WordPerfect Install on OS/2

[Dave Yeo]

Do you remember what the DLL's were?
While the OS/2 API has been pretty stable, it has changed between 2.0 and 4.52 and a lot of those old programs were built in a time when 16MB of ram was a lot, same with HD space.
I note that now the WP I installed is displaying it's splash screen and crashing after a couple of hours of uptime.

[mauro]

maybe I missed a specific reason why you focused on Word Perfect 5.2 and ignore StarOffice 5.1 which is a good office suite more recent than WP 5.2, well working in my OS2 W4.52.

[KevinP]

maybe I missed a specific reason why you focused on Word Perfect 5.2 and ignore StarOffice 5.1 which is a good office suite more recent than WP 5.2, well working in my OS2 W4.52.

I guess you could call it sentimental reasons.  I used WordPerfect in the past as my main word processing software.  I will install StarOffice at some point.  Thanks for the suggestion.

[KevinP]

Do you remember what the DLL's were?
While the OS/2 API has been pretty stable, it has changed between 2.0 and 4.52 and a lot of those old programs were built in a time when 16MB of ram was a lot, same with HD space.
I note that now the WP I installed is displaying it's splash screen and crashing after a couple of hours of uptime.

The .dlls's were:  c:\os2\mdos\winos2\system\compobj.dll and c:\os2\mdos\winos2\system\storage.dll.  I will post pictures of the messages.  There is something I now know *not* to do.  During the WP 6.1 installation it gives you the option to select directories into which the files can be place.  In two cases it shows subdirectories under C:\os2.  I created specific folders for wpos2 files.  I'm not sure if that is what "did the trick" but when I rebooted and tried to start WP I got a message about registering information to a particular file (picture attached).  IU selected yes.  The procedure started "churning" (with the Windows "hourglass" figure instead of the OS/2 clock) and essentially locked up the computer.  I waited in hopes it might eventually start WP but it never did.  Every time I restarted the computer it would automatically start trying to start WP and the same thing would happen.  Eventually, I restarted and got to a command prompt.  I had to go folder by folder in DOS and delete all the Corel files and folders until I could get the computer to restart normally.  So, do *not* go the route I did!

[Dave Yeo]

First thing you should do is to look for a line like,

Code: [Select]

SET AUTOSTART=PROGRAMS,TASKLIST,FOLDERS,WARPCENTER
and remove the PROGRAMS, part. The idea of the PROGRAMS part is after shutting down and restarting, whatever was running on shutdown will be restarted on startup. Great idea until one of those programs is crashing like you experienced. Safer to simply manually restart anything you had running.
Coral is a bit weird as the port was never finished resulting in a hybrid of OS/2 and Windows programs. OS/2 comes with WinOS2, basically a fork of Win3.1 and it seems like it is the Windows part you are having difficulties with.
I see those DLLs on my old Warpv4 install but not on my ArcaOS install. They're Win3.1 OLE files, I'll attach them in case.
Personally, I don't like having too much in the root directory, so you might want to create a directory like Programs and install stuff under that. Also remember that the DOS (and WinOS2) subsystem uses 8.3 naming and simply ignore long file names.
It's been a long time since I tried the Coral suite, seems it worked fine but can't remember much. Have to think on it.

[Dave Yeo]

Another trick is that at the beginning of the boot process, when there is a flashing white box in the upper left of the screen, you can enter ALT-F1 which brings up a recovery menu from which you can do various things including going to the Maintenance Desktop, reverting to earlier archives of config.sys and the ini files, booting to VGA and such. Can be handy recovering from problems.
Edit: pressed submit too quick. The timing on the ALT-F1 can be tricky with faster computers.

[Tom]

First thing you should do is to look for a line like,

Code: [Select]

SET AUTOSTART=PROGRAMS,TASKLIST,FOLDERS,WARPCENTER
and remove the PROGRAMS, part. The idea of the PROGRAMS part is after shutting down and restarting, whatever was running on shutdown will be restarted on startup. Great idea until one of those programs is crashing like you experienced. Safer to simply manually restart anything you had running.

I would rather use

Code: [Select]

set RESTARTOBJECTS=STARTUPFOLDERSONLY

[Dave Yeo]

You'd lose the WarpCentre, he is using Warp 4.52.

[KevinP]

OK, I removed the PROGRAMS item under SET AUTOSTART.  That definitely will be helpful.  Yes, I have learned to use Alt+F1 to get to the command prompt and stuff. 

I think I mentioned that I have an original boxed edition of the Corel Suite 7 for Windows 3.1.  It also has a second disk for Windows 95.  Since OS/2 has the fork of Win3.1 I had wondered if the suite would install.  It does not seem to have a Custom installation option like 6.1 so you apparently cannot change paths.  But it mostly seems to install into C:\Corel\Office with some files (.dll's I think) going to C:\os2\mdos\winos.  There are probably several orphan .dll's there from where I have deleted the installations.  v7 of the suite unpacked all the files but when it starts configuring itself it hangs up on one .dll (picture attached).  It will start loading when I click on the Start Menu item but never finishes (picture attached).

I used to like WP.  I guess I rarely actually used other portions of the suite except the word processor.  I used to run RedHat Linux years ago and when Corel published their version of WP for Linux I got a copy.  It was written for their distribution of Linux which was based on Debian.  I really wanted to have WP on Linux and there were some forum posts about how to convert the Debian files over to .rpm's.  I did that.  It was a log process but it worked and I had WP running on RedHat for some time.  That was based on WP v8.0 or 8.1. 

I removed one stick of RAM from this computer so it was down to 2gb.  The WP5.2 installed fine, as you said.  I left it up while I was gone for a few hours this afternoon and it never crashed.  I wish there were a way to get v7 installed and running.  This computer may have had 2gb installed to start with.  One stick went bad so I was down to 1gb until I could order more.  The motherboard has 4 slots to accommodate a total of 4gb but I found that OS/2 would not run with more than 3gb.  Thanks again.

[Dave Yeo]

It's strange you get hangs installing stuff at the copying stage. Wonder if there are problems with your file system. Usual fix is to run chkdsk c: /f:3. Unluckily you can't do it on a live system, usual is to boot to a maintenance partition to do it.
How big is your C: partition?
Coral 7 likely wouldn't work on WinOS2 due to using Win32s. The problem with Win32s is back in the day when IBM and MS were competing, MS tried its hardest to break WinOS2 and eventually succeeded. Win32s were/are a subset of Win32, used on NT and Win95+. There were various releases from MS, they'd break WinOS2, IBM would fix things, repeat. The last version, Win32s 1.30 hard coded some DLLs to load in high memory above 1GB, which was unreachable by OS/2 at the time and that broke things permanently. It is possible to have a hybrid Win32s of 1.25 and 1.30 and many 32bit Windows programs would run but once into the Win9x era it became harder and not possible to work around some of this stuff. Even the installers often depended on 32 bit to install 16 bit. There were workarounds but got harder and harder. Lots of hatred at MS from that.

Yes, also had (actually just looked at the CD) WordPerfect 8 for Linux. Actually both versions, the Deb which at the time installed fine on Debian based systems and the full version. I also used Corel Linux for a while. It was a good distribution at the time.
Actually tried to install it (the full version) on Linux Mint but I couldn't meet the simple dependencies, libc5 and xlib5, the debs weren't to be found and I didn't put much effort in trying to find them. Perhaps the debs in the Coral Linux would have worked but I seem to have lost the CD.

[Dave Yeo]

Martin, we seem to have moved topics from installing SM to installing WP. Perhaps the thread should be split.

[KevinP]

How big is your C: partition?

Since I did not know what I was doing when I first installed this I just let the installation handle things.  So, the partition is essentially the entire drive which is an old 20gb IDE drive.

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi Dave

Martin, we seem to have moved topics from installing SM to installing WP. Perhaps the thread should be split.

I slip the topic. I hope I did it right.

Regards

[KevinP]

The 6.1 version of the Corel suite for Windows 3.1 is 16-bit.  I looked at my disk of the version 7 of the suite and it is labeled as being 16-bit as well.  Some information I read (regarding installing 6.1) said to create a directory, observing the 8.3 filename convention, copy the files/folders from the Corel disk into that directory, then run the installation/setup file from that directory (some of it says to use the command prompt to run the file).  Does that sound doable?  Should I add some partitions to the drive? 

[aziz]

Actually tried to install it (the full version) on Linux Mint but I couldn't meet the simple dependencies, libc5 and xlib5, the debs weren't to be found and I didn't put much effort in trying to find them. Perhaps the debs in the Coral Linux would have worked but I seem to have lost the CD.

There is a website https://xwp8users.com/ dedicated to getting WordPerfect for Linux working on newer distributions.

Slightly off topic, but maybe it helps.