Welcome to the home of PC/2, or Program Commander/2 if you prefer the long name. This page covers the public release 2.00, which went GA (general availability) in January, 1998, as there is a more current version by now you may want to check for PC/2 V2.10 GA! As there is of course still room for improvements, you may check the PC/2 beta page.
You can download the PC/2 V2.00 from this site or major anonymous-ftp servers supporting OS/2 software, but first please take a look at the Highlights and into the more detailed PC/2 features page, containing some fancy screen shots and even a downloadable demo video.
A code update is available that will likely fix 2 major problems that have occurred after PC/2 2.00 has been release. You can download an update that fixes both problems, that is the Communicator 4.04 hang and the SmartSuite 97 Lotus 1-2-3 trap.
If you're running Warp Advanced Server SMP, PC/2 may cause a solid hang (tested with the GA release and FP35 applied). As a workaround you may use MPCPUMON to offline all but one CPUs before launching PC/2 (later you can online them again) or disable APM in BIOS/by removing APM.SYS. If you can recomple the source code, just comment out the DosDevIOCtl() call in Thread.c that enables the APM subsystem. As it definitely has something to do with the APM subsystem this problem may just be hardware dependent and not happen on your PC.
I think this is not a problem of PC/2, but rather related to some deadlock occurring in the SMP scheduler (as even CTR+ALT+NUM+NUM can't break out, and using the Kernel debugger - when I can break in which does not work always too! - it seems that either a tripple fault causes the CPU to shutdown or that some kernel spinlocks get into a deadlock). By the way, a similar hang does occur if I use the WPS Power Object to disable APM subsystem...
For a more objective evaluation of PC/2, please try one of the following links:
PC/2 lets you become more productive using and maintaining your OS/2 based workplace because of its:
Tired of phrases like "OS/2 is for servers only", "OS/2 is a strategic part of the network computing strategy", ...? Sure, you could use PC/2 on OS/2 Warp Server too, but PC/2 is targeted to enhance the operation of an OS/2 Warp based Client workstation, and despite of the lack of support (and likely also the lack of a vision to provide an alternative to the monopoly desktop OS almost all blindly follow like lemmings) OS/2 Warp still is a very powerful Client operating system you can trust to run your mission critial applications with!
Tired of launching OS/2, DOS, WIN-OS2 and WPS
applications from folders and icons that mess up your desktop?
Then PC/2 allows you
to do that from a configurable Popup Menu! In addition to the WPS
you can also specify a hotkey, the position and size, priority,
environment and a scheduled date. No more changes to CONFIG.SYS,
e.g. you could even run 2 Netscape browsers running JAVA 1.02 and
1.1.4 runtime simultaneously!
Alternatively you can activate the Popup Menu from the keyboard,
including the WIN-95 keys, and launch the applications from there!
And compared to the WPS (PMSHELL), PC/2 saves about 4 MB RAM, even
on 32MB machines!
The mess of applications windows on your Desktop
drives you crazy?
Then PC/2 is the management center that gives you
backt control of the windows on a up to 9x9 fold Virtual Desktop, allowing
you to switch with button clicks or simply by moving the pointer onto a
surrounding row/column of your desktop. No more mess on your
desktop!
Switching between Virtual Desktops is as easy as moving the mouse pointer
onto the row and/or column surrounding your Desktop, PC/2 will automagically
scroll into that direction then (you can of course configure that a click
is required). That is HW Panning Support implemented in software instead of
expensive hardware!
You are among the people hating the need to click on windows to switch the focus? Activate the Sliding focus and PC/2 automatically activates the control or window below the mouse pointer (as X-windows does), no more clicks to switch between windows!
You find selection of copy and paste operations from menubars or systemmenus inconvenient? Advanced Marking allows you copy and paste operations for OS/2 and DOS windows, (multiline) entryfields, E and EPM editor, CM/2, PC/3270 and Passport/2 by just a few mouse clicks, no more inconvenient interaction with the menubars!
Want to launch or swtich between applications with
user-selectable Hotkeys?
PC/2's Hotkey support allows you to launch and/or
switch between applications with user-selected Hotkeys out of 108
supported combinations.
The Hotkeys will be detected within any PM window, even OS/2 windows,
just ensure that the Hotkey key combination isn't required to operate
an applications.
Want menus automatically to cascade when touching them with the mouse pointer? Then Dynamic Menu Selection eliminates the need to click on menuentries to shell into submenus!
Tired of applications that make modifications to
your CONFIG.SYS before being able to run?
Manage your application environments with
Environment Spaces, which most easily compares to environment
templates! Create and combine them and add them to the applications
of your choice, no more changes will be required in your CONFIG.SYS
(except for device drivers)!
The application launcher from WSOD (WorkSpace On Demand) allows an
administrator to do the same, but from what I've seen PC/2 does that
in a much superior and elegant way!
Want instant access to your applications (even when
distributed around Virtual Desktops)?
PC/2's SessionBar allows you to switch
between applications (and automatically between Virtual Desktops too
if required) from a graphical taskbar or the QuickSwitch window
allows you to switch to the next/previous task!
The SessionBar automatically adjusts other windows not to cover it
(and displays additionally the battery status on APM capable PCs),
no more a messed up desktop and instant access to your applications!
Your ThinkPad's LCD display is smaller than the supported resolution but you're tired that your windows are larger than your LCD display? Then HW Panning Support ensures that windows won't be larger than LCD display, even when maximized!
You want instant access to close, rollup, help, ...? Then PC/2's TitleBar SmartIcons added to windows' titlebars are what you're looking for!
Want to secure access to your PC/2 configuration or lockup your workspace even when not using the WPS? Then PC/2's Security options will fit that needs!
You need to schedule applications? Then the Scheduler built into the Popup Menu allows you to schedule application launches or even when to Shutdown and Reboot or Power off your PC!
Missing APM suspend or power off support under OS/2? Then PC/2 will fit that hole allowing you even to schedule these events (requires WARP 4, but unfortunately with some combination of hard- and software you may be out of luck)!
You are not running the WPS (PMSHELL) as your WorkPlace Shell process but want to control your local printers? Then PC/2 Spooler is the management center you need!
You want to migrate your WPS objects into PC/2's Popup Menu? Just drag them onto WPS 2 PC/2's icon and from there into PC/2, and PC/2 will automagically add them to the Popup Menu!
First, I know that many of you have problems downloading code from here. Unfortunately I can't influence that (Geocities houses the homepages of more than a million homesteaders, that can explain some traffic)! Please retry your download, preferably at times Geocities and/orthe InterNet is not that busy and overloaded, for examples in the night or on weekends (Geocities is located in California, as far as I know). As the PC/2 V2.00 will be uploaded to major OS/2 anonymous-ftp sites you also have alternatives (unfortunatley Geocities doesn't support anonymous-ftp, and ftp always is faster than http on the same machine).
You can download PC/2 V2.00 from this site, however knowing the download problems
I have split PC/2 into 2 parts here (on the ftp sites it will be a single complete
package) the
PC/2 V2.00 executable
(556 kB) and the encrypted
PC/2 V2.00 source
(530 kB - please rename it to Source.zie as extensions .zie
are not accepted at Geocities!).
If you downloaded V2.00 before 29th, December, 1997 from my site (and only my site
is affected with the problem as I will upload it into the Internet later)
then you will get a trap when closing NetScape, however when you read this line
the problem has been corrected and the archives have been updated.
The problem was introduced between beta 1.99y and 2.00 to lower the risk of PC/2
hanging when closing (please see also PC/2
hanging during exit).
To decrypt the source you need to download both parts of PC/2 2.00 and to issue from an OS/2 commandline: PROTECT pc2v200 SOURCE.ZIE. This will generate the source archive Source.zip which you then can uncompress with UNZIP.EXE. As I provide the decryption program Protect.exe only for 32-bit OS/2, looking into the source requires Windows users to find a OS/2 installation ;-).
If you going to install this versions over any previous release, just ensure that PC/2 is not running and WPS 2 PC/2 is deinstalled (as this will lock some files. If the installation failes, some files may be locked (yes, other programs can lock PC/2 files, which can only prevented by doing a reboot after above mentioned step). Thus, ensure by deinstalling the previous PC/2 package and a reboot that all files become onlocked and then please reinstall. Also be sure that you backup your existing PC/2 configuration files (that is PC2.CFG, PC2.INI and probably PC2.ENV) before deinstalling the previous version, as PC/2 2.00 will upgrade them (and then no longer can be used by the previous version)!
I have uploaded the public, official PC/2 V2.00, released in January, 1998 to the following major OS/2 sites (and getting it from there using anonymous-ftp usually is much faster) on December, 31st 1997 (the filename given was PC2v200.zip, but hay have been converted to lower- or uppercase letters):
Uploaded into the incoming directory from where it has to be moved to ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/os2/new/ before you can see it, with the final destination at ftp://ftp.cdrom.com/pub/os2/wpsutil/.
Uploaded into ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/incoming/ with the final destination at ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/util/wps/.
Uploaded into the incoming directory from where it has to be moved to the final destination at ftp://ftp.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/pub/comp/os/os2/leo/wpstools/ before you can see it.
Uploaded into the incoming directory from where it has been moved to the final destination at http://www.netlabs.org/tools.html, but you may also check Netlabs' main page. However Adrian Gschwend yet made it available via ftp://ftp.netlabs.org/pub/tools/PC2v200.zip.
As of June 1999, PC/2 is available on the following servers (according to FtpSearch), which are likely more up to date than above locations:
The following tips and tricks are available at the moment:
I do welcome problem reports, but please do not send dumps (that is PDUMP.*, PC2.TRP or POPUPLOG.OS2 files) without contacting me prior. Generally I can handle only MIME-64 encoded data attached to mail, everything else is a waste of bandwith as I can't read it (if you really want to know, it is due to ASCII to EBCDIC conversion).