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Date:	Thu, 3 Feb 2005 15:06:35 PST8
From:	Colin Campbell <cmcampb@adelphia.net >
Reply-To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Help: Installing eCS 1.2 on Dell PC

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I sent an e-mail to Scoug-Help several days ago, but I didn't get any
replies. Maybe it was "lost" to some people while Steven was working on
the server. So, I thought I'd try again.

I looked at repartitioning the original 80GB drive, but asking questions
at the DFSee Yahoo group gave me little assurance that I could do that
without problems. So I bought a second SATA drive of 120GB. (It is a
Maxtor, and I found it at Best Buy for $109.99.)

I started an OS/2 4.52 install by inserting the CD and booting. Nothing
at all seemed to happen for a considerable time, so I stopped, and
inserted the eCS 1.2 CD. After I was prompted to choose between the
hard drive and the CD, things again proceeded V-E-R-Y slowly. I
actually had to go to bed after the install process had been running for
over 4 hours.

I wonder whether the OS/2 install would have worked eventually, but I
haven't returned to trying it. Eventually, I "completed" the eCS 1.2
install in about 24 hours, with time taken out for sleep, a bike ride,
and a trip to the gym. I had set up several partitions on the second
hard drive, but I had not formatted any but the Primary of 3GB for eCS.
I also made several errors during this install, including choosing bad
drivers for the sound card and the integrated gigabit Ethernet, and
installing Boot Manager _without_ including WinXP as one of the bootable
choices.

After several tries at different strategies, I am now in the following
state:
1. I deleted the partition where eCS was installed.
2. The other partitions, where I had planned to have a FAT, a FAT32, an
NTFS, and an HPFS file system are still defined, but not yet formatted.
(I plan to finish the partitions that WinXP can manage today.)
3. I have Boot Manager installed, with WinXP the only choice on the
menu. WinXP will start this way.

I'm hoping you folks will give me some suggestions for resolving my
speed issue. I'll ask at eComStation Support. Should I ask elsewhere
(like the OS/2 groups), or just forget it, with the OS/2 Guy around? I
was wondering whether the SATA drives (which I think I read are IDE
drives, with some kind of speed twist) might be my problem. I'm not
sure which IDE driver was used in my first installation attempt - how
would I check that?

Next, I need to figure out what driver to use for the sound card. The
Dell came with integrated sound ("ADI 1080 AC97 Codec"), but I thought I
could order a "Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit Advanced HD Audio" card, and
save myself any heartache. There is a Sound Blaster Live! audio driver,
but it didn't recognize any sound card. (Perhaps an issue of how new
the driver is versus the card?) Might the Uniaud driver work? I've
looked at eComStation.ru, and there seems to be an indication that it
might. At os2world.com, there is a table that says the Creative cards
with EMU 10K1 and EMU 10K2 chipsets work with an IBM/Innotek ALSA or
ALSA2 driver. I'm not sure whether this is Uniaud, or something
separate. The Creative.com site doesn't say what chipset is in this
card. Suggestions, please?

Then, I need to learn whether the integrated Ethernet is supported.
Dell's "specs" say only "Integrated network interface capable of
10/100/1000 communication". I haven't looked too closely at what is
offered with eCS. If there is no support, I can buy an Intel PCI card
to do this job, which is what I did with my current PC. I can ask Dell
Support for more information. Has anyone explored this with respect to
Dell computers?

If I could get these items worked out, I'd be in pretty good shape, I think.
Colin

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