Author Topic: New QSINIT aka Tetris bootloader has been updated to support ACPI.PSD 3.22  (Read 9152 times)

dbanet

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Hi OS/2World,

QSINIT is a small 32-bit something (you may call it an operating system, or a "small DOS"), that you can write applications for, and that may act as an OS/2 kernel bootloader.

The installation is fairly simple, and the advantages comparing to the original IBM OS2LDR are:
  • The "512 megabytes" problem, when the system couldn't operate and trapped on new PCs (like Intel Core i3-5-7) if the amount of the RAM installed was greater than 512 MiB, is solved. You can now use the whole physical address space with QSINIT.

  • Ability to boot nearly all OS/2 kernels existing, including the ones from IBM OS/2 Warp 3, the ones produced by the Phoenix OS/4 project, and the ones from the original Warp 4 and ACP2/MCP2, including the latest available (14.106_SMP) with support of ACPI.PSD of the latest version (3.22.03), which means full eComStation 2.2 support.

  • The one of the greatest features produced since ages: Physical Address Expansion support, which provides the system with an ability to operate with up to 64 GiB of physical memory. Unfortunately, this memory is not available to OS/2 applications directly (limitation of all OS/2 kernels existing: physical RAM plus SWAPPER.DAT <= 4 GiB. This could be fixed (OS/4)), but is provided in a form of a RAM-drive, or direct API (for programmers, might be extra-useful for VMs).

  • Full source code of QSINIT, including the parts that boot the kernel directly, is available for everyone.

  • A feature to set up Write-Combine flags on the LFB by MTRR is provided, which means that you may have Panorama video driver working as fast as with 14.106_SMP and ACPI.PSD 3.22, but with any kernel and any PSD, or none at all. If you encounter problems like slow video on some bootups due to the lacks of the way Panorama sets up caching, just turn the feature on, it will not hurt, but resolve those slowdowns.

  • Dozens of other features, including but not limited to: PXE support (install OS/2 on a PC by LAN only), VESA video support (pseudo-graphic console), disk editor (physical disks HEX-editor), full FAT support, including reading, writing and formatting drives in FAT32 or FAT16, general partition managing capabilities, including GPT partition support, and LVM support (OS/2-compatible partitioning), general boot managing features (select another partition to boot from (like with Windows installed onto), including GPT), kernel and applications select menu, outstanding flexibility, and many more. Yes, for free, and with sources.

If you want to read even more, please proceed to the google-translated web page written by QSINIT's author about QSINIT itself. There are a lot of screen shots.

If you want to download, install and start using QSINIT yourself: direct link (or by FTP). And read the included readme first.

If you want to view the sources or proceed to writing applications for QSINIT: direct FTP link. There is also a Github mirror of the sources only by Martin.



Licensing stuff.

No GPLed code has been taken place in this software. The author of this software, Dmitry Zavalskov, has reserved the copyright to himself.

The software is provided to you under the following license agreement:

Quote
License Agreement
-----------------

Binary form of this package is freeware.

Source code available for non-commercial use only.

Modifications concerning the existence and/or modification of any
copyright/author/name statements are generally not allowed.

This software is provided on an "as is" basis. The author makes no
warranties, expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, those
of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose,  with respect
to this software. The author does not warrant, guarantee or make any
representations regarding the use or the results of the use of this
software, in terms of the accuracy, reliability, quality, validity,
stability, completeness, currentness, or otherwise. The entire risk of
using this software is assumed by the user.

In no event will the author be liable to any party (i) for any direct,
indirect, special, punitive, incidental or consequential damages
(including, but not limited to, damages for loss of business profits,
business interruption, loss of programs or information, and the like),
or any other damages arising in any way out of the availability, use,
reliance on, or inability to use this software, even if the author
have been advised of the possibility of such damages, and regardless
of the form of action, whether in contract, tort, or otherwise;
or (ii) for any claim attributable to errors, omissions, or other
inaccuracies in, or destructive properties of any information.

Author is not obliged to provide maintenance or support to you.

If you don't agree with these statements, please erase this sofware.

AND
This application is based on part on:
 * zlib 1.2.5 (c) 1995-2010 Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler
 * FatFs - FAT file system module (c) 2013, ChaN.
 * PMODE 3.07 (c) 1994, Tran (a.k.a. Thomas Pytel)



Donations are welcome, as the following, quite a serious for some part of OS/2 users drawback has not yet got addressed:
  • The QSINIT bootloader is not capable of booting DBCS-enabled systems!
Be careful, and always have a backup.

The author participates the OS/2World Forums: profile link.

With best regards,
dbanet.
« Last Edit: August 25, 2014, 09:19:42 pm by Boris »

Sigurd Fastenrath

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With my OS/4 DVD project I would like to integrate the QS Loader in the "Boot from DVD process".

I use UPDCD to build the DVD, can you tell me what files and config.sys entries do I have to place in the boot images?

Thanks!

Dave Yeo

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Be nice if the QSINIT people added some versioning info to the zip files
Thanks for the work.

dbanet

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With my OS/4 DVD project I would like to integrate the QS Loader in the "Boot from DVD process".

I use UPDCD to build the DVD, can you tell me what files and config.sys entries do I have to place in the boot images?

Thanks!

I'm not sure what your boot process is. You need to replace the original OS2LDR with QSINIT's one and place QSINIT.LDI in the boot drive's root.

the QSINIT people

Dave, the only author is _dixie_ aka walking_x, all credits to him. ;)

walking_x

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Be nice if the QSINIT people added some versioning info to the zip files
Actually, there is no reason to collect old versions, but "numbered" files available in ftp://212.12.30.18/public/QS/Archive directory.
Or you can use bldlevel on OS2LDR / QSINIT.LDI files in achive.