| OS/2 installation problems |
This page deals specifically with problems that I have personally encountered. Other problems are dealt with adequately elsewhere. Current problems covered are:
There is a problem in the TESTCFG.SYS driver when running on Cyrix/IBM CPUs. This causes a characteristic crash when the driver loads and initialises. The crash is easily identified; it is a Trap 0d and the contents of registers EAX and ECX at the time of the crash are 20000000 and 00001004 respectively.
This problem is present in Warp 4 (Merlin) up to and including FixPack 12. It is also present in OS/2 Warp Server for e-business (Aurora), at least at the GA level.
The crash is caused by a faulty check for an 80486 processor inside the driver, followed by access to some internal registers which work differently on the Cyrix/IBM CPU. Unfortunately the driver seems to be essential during installation, which makes this problem a potential showstopper.
One solution is to patch the driver file to eliminate the offending instruction; this is safe since they are needed only on an 80486SLC (a special IBM version of the 80486). The file resides on diskette 2 (the last one) of the three boot diskettes. Details of the patch are given in the file CFGPATCH.ZIP, available for download here. You will also need to edit the CONFIG.SYS file on diskette 1, to add the line:
SET COPYFROMFLOPPY=1This ensures that the patched copy of the driver is installed on the hard disk, rather than an unpatched copy from the CD.
Once these two diskettes have been modified, the install should proceed normally.