Pkzip for OS/2 v2.0
Mohit Goyal
been released yet. I saw an ad for it that said it was
going to be released late first quarter, but I haven't
seen it anywhere yet. Thanks.
Bob Jackiewicz
Don't expect a great port, or even one specific to OS/2 2.0 (save the 32-bit
stuff). I talked to a guy from PK Ware at Comdex. His badge said something
like "Software Engineer" and when I asked him about an OS/2 2.0 version,
the first thing out of his mouth was "I thought OS/2 didn't have a command
line. Hmmm." After a controlled correction, he explained that he (Phil
Katz??) has discovered a bug with the 386 and 486 chips which will delay
PK Zip 2.0. He also said that they were working on a graphical interface
for Windows, and he (Phil again??) would probably port just the command
line version to OS/2 2.0 when they were done with the Windoze one.
Oh well. I do wonder what their NT support will be like??
Brought to you by the sick mind of University of Illinois at Chicago
Bob Jackiewicz, writer of wrongs, BITNET: U25042@UICVM
wronger of rights; not UIC. InterNet: U25...@uicvm.uic.edu
When DOS grows up it wants to be OS/2
Christopher Sacksteder
ftp. It's not a PM app, and I didn't decipher the complicated
command-line syntax. There are many other files in the archivers
directory, including:
uz42_32e.zoo 155988 Info-Zip UNZIP version 4.2 32-bit executables
unzip42s.zoo 201274 Info-Zip UNZIP version 4.2 sources
uz42_16e.zoo 84375 Info-Zip UNZIP version 4.2 bound 16-bit executables
zip10x.zoo 296357 Info-Zips ZIP ver. 1.08 (S/D)
os2kit1.exe 46815 PK(UN)ZIP utilities, disk 1
pmzip10.zoo 90384 Front-end for PKZIP (PM)
pkz102-2.exe 258176 PKZIP 1.02 (P/D/SFX)
Robert Cole
In article <70...@ut-emx.uucp>, m...@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Mohit Goyal) says:
>>Hello. I was wondering whether Pkzip v2.0 for OS/2 has
>>been released yet. I saw an ad for it that said it was
>>going to be released late first quarter, but I haven't
>>seen it anywhere yet. Thanks.
IBM apparently already has an internal use only version of PKZip. I was
told they contracted PKWare to write it for IBM. I've seen this program
and I've unzipped files that were zipped with it.
Robert G. Cole
Brooke Paul Anderson
are nice -- and they are freeware. You can get them on hobbes.nmsu.edu
probably (I got my copies from comp.os.os2.binaries when the latest
versions came out).
Cave Newt
> Hello. I was wondering whether Pkzip v2.0 for OS/2 has
> been released yet. I saw an ad for it that said it was
> going to be released late first quarter, but I haven't
> seen it anywhere yet. Thanks.
And many others responded with various things which didn't seem to
answer the question. The short answer is no: PKZIP 2.0 has not been
released for either DOS or OS/2, and when it is released, it won't be
called "2.0". According to a couple of folks at the PKWare booth at
Comdex, the DOS version will be out by the end of June, possibly within
the next month; but the OS/2 version will lag by several months. The
reason for the extra delay in the DOS version (over that due to some
new features) is a hardware bug involving the interaction between the
external cache and onboard cache of some newer 386's and 486's. This
is not PKZIP-specific and has been demonstrated with a 20-line program
(or so), using various compilers. They are rewriting the PKZIP code
to avoid the block memory transfers which trigger the bug.
U25...@uicvm.uic.edu (Bob Jackiewicz) wrote:
> Don't expect a great port, or even one specific to OS/2 2.0 (save the 32-bit
> stuff). I talked to a guy from PK Ware at Comdex. His badge said something
> like "Software Engineer" and when I asked him about an OS/2 2.0 version,
> the first thing out of his mouth was "I thought OS/2 didn't have a command
> line. Hmmm." After a controlled correction, he explained that he (Phil
> Katz??) has discovered a bug with the 386 and 486 chips which will delay
> PK Zip 2.0. He also said that they were working on a graphical interface
> for Windows, and he (Phil again??) would probably port just the command
> line version to OS/2 2.0 when they were done with the Windoze one.
I'm not sure that this was Phil Katz (at least, I didn't see him there),
but in any case, Phil is not responsible for the OS/2 code--another
programmer is. Also, the OS/2 version will probably not have any 32-bit
code in it. The important parts of PKZIP are written in assembler, and
the programmer to whom I spoke said that they wanted that to be identical,
to avoid possible compatibility problems.
co...@lea.csc.ncsu.edu (Robert Cole) wrote:
> IBM apparently already has an internal use only version of PKZip. I was
> told they contracted PKWare to write it for IBM. I've seen this program
> and I've unzipped files that were zipped with it.
This is probably not the PKZIP 2.0-compatible version, since you'd have
a hard time unzipping the files (unless you have the DOS PKZ193A.EXE
alpha or Info-ZIP's UnZip 5.0 beta).
These are definitely not 2.0-compatible, although the current beta
versions are. We will probably release our versions before PKWare does
(amusingly enough, the guys at PKWare said that was fine with them :-) ).
Greg Roelofs
(Info-ZIP kind of guy)
Dennis Yelle
> The
> reason for the extra delay in the DOS version (over that due to some
> new features) is a hardware bug involving the interaction between the
> external cache and onboard cache of some newer 386's and 486's. This
> is not PKZIP-specific and has been demonstrated with a 20-line program
> (or so), using various compilers. They are rewriting the PKZIP code
> to avoid the block memory transfers which trigger the bug.
Where can I get a copy of this 20-line program. My company
just recieved several new machines, and I would like to test them.
--
Dennis Yelle (bbs.d...@tsoft.sf-bay.org)
Cave Newt
>> The reason for the extra delay in the DOS version (over that due to some
>> new features) is a hardware bug involving the interaction between the
>> external cache and onboard cache of some newer 386's and 486's. This
>> is not PKZIP-specific and has been demonstrated with a 20-line program
>> (or so), using various compilers. They are rewriting the PKZIP code
>> to avoid the block memory transfers which trigger the bug.
bbs.d...@tsoft.sf-bay.org (Dennis Yelle) writes:
>Where can I get a copy of this 20-line program. My company
>just recieved several new machines, and I would like to test them.
I have not seen the program (and it turns out to be 25 lines :-) ), but
you may be able to request it from PKWare. The following is a message
posted to a PKWARE conference on some BBS, reposted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.-
hardware, and finally forwarded to me by someone else in Info-ZIP:
----------------------
BBS: Infoguide Pcboard System
Date: 03-24-92 (07:48) Number: 9315
From: MITCHELL HALPERIN Refer#: NONE
To: ALL Recvd: NO
Subj: PKZIP 2.0 release delay Conf: (18) PKWARE
PKWARE has announced that PKZIP 2.0 won't be released until the "end of
April" or "early 2nd quarter 1992" (depending on the message). They
blame the delay on a hardware "bug" they discovered involving 486
motherboards and external memory caches. Apparantly, when copying a
block from one memory area to another, the SOURCE can be corrupted by
one bit - enough to cause CRC errors. It was difficult to track down
the problem as it occurs inconsistently and is very individual machine-
and file-dependent. They were able to duplicate it with a 25 line C
test program - independent of compiler. The exact hardware source of
this problem has not been identified yet - they are in contact with
various manufacturers. It can be eliminated by switching off the
external memory cache. To get around it, PKWARE is rewriting PKZIP code
to eliminate block memory transfers where possible - delaying release.
They say there will be an article in one of the trade magazines giving a
detailed description of this hardware problem.
----------------------
For those more interested in PKZIP 2.0, I also learned at Comdex that
part of the delay stems from bugs in other software, including one in
Netware. FWIW.
Greg Roelofs