From: johnm@cory.Berkeley.EDU (John D. Mitchell)
Subject: Re: patch for os/2 fails
Organization: University of California, at Berkeley
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 17:53:56 GMT

In article <1992Aug28.051103.8902@ennews.eas.asu.edu> ejohnson@enuxha.eas.asu.edu (Eric R. Johnson) writes:

>My reasoning is simple: I need geos to run under os/2.  what more reason do 
>they need?  Not good enough?  Someone has come up with a two line patch that
>will allow certain versions of geos to run under os/2.  What does the 
>patch do, and why isn't geos interested in finding out?  I just want to know
>why geos won't run under os/2.  The answer from tech support was most 
>enlightening: 'it wasn't designed for that'.  Well no kidding.  geos runs on
>8088 boxes; why won't it run in a vdm?

The person you talked to is correct.  PC/GEOS v1.x was not designed to run
under OS/2 v2 and until the last few months OS/2 v2 itself was tremendously
unstable.  As you say below, PC/GEOS v2 will run under OS/2 v2.  That is
*the* solution.  If, as you seem to want, GeoWorks made a running change
for every issue like this that each user wanted and shipped a bunch of
interim versions then PC/GEOS v2 would never, ever get done!  Have you ever
managed/run/whatever the testing, build, and distribution of an operation
system and a large suite of libraries and applications?

GeoWorks knows what the patch is.  That doesn't mean a whole helluva lot as
PC/GEOS v2 was designed to work with OS/2 v2.

>My experiences with geos tech support have always been marred by an attitude
>of the type 'everything that is wrong is out of our control' ; today the 
>guy I talked to wasn't the least bit interested in finding out what the 
>patch does, or in helping me get my work done.  I was told that v 2.0 will
>run under os/2; when I asked when that would be released, I was told it
>'wasn't announced yet'.  I need help now with this problem; if the folks at 
>geos aren't that interested in my business, so be it.  I'll find an app that
>will work under os/2.  It's just plain bad business to tell your customers
>(of two years standing, or so , 1.1) to get lost, we're not interested in your
>problem.  AND(!), what kind of banker's hours are 9-3, anyway ;-) only half-
>smiley, there.  It took me _several_ tries before I got through.

Have you ever run a business?  Seriously.  GeoWorks has to prioritize how
it allocates it's resources to achieve the maximum benefit.  How's it gonna
do that?  Easy, it finds out what the customer wants.  Your attitude is
that since *you* personally want (need) that fix *right now* that GeoWorks
should drop everthing and just do it.  GeoWorks on the other hand has
talked to a great many people to find out what they want as a large
population of users (and many who aren't currently users to find out what
would make them users :-).  GeoWorks has based it's plans on those
findings.

You seem to take offense that GeoWorks won't drop everything to fix your
one 'problem'...  If the support representative was rude or otherwise
exhibited poor manners or whatever please let me know the specifics and
I'll check into it.  I highly doubt that they in any way said that they
didn't care about user problems (your make a very grand generalization from
one isolated incident).

As for the technical supports hours, call wait times, and the like...  I
don't know what the latest plans our but as of my last conversation with
them, I do know that they're working on a bunch of things that will make a
big difference.

>I understand the mechanics of patching, but I don't know what in kernel.exe
>is getting patched.  The error I get in execution is 'cannot run kernel
>from a write-protected disk'.  My wild guess is that it doesn't like hpfs;
>I'd love to know _what_ the problem is.  Anyone (like the author ;-) who
>can help me with this, AtDhVaAnNkCsE.

Thanks for bringing up this issue,
			John D. Mitchell
			johnm@cory.Berkeley.EDU

P.S.	I speak solely for my self.  GeoWorks speaks for itself.
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.pcgeos