one size fits all” mentality fits all. They fail to realise that something as “trivial” as long term product support is necessary in some situations. Banks are one of those situations, because clients get really ticked off if there are computer problems. This makes transitions to new products, even new versions of products, very risky in the eyes of banks.
“The hype to reality gap of OS/2 confirmed forever that IBM makes the worst software, except perhaps for CA.”
An OS with a nickname of “warp” is clearly trying to capture the hearts and minds of home users. A long, long way away from what OS/2 was used for (and marginally good at).
OS/2 was also hyped as “a better DOS than DOS, a better Windows than Windows.” Hardly what an investment banker needs to hear.
IBM’s software strength, if it can be called that, is to take forever to make something that is fairly slow, clunky and ugly that will last a long time. Fine if that is what you are looking for but most people, and certainly most OSNews readers, are not looking for this.
OS/2 has all of the utility and pizzazz of a terminal window into a mainframe. But how ’bout those extended attributes!
May the next time I hear the word “warp” be this afternoon on Spike TV.
“IBM’s software strength, if it can be called that, is to take forever to make something that is fairly slow, clunky and ugly that will last a long time. Fine if that is what you are looking for but most people, and certainly most OSNews readers, are not looking for this.”
I disagree. While it was still being developed by IBM, OS/2 implimented a lot of cutting edge technology. I think it was the first consumer OS to come with an internet dialer (and TCP/IP) and probably the first consumer OS to have native Java support. It was faster and more reliable than Win95 when the two were competing head to head.
As many compainies do, I think IBM just realised that there was no point in attempting to compete directly with MS and so decided to just not bother anymore.
I ran it as my main OS (reboot for games/Cubase) in home a environment for a few years and have very fond memories of it. I don’t regret chosing it and I can’t think of any available desktop OS of that era that would suited my needs better.
OS/2 was useful in the Windows 3.x era but not since.
Anything with decent networking, a good GUI, and a decent selection of network clients and other applications is still potentially useful on the desktop, at least to some people.
Linux is lower cost and more “free” in many ways, but it still has some things to learn from OS/2 in terms of UI (both CLI and GUI). 4OS2 kicks bash’s butt in usability (COLORDIR, DESCRIBE, and SELECT, anyone?), and I’ll take the WPS over KDE any day.
Stable? Check!
Fully drag’n’drop enabled? Check!
Filesystem with enhanced functionality to support object oriented system? Check!
Support for a wide range of hardware? Check!
Superb support for DOS and 16bit windows? Check!
Modern software available? Check!
BSODs? Negative!
Only negative is lack of BSODs, and I believe that negative is positive
I think it’s interesting that Windows still suffers from a buggy TrueType implementation 14 years after it was released.
I think it’s interesting that Windows has so inconsistent a desktop, as it has. Very buggy, and bugs which have been unsolved for a whole decade.
HINT:
http://www40.brinkster.com/dylansmrjones/windowsdesktopbugs.html
But of course: OS/2 has bit outdated look, but try this: Changing themes through drag’n’drop – changing fonts through drag’n’drop. Easy customization of an individual folder – all through drag’n’drop. And even without a certain browser installed (to get jpeg, gif and png-support).
I’m gonna get a extra harddrive, ‘coz I’m gonna reinstall OS/2
Funny, I installed it in a Parallels virtual machine (very much like vmware, much cheaper!), and booted it up. Sound didn’t work, networking didn’t work. And then the endless task of getting things to work under OS/2 starts. Now, why was it again that Win95 blew it out of the water? By the way, Parallels comes with a CD image with OS/2 (and many other OS’s) drivers, but I could see a way to install them in the live CD session. Parallels emulates very common hardware (like most VM’s do), so I imagine many people will have similar results. Nice looking desktop, though. Reminded me of IceWM.
Windows 95 blew it out of the water in the long term because of mindshare and preloads, but OS/2 was still the top selling retail product for a couple of months after Windows 95’s launch. In the short term, it actually did quite well.
>I installed it in a Parallels virtual machine (very much like vmware, much cheaper!), and booted it up. Sound didn’t work, networking didn’t work.
Aren’t those problems Parallels’s problems ?
> And then the endless task of getting things to work under OS/2 starts.
Againg – what about Parallels ?
If you drove a moped on the expressway, many would say you were crazy or and idiot. If you then complained that when large trucks passed by, that the wind they pushed made your moped hard to handle, many would say you are stupid.
Knoppix, QNX demo and eComStation demo are intended to be booted from a removable drives (CD or Floppy Diskettes). If you install them in a virtual machine and then complain about the performance of the operating systems, what do people think of you?
I have tried this and really like it…I used to use OS/2 4, and got away from it. The look and feel to me is alot better.
I just bought a copy of eCS and can’t wait to get back in the swing of things.
I’ve changed ftp:// to http:// from the link they send me… and i ended up in a page with the yT logo and “Please enter your valid email address for access to the Zeta Neo Update download:”
–gabriel
JustThinkIt – your ignorance is showing.
You’ve obviously been away from the “scene” for quite awhile. OS/2 is still VERY useful and in quite a few ways is still far ahead of Windows. Obviously in some ways it has fallen far behind.
IBM makes great software. They just have no idea how to make it look really pretty and have even less of a clue how to market it to small companies and individuals. Case in point. The original ads for OS/2 which predated the existance for Windows 95 never showed the product itself. If it had, people would have really wondered what MS was doing coming out with someone that look so much like OS/2 but a couple years later.
“OS/2 is still VERY useful and in quite a few ways is still far ahead of Windows. Obviously in some ways it has fallen far behind.”
Can something be far ahead _and_ far behind?
Maybe like a stealth fighter that can fly 125mph, or a postage stamp sized Blu-Ray that can hold 500MB of data?
…and how ’bout those 5 minute boot-ups!
OS/2 should come with a pair of those goggles that car racers used 80 years ago. Then they could call the next version ‘Whacky Warp’. Heh, I’d download the SmutlySnicker.SND file from that product.
Can something be far ahead _and_ far behind?
Come now — the concept isn’t that difficult. 😉
For example, Linux is far ahead of Windows in terms of overall configurability, in terms of source availability, in terms of scriptability, in terms of cross-platform support, and in terms of network connectivity.
However, it is also far behind Windows as a gaming platform, as a standard office/business desktop platform, and as a corporate money sink. 🙂
OS/2 situation is similar. The OS/2 Warp 4.52 kernel is considerably more agile than any existing Windows variant on the same hardware, it uses what I consider to be two superior filesystems in JFS and HPFS, and its desktop puts Windows’ desktop to shame even with its weaknesses.
On the other hand, OS/2 has very little mindshare now even in the x86 PC hobbyist community it once ruled, it’s very limited for things like gaming or MIDI, and the selection of software overall is pitiful compared to newer Windows variants.
The OS/2 Warp 4.52 kernel is considerably more agile than any existing Windows variant on the same hardware, it uses what I consider to be two superior filesystems in JFS and HPFS, and its desktop puts Windows’ desktop to shame even with its weaknesses.
HPFS’s Extended Attributes, maybe its only feature, were a disaster. Putting all attributes for all files on a partition in a single massive file is not good for back/restore. If it was a good FS, where is it today? Fat32 must have something going for it, as it thrives today.
On the other hand, OS/2 has very little mindshare now even in the x86 PC hobbyist community it once ruled, it’s very limited for things like gaming or MIDI, and the selection of software overall is pitiful compared to newer Windows variants.
I don’t recall OS/2 ever having any mindshare. Its software selection was always limited, primarily because IBM gouged developers while MS catered to them — e.g. MS introduces Access v1 for $10 and they instantly become the database marketshare leader.
…but wasn’t that 4-stage OS/2 splash spiffy!
* $100 for Access 1.0, the $10 was for the obligatory upgrade to 1.1.
The HPFS filesystem did *not* put the EA’s in a
massive file, that was only done for the FAT
filesystem on OS/2 for HPFS files that were
copied over onto the FAT filesystem. Under
native HPFS the EAs were in the filesystem itself.
I don’t recall OS/2 ever having any mindshare.
Never read InfoWorld, eh?
Or Will Z back when he wrote for PC Week and resigned from Ziff-Davis over it?
http://www.textfiles.com/messages/zachman2.msg
Some of us still remember Sandy Reed and the infamous IWE Product of the Year polls all too vividily. OS/2 won their Product of the Year award for five years running (if you don’t remember).
“Infoworld…IWE Product of the Year…blah, blah”
You are full of cynicism, criticism and empty points.
There isn’t a product from those times that is used in force today. So “Product of the Year” then means nothing now. I’ve never seen a PotY award for FAT32, to use my previous example. Does that mean a single thing? No.
IBM pumped massive amounts of capital into OS/2. In fact, they probably wasted more money (compared to returns) than any other software ever. Naturally a gazillion bought ads is going to get some column inches of fake praise — isn’t this obvious?
It is like Dell, who buy infinite numbers of ads and so “win” the service awards each year, yet when I call them about those yellow and red disk-related icons in my Event Viewer the Dell “service” people in India challenge why I am even suspecting a disk problem when the mickey mouse boot up test says all is well.
Never again will I buy a Dell. And never again will I be the lone technician in our dept. eating OS/2 dog food.
…but how ’bout that bile green color scheme!
You are full of cynicism, criticism and empty points.
No, I simply addressed this comment from you:
“I don’t recall OS/2 ever having any mindshare.”.
OS/2 had a *LOT* of mindshare back in its day, and it won over 50 industry awards between 1992 and 1995 (many of them user awards like the aforementioned InfoWorld PotY).
I’ve never seen a PotY award for FAT32, to use my previous example. Does that mean a single thing? No.
You haven’t seen a PotY award for FAT32 because it, like Windows 95, was a stop-gap measure intended to stretch the life of Microsoft’s DOS-based OS architecture as far as possible, and most folks with any backaground at all in filesystem design realize that FAT32 is pure crapola by almost all measures.
IMO, Microsoft *should* have used HPFS, the lightweight filesystem designed by their own Gordon Letwin for the OS/2 operating system. It had all of the advantages of FAT32 but almost none of the negatives, and MS already had an implementation of HPFS in their Windows NT product (PINBALL.SYS) as well as their older OS/2 product line.
Since you didn’t realize that EA DATA. SF files under OS/2 only applied to *FAT* filesystems and not *HPFS*, you will hopeflly understand why I don’t assign your technical opinions a lot of weight, at least when you’re talking about that particular filesystem…
Can something be far ahead _and_ far behind?
How about an operating system that is ubiquitous but, relatively speaking, unstable and requires frequent reboots since it can’t recover from things that happen during normal use? It would be far ahead in market share but far behind in engineering quality.
…and how ’bout those 5 minute boot-ups!
How often do you boot up? I’d say a 5 minute investment at startup time is worth a lot if you have any concerns about functionality. If you need to reboot often you may need to have more hardware in place to take up the slack for systems being offline. It’s up to you to decide if buying and configuring one or more new boxes is worth the saving of 4 minutes. I would want to invest time and money into a system that only need to be rebooted when doing patches that require a reboot or when replacing hardware. Not everyone sees it that way. Some like to use fresh electrons or an OS re-install to make sure their system is speedy and likely to work.
I’d also say that it’s unlikely that a multi-GHz box with 512Mb RAM is going to have the same bootup time as a 486 or a Pentium 233 even with 32 or 64 Mb RAM, which was a lot in those days. When did you last perform this speed test?
And if you are interested in booting up frequently there are a number of ways to optimize the bootup of OS/2 so you can watch it more often but for less time if you really need to restart a lot for some reason.
This kind of hand tuning is sort of a lost art nowadays but it’s not entirely unheard of. IBM has published information on how to [manually] paralellize startup scripts to reduce *nix boot times and Solaris uses a binary to start, test and monitor services that the OS relies on. Where would those fit in the ahead/behind chart?
I will say that when it had problems it did tend to get really, really slow. But eventually it would recover and resume normal speed operations, it didn’t spontaneously reboot or just lose all functionality and then do nothing but flash a cursor at you on a black screen or let you operate your mouse on a blank Desktop with no access to anything.
My advice to you would be to skip it since it doesn’t seem to be something you want to have to come to terms with. But, as always, you may do as you wish, no matter how it may make you feel.
Can something be far ahead _and_ far behind?
A: OS/2 is fully object oriented and has true drag’n’drop support all through the system, incl. easy individual customization of any folder. {Way ahead of Windows here}
B: Hmm… Plug’n’Play? Mainstream applications? Wide support for hardware? {This is where OS/2 and eCS lags behind windows}
5 minutes boot-ups? I never had such. Typical a bit above a minute on the hardware of that era. Much faster booting than Windows could at that time (but Windows had PnP to a certain degree).
To me it seems like you never used OS/2 – or had some really bad experiences. In which case you are probably to soft to listen to many issues with BSODs on the windows platform
So, i wanted to try this, but the link i got back doesn’t really do anything. The page has the normal menu and header, but no download button or anything. What is going on?
I’m only guessing, OK?
My guess is that they are having some problems with the distribution process. What I’m basing my guess on is that at least a couple of folks have posted that they are having site issues and eCS hasn’t sent me a reply to my e-mail to tell me where to download.
Needless to say many other conjectures may fit the above pattern…
“Apparently OS/2 uses some x86 tricks that most other OSes don’t.”
Yes. It’s called non-sloppy, non-bloat programming.
I remember when I tried out OS/2 Warp 3 on my computer. OS/2 was really impressive technically, but I never especially cared for the GUI.
Win95 did not blow OS/2 out of the water, IBM forefitted the game.
MS put the screws on hardware manufacturers in Taiwan. They simply told them to stop supporting OS/2 with drivers and preloads or else MS would stop providing driver specifcations and OEM software. So they stopped. I remember going in the engineering department at Abit outside of Taipei back in Spring 1999…..they had copies of FreeBSD and BeOS hidden so the MS reps wouldn’t see them when visiting. All alternative OS testing was contracted outside the company.
So Serenity, whose OS costs $250, offers a FREE downloadable demo LiveCD while Zeta charges you? 🙂
How’s that for irony
Works fine on my Thinkpad T40, booting up in a reasonable time considering that it’s a Live CD.
THis is a great job done by Bob and the technical team at Serenity – a live CD is something that we’ve needed for quite some time. Thank you.
PS. When was the shutdown animation added? A nice touch
With every post it’s more and more obvous that JustThinkIt is just a shrill for MS. Could his comments be more wong?
He would be a lot more effective if he’d get the basic details right. 🙂