Install In Haste, Repent At Leisure

Peripherals

Install In Haste, Repent At Leisure

By L. R. Shannon
The New York Times

November 2, 1993

It was past time to learn something about OS/2, the high-level operating system from I.B.M. that will replace DOS, that faithful old clunker, unless Microsoft's Windows NT or a variation of UNIX wins the desktop battle.

A phone call to Micro Warehouse, a mail-order concern whose catalogue happened to be on top of the tallest pile on the desk, brought the 5.25-inch disk edition of OS/2 2.1 a few days later. The suggested retail price is $278.95; the actual price was $149.95. In the same catalogue, Windows NT is $279.95, with a suggested retail price of $295.

The program occupies 21 numbered disks, in addition to eight more that are not counted as part of the program but are needed. If you load all the features -- and how do you know you do not need a feature if you do not load it? -- 28 megabytes of hard disk space are occupied. The Multimedia Presentation Manager, which comes on three of the uncounted floppies, takes five more megabytes.

OS/2 can be installed as the only operating system, probably the wisest choice since it will run most DOS and Windows programs and use the HPFS (High Performance File System) in place of DOS's old FAT (File Allocation Table). But I wanted to keep standard MS-DOS 6.0 and Windows 3.1, so FAT it was.

About half-way through installation, the computer reported that disk No. 10 suffered from "cyclic redundancy." Years of experience had taught me how to deal with "cyclic redundancy," whatever that is: remove the floppy disk, jiggle it and replace it. That solved that problem. A few minutes later the computer said it could not find the sector requested, and jiggles did not help. There was an option to ignore the error and continue, which I selected. The rest of the installation went without a hitch; after an uninterrupted hour, OS/2 was ready to go.

Half an hour with the beginning of the built-in tutorial demonstrated one of the main differences between operating OS/2 and Windows or DOS or the Macintosh. It sounds inconsequential, but Windows relies on the left mouse button, and the Macintosh mouse has only one button, while OS/ 2 often requires a press of the right mouse button. That takes finger retraining.

The printed documentation is lean. The "Installation Guide" is a relatively hefty 183 pages, big for an installation guide, because OS/2 can be installed in alternative ways on many kinds of systems and all have to be explained. But "Using the Operating System" is a relatively svelte 545 pages, compared with the usual 700 or 800. The reason for the paucity of pages is that there is so much on-line help: the Master Help Index, Help Windows, Information, a glossary, the F1 key, menus, services and more.

It was easier at first, and more fun, to turn to "The Little OS/2 Book" (Peachpit Press; $13), by Kay Yarborough Nelson. From Chapter 4, "Customizing Your Desktop," I learned how to change the background color -- "OS/2's factory-setting screen colors are pretty ugly" -- from dull gray to light blue, and the font in which names of icons are displayed from 8-point Helvetica to 10-point Times Roman. There is also screen saver information (yes, OS/2 has a screen saver, and a solitaire game with a cheating option), and other customization tips.

Finally, I exited from OS/2 and went into DOS.

Uh-oh.

"Invalid command.com. Cannot load command, system halted."

It took a few minutes of listening to recorded messages on I.B.M.'s 800 number before a human being came on the line.

I.B.M. asked: Had I called Microsoft? No, DOS worked fine before OS/ 2 was installed, and the machine starts normally from a floppy disk, but not from the hard disk. In a few more minutes, I was talking to a technician. I should change the autoexec.bat and config.sys files according to the directions starting on page 41 of the installation manual, which I had not opened because there was a quick-install printed card; also, look in the OS2/system subdirectory for autoexec.dos and config.dos files. Thanks. But the original files in the root directory were fine, according to the manual; however, there were no .dos files in the new subdirectory. Creating them did not solve anything.

Another phone call and, after I said I was willing to reinstall the system, a second technician said I should first boot from a floppy and then type sys c:. That worked without requiring reinstallation; I was at last able to switch from OS/2 to DOS to Windows to DOS to OS/2 to DOS to Windows . . .

It was getting late. To shut down the operating system, you move the cursor to a blank area of the screen and press the right mouse button. That produces a menu in which "shut down" is one of the choices. Click on that choice and a box on the screen reports that shutdown is in progress.

The next morning, it was still in progress.