OS/2 Shareware BBS: OtherApp/OtherApp.zip/lrdemo.zip/README.TXT

Text File | 1995-07-19 | 13KB | 306 lines

LinkRight 1.1G Demo

This is a demo and there are some restrictions.

  One file can be transferred at a time.  No directories or
  subdirectories can be transferred.

  The file to be transferred must be less than 1.2 megabytes
  in size.  Files larger than 1.2 megabytes won't be transferred.

  There is no LRCLONER.EXE included.  This is the OS/2 command
  line version of LinkRight.

Other than those restrictions, this is the full package.  The
shrink wrapped package does not have these restrictions.  If you
like this demo and would like the full package, contact Indelible
Blue at [phone] or [phone] or OS/2 Express at
[phone] and [phone]. The street price is about $70
without cables and $99 with cables.  Distributor sales by Micro
Central.  For more information, contact Rightware Inc. [phone]
FAX [phone].

Also available: LinkRight for LANs.  It works much like the serial
and parallel port product, but over a network.  Look for the demo
which is available.  Street price for this product is about $79 for
a 10 user license, $249 for a 100 user license and $995 for a
1000 user license.

Installation

You don't need to copy to a floppy to install.  Just install it to
a different directory from the one where you unzipped it.  Make sure
the install program (INSTALL.EXE) knows the directory where you're
installing from and to.  Ignore where the install program says it
is copying LRCLONER.EXE.  It's just copying a stub because I didn't
want to change the install program for the demo.

New for 1.1G

Not much is new.  The only thing with 1.1G is a new
LRCOM.SYS and LRPAR.SYS.  These drivers will only work with
version 1.1F or 1.1G of the executables.

A couple of new options have been added as parameters for
the drivers.  The complete list of options for LRPAR.SYS are

DEVICE=LRPAR.SYS /Q:7 /P /A:3BC /M /C:3 /D

where:
 /Q:7 uses IRQ7 or /Q:5 uses IRQ5.  These are the only IRQs supported.
 Interupt driven mode can only be used if PRINT01.SYS or PRINT02.SYS
 also uses the same interupt.  If no /Q option is selected, polled is
 assumed.

 /P is for polled.  This is a useless option, since it is the default.

 /A:3BC or /A:378 or /A:278 select the address of the LPT port for
 LinkRight to use.  If this parameter is used, only one address can
 be specified.  Then, when you select Connect from the LinkRight
 menu, no matter which LPT port you select, either LPT1, LPT2 or
 LPT3, LinkRight will use the address specified.  If this parameter
 is not included, LinkRight reads the BIOS info at bootup time to
 get the LPT addresses.

 /M is to specify MicroChannel machines.  For some MicroChannel systems
 when booted from bootable floppies, LinkRight would not see that it
 was MicroChannel and would assume an ISA bus.  This caused the
 driver to fail.  So if you boot your MicroChannel system from floppies
 and the LinkRight driver displays a message at bootup time saying
 an ISA bus was found, use this parameter to fix the problem.

 /C:X is used to tell the driver what type of system is being used.
 If the driver does not load properly, use this parameter and the
 driver will skip it's own test for type of system used and will accept
 the entered parameter as the system type.

 /C:1 is for a 386 SX system.
 /C:2 is for a 386 DX system.
 /C:3 is for a 486 DX system.
 /C:4 is for a 486 DX2 system.
 /C:5 is for a 486 DX4 system.
 /C:6 is for a Pentium system.
 /C:7 is for a faster than Pentium system.

 /D is to add a driver delay for parallel port access.  Use this
 parameter if you are having problems transferring lots of files.
 The sympton of the problem is that you establish a connection,
 transfer a megabyte or 2 megabytes but then LinkRight just locks
 up.  It is most common with ThinkPads and other portable systems.
 This problem is different from the Retry Warning Delay and you
 should not include this parameter until you've tried bumping up
 the Retry Warning Delay to 8 or 9 and the problem persists.

 The preferred and suggested mode of use is no parameters on the
 LRPAR.SYS line in CONFIG.SYS.  You can add parameters if there are
 any problems.

The complete list of options for LRCOM.SYS are

DEVICE=LRCOM.SYS (1, 03F8, 4) /C:3

 /C:X is used to tell the driver what type of system is being used.
 If the driver does not load properly, use this parameter and the
 driver will skip it's own test for type of system used and will accept
 the entered parameter as the system type.

 /C:1 is for a 386 SX system.
 /C:2 is for a 386 DX system.
 /C:3 is for a 486 DX system.
 /C:4 is for a 486 DX2 system.
 /C:5 is for a 486 DX4 system.
 /C:6 is for a Pentium system.
 /C:7 is for a faster than Pentium system.

 (COM, ADDR, IRQ) where COM is which COM Port to use, ADDR is the
 address of the COM port, and IRQ is the interupt to use.  The format
 is similar to what the standard COM.SYS driver of SIO.SYS driver
 uses.

 The preferred and suggested mode of use is no parameters on the
 LRCOM.SYS line in CONFIG.SYS.  You can add parameters if there are
 any problems.

New for LRDOS.EXE

 D is a new parameter that you can specify on the DOS command line.
 It adds a driver delay for parallel port access.  Use this
 parameter if you are having problems transferring lots of files.
 The sympton of the problem is that you establish a connection,
 transfer a megabyte or 2 megabytes but then LinkRight just locks
 up.  It is most common with ThinkPads and other portable systems.
 This problem is different from the Retry Warning Delay and you
 should not include this parameter until you've tried bumping up
 the Retry Warning Delay to 8 or 9 and the problem persists.

 Another symptom of this problem is extremely slow transfers.  I
 have one user who would transfer a one megabyte file and it took
 two minutes to complete.  After using this fix, it only took 12
 seconds to complete the same transfer.  This was on a ThinkPad 750.

 For example:

 LRDOS LPT1 D

Bootable Floppies

Warp bootable floppies should be built slightly differently.
From the OS/2 System folder, select System Setup.  From there, select
Create Utility Diskettes.  Build the 3 diskettes.  Boot the system from
those 3 diskettes, make sure it works OK, then start the modifications.

 REM out the config.sys line for memman=noswap.

 Add lines:
 MEMMAN=SWAP,PROTECT
 SWAPPATH=C:\TEMPSWAP

 Make sure you have about 8 Meg of disk space available for swapper.

 REM out protectonly=yes

 Add PROTECTONLY=NO

 Add LIBPATH=\;A:\;A:;

At the end of config.sys, add
 DEVICE=A:\LRPAR.SYS

Copy LRPAR.SYS to Utility diskette 2. Copy NLS.DLL to Utility diskette 2.
You may also need VIOCALLS.DLL  and DOSCALL1.DLL (I think, I'm
not sure about these).

Obviously, I skipped a couple of steps for partitioning, formatting, making
c:\tempswap, making c:\temp and putting LRCLONER.EXE in there.

You don't need CMD.EXE or EAUTIL.EXE in the C:\TEMP directory if you're using
version 1.1E or greater of LinkRight.  Ignore the statements in the manual
saying you do need to do this.

On Utility diskette 3 you'll find things like format.com fdisk.com, and the
important file sysinstx.com.  Other than that, diskette 3 is not used.

New for 1.1F

The biggest difference is improved serial port speed.  Now, you
can reliably do 115.2 kbps.  Note the new driver, LRCOM.SYS, is
required for 57.6 kbps or 115.2 kbps.  This driver does not
interfere with your normal com drivers (either com.sys or sio.sys).

Limitations

Faster serial speed comes at a price.  If you have a serial mouse,
you'll find that running LinkRight at 115 kbps or 57 kbps changes your
system to a single tasking system.  If you have a PS/2 mouse or
bus mouse using a high interupt, you can probably continue to use your
system while transferring files.

This limitation will be fixed in a future version.  1.1F was created
in a couple of weeks and is a quick and dirty version for faster
serial support.  Some niceties were sacrificed so it could be
released sooner.

Bug fixes

A couple of bugs have been fixed.  Some users reportedly could not
change directories to certain directories.  This bug was reported
many months ago, but I was never able to duplicate it.  During
final testing of 1.1F, I saw this bug occur on one of the four
systems I use for testing.  About 5 directories out of 200 failed.
After I duplicated the problem, it was fairly easy to fix, though
I still can't understand why it happened and why it happened on
only some systems and only on some directories.

Options

The patch file deletes your current options.  When you start the
new version of LinkRight, it will start with the default options,
so you'll have to set things up the way you want them.

If you copy the files to another system, be sure to delete the
LINKRGHT.CFG file, and have it start with no old configuration
file.

****IMPORTANT******
The MOST common user error for those using LRCLONER is starting
a clone operation and having the files transferred to C:\TEMP.
Some users try to fix this by starting LRCLONER from the root
directory of C:.  This only causes other problems.

The proper method of cloning is to start LRCLONER from the
C:\TEMP directory.  Once a connection is established, from the
Local system change directories on the Remote system by double
clicking on the line with ".." (you also have to change directories
on the Local system to get to the root).  Now you can start
transferring files and they will go to the proper location.
*******************

Turbomode (in the Options menu of LinkRight when in Local mode)
should be turned off initially.  Also, Turbomode is read and
set once when you establish a connection.  To change Turbomode,
change the option, disconnect if you are currently connected,
and do a re-connect.  If you have no trouble with Turbomode
off, you can try Turbomode on and get a speed boost.

The LinkRight parallel port driver can now be used in interupt
driven mode or polled mode.  The default is polled, which matches
the default of PRINT01.SYS in OS/2 Warp 3.0.

Interupt driven mode has some problems.  I've had some of my test
systems lock up completely when used in Turbomode with interupt mode.
The same system does not lock up when Turbomode is off.  None of my
test systems have any problems when using polled mode.  Many
gigabytes transferred successfully!!  Obviously, we suggest you
use polled mode.

For LRCLONER, you no longer need EAUTIL.EXE and CMD.EXE in the
C:\TEMP directory.  This should make cloning easier.  You still
need the temp directoy and LRCLONER.EXE should be started from
this directory.  Although I said this for 1.1D it turned out not
to be true.  I really mean it this time!!

 Serial mice and slow systems are a problem when using the parallel
 port.  Bump the packet size down to 128 bytes and turn Idle time
 transfers on and it may improve response with the mouse.  PS/2 style
 mice are not a problem.  If you find responsiveness is a problem and
 you are willing to work with me, I'll create a special driver for
 your particular systems to improve mouse responsiveness.  It may take
 a few tries to get it right, so patience would be required.  Obviously,
 when I get it working well on your systems, I'll incorporate it into
 the full LinkRight product.

 Bump up the Retry Warning Delay option to 9 and you will not get any
 of those annoying Retry Warnings.  LinkRight will try forever if this
 value is 9.  Of course, you won't know if there is a problem either.

 One user complained about updating the Remote system screen just to
 display a "dot".  I didn't see any problem on my systems, and it looked
 like a minor nit.  But during final testing of this version, I grabbed
 my slowest system, turned the hardware turbo switch off on it, and
 watched for about a second for it to refresh the screen.  Very annoying.
 There is a workaround available, though.  From an OS/2 command prompt,
 run LRCLONER T LPT1 on the Remote system.  You won't lose any
 functionality and won't be annoyed by the slow screen refresh.

 For cloning systems, run LRCLONER with no parameters to check the proper
 usage.  You should comment out any network stuff in your config.sys on
 the Source system so no files are locked at bootup. I've been told you
 have to do it this way if you're using COMM manager or Extended Services.
 After that, you can run the full PM version of LinkRight on the Source
 system and copy everything.  Running LRCLONER from the Source system to
 clone an entire system doesn't work (till I fix it), so use full PM
 version on the Source system.

 As you can see, LinkRight is up to version 1.1G.  A new version has been
 appearing about once a month.  I would encourage all users to check for
 a new version occasionally because a new version with features you want
 or bugs fixed could be available.  If you have used most of the various
 versions of LinkRight, you have seen substantial improvements in all the
 new releases.  Expect such improvements to continue.

 Good luck and happy computing!!

 Jeff Tremble
 President Rightware Inc.