Category Archives: News

ArcaOS 5.0 launch on hold for a few more days

Finishing touches can often take longer than expected. Because we want ArcaOS 5.0 to be the best that it can be, Arca Noae has made the difficult decision to delay release two weeks, with a new projected delivery date of April 15, 2017.

Because we don’t believe in selling anything we are not ready to ship, we will not be taking pre-orders for ArcaOS 5.0.

Please be patient while we get the last few things as they should be, so that your experience installing and using ArcaOS 5.0 is as smooth as possible.

ACPI Driver Package version 3.23.05 released

Arca Noae is pleased to announce the immediate availability of our ACPI Driver Package for OS/2 and eComStation version 3.23.05.

This is a maintenance release containing the following changes:

Updated to ACPICA 20170119. See acpica.org for details.
Enhanced debugging support.

This driver package is available for download from the Arca Noae website as part of your Arca Noae OS/2 & eCS Drivers and Software Subscription. Please log into your account in order to access your software.

More information about the ACPI Driver Package may be found in the ACPI Driver wiki.

If you haven’t yet purchased a software subscription, this is a great reason to do so now.

Blue Lion moves into beta testing

Per Arca Noae’s revised release schedule, and as announced at Warpstock 2016, Blue Lion (ArcaOS 5.0) moved into beta testing stage today. The first beta release has been made available to the test team, and we anticipate a rigorous round of installation, modifications, formatting, deletion, disk wiping, and all that other fun stuff which accompanies a healthy beta test.

We do not anticipate a public beta cycle nor are we planning a gamma release or an untold number of release candidates. Instead, we fully expect ArcaOS 5.0 to emerge from beta testing at the end of March and to become generally available at that time.

We wish to thank our loyal supporters, our beta testers, and our development team for their dedication to the Blue Lion project, and look forward to the next 60 days as we ready the next release of OS/2.

Pricing will be made available in the near future. Expect two tiers, much like our subscription service (Personal and Commercial), with the latter including prioritized support and a longer bundled maintenance period. Volume discounts will also be available.

Current release timetable for ArcaOS 5.0 (Blue Lion)

As announced at Warpstock 2016, ArcaOS 5.0 (codenamed Blue Lion) is currently scheduled for general availability March 31, 2017.

The movement into 2017 was necessary to ensure a finished product with the slate of planned features, including:

New XWorkplace (just released) with ArcaOS exclusive branding and features (e.g., the new Arca Noae Removable Device widget);
New desktop productivity apps, including DVD Tools, Archive Tool, Dynamic Icons, ArcaBar, Lucide Document Viewer, and much more;
New network filesystem connectivity;
New operating system kernel, with fixes and enhancements to better manage today’s larger applications, including Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, and Apache OpenOffice;
New kernel loader to address shortcomings in IBM’s last version, and to provide some useful new features, such as use of installed system memory above 4GB as a RAM disk;
New installer, completely built from the ground up for ArcaOS;
New installation options, better suited to today’s systems, both bare metal and virtual;
Integration of latest RPM-provided content;
Integration of latest Arca Noae device drivers;
Updated SNAP accelerated video driver;
Much, much more…

The above list is not final, nor are all components assured to be in the release of ArcaOS 5.0, but they have been in the plan and in the works for some time.

We know that everyone is anxious for this release, and we share your enthusiasm! All we ask is that you bear with us a little while longer while we get things fully assembled and tested to better assure a smooth installation and operating experience.

Many happy returns of the season from the team at Arca Noae, and best wishes for a truly bright 2017!

New MultiMac NIC driver package (20161204) released

Arca Noae is pleased to announce the immediate availability of a new release of our MultiMac NIC driver package.

This package contains rebuilt drivers to incorporate some SMP related fixes in the system libraries. Even though the actual driver code has not been changed in any of the drivers, all the drivers were rebuilt to incorporate the new system libraries. All of the 32 bit drivers are affected.

Note that when you install this package, one of the drivers is marked as untested (MMSK) and is not automatically selected for installation. This means that the developer does not have the hardware to test this driver and could not get someone to test it. If you want to use this driver, you must select it on the packages page of the installer. If you use this driver and would like to become the official tester for it, please see the info section of the .txt file for the driver (MMSK.txt) after installation, or the ReadMe on the wiki.

As always, please read the .txt file that comes with each driver and also provided on the wiki. If you have problems with any of the drivers in this release, please read the Debugging Guide in the wiki first. If your problem cannot be resolved with the Debugging Guide, then the problem should be reported to the ticketing system. Simply log in with your Arca Noae credentials, select MultiMac from the list of projects, and open a ticket.

This driver package is available for download from the Arca Noae website as part of your Arca Noae OS/2 & eCS drivers and software package subscription. Please log into your account in order to access your software.

If you haven’t yet purchased a software subscription, this is a great reason to do so now.

More information about the MultiMac NIC drivers may be found in the wiki.

New AMouse driver package (3.01.01) released

Arca Noae is pleased to announce the immediate availability of a new release of our AMouse driver package.

This package contains the following updates:

The XWP widget is now included.
Misc minor bug fixes.

Please read the ReadMe.txt file that comes with this package and also provided on the wiki. If you have problems with this software, please report the problem in the ticketing system. Simply log in with your Arca Noae credentials, select AMouse from the list of projects, and open a ticket.

If you haven’t yet purchased a software subscription, this is a great reason to do so now.

More information about the AMouse driver may be found in the wiki.

ACPI Package version 3.23.04 released

Arca Noae is pleased to announce the immediate availability of our ACPI Package for OS/2 and eComStation version 3.23.04.

This release contains the following changes:

Updated to ACPICA 20160930. See acpica.org for details.
Fixed minor issue when running in PIC mode related to the 64 interrupt support change.
Improved how the PSD integrates with the kernel. This fixes a minor issue related to the 64 interrupt support.
Fixed a problem in InstallDebugFiles.cmd.

More information about the ACPI Package may be found in the ACPI wiki.

If you haven’t yet purchased a software subscription, this is a great reason to do so now.

ACPI package version 3.23.03 released

Arca Noae is pleased to announce the immediate availability of our ACPI Package for OS/2 and eComStation version 3.23.03.

This release contains the following changes:

Updated to ACPICA 20160831.
Added support for up to 64 interrupts.
Removed automatic fallback to VW if too many interrupts. Use of /VW is discouraged. Use of /VW can cause failures on modern hardware.
Some minor fixes to the Warpin installer.

More information about the ACPI Package may be found in the ACPI wiki.

If you haven’t yet purchased a software subscription, this is a great reason to do so now.

New MultiMac NIC driver package (20161008) released

Arca Noae is pleased to announce the immediate availability of a new release of our MultiMac NIC driver package.

This release is a refresh of the 20161005 package. There was a problem in the system library which affected all drivers in the package. If you previously installed the 20161005 package, you are strongly encouraged to download and install this package to update your drivers.

This package is just a refresh of the 20161005 release so the information for that release is the same for this one and is repeated here:

An updated E1000B driver.
An updated MMALE driver.
An updated MMLEM driver.
An updated MMRE driver.
An updated MMAE driver.
An updated MMALC driver.
A new MMIGB driver for older Intel NICs.
A new MMSK driver for SysKonnect SK-NET NICs.
All the other drivers are not changed at all. In fact, they are the same files that were distributed in the last release simply copied into this current release for convenience.

Note that when you install this package, four of the drivers are marked as untested (MMAE, MMALC, MMIGB, MMSK) and are not automatically selected for installation. This means that the developer does not have the hardware to test these drivers and could not get someone to test them. If you want to use these drivers, you must select them on the packages page of the installer. If you use one of these four drivers and would like to become the official tester for it, please see the info section of the .txt file for the driver (mmae.txt for example) after installation, or the ReadMe on the wiki.

If you haven’t yet purchased a software subscription, this is a great reason to do so now.

More information about the MultiMac NIC drivers may be found in the wiki.

New MultiMac NIC driver package (20161005) released

Arca Noae is pleased to announce the immediate availability of a new release of our MultiMac NIC driver package.

More information about the MultiMac NIC drivers may be found in the wiki.

New in this release:

An updated E1000B driver.
An updated MMALE driver.
An updated MMLEM driver.
An updated MMRE driver.
An updated MMAE driver.
An updated MMALC driver.
A new MMIGB driver for older Intel NICs.
A new MMSK driver for SysKonnect SK-NET NICs.
All the other drivers are not changed at all. In fact, they are the same files that were distributed in the last release simply copied into this current release for convenience.

If you haven’t yet purchased a software subscription, this is a great reason to do so now.