OS2 World Community Forum

OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical => Setup & Installation => Topic started by: Bennie Nelson on June 10, 2017, 05:05:29 pm

Title: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: Bennie Nelson on June 10, 2017, 05:05:29 pm
I am really pleased with ArcaOS, but I have run into one issue. For a number of years I have been running eComstation in virtualbox (most recently, v5.1.14) with widescreen video support working just fine (1920 x 1200, 1920x1080, and 2560x1440). With ArcaOS, however, I have not been able to get any widescreen resolutions to show up in the Screen dialog for Snap, Panorama, or Gengradd. Has anyone else gotten ArcaOS to recognize widescreen resolutions in Virtualbox?

Thanks,
Bennie Nelson

Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: Doug Bissett on June 10, 2017, 05:59:44 pm
I am really pleased with ArcaOS, but I have run into one issue. For a number of years I have been running eComstation in virtualbox (most recently, v5.1.14) with widescreen video support working just fine (1920 x 1200, 1920x1080, and 2560x1440). With ArcaOS, however, I have not been able to get any widescreen resolutions to show up in the Screen dialog for Snap, Panorama, or Gengradd. Has anyone else gotten ArcaOS to recognize widescreen resolutions in Virtualbox?

Thanks,
Bennie Nelson

Never, without using the wide screen activator (I don't even remember where that is, and it is probably not a good solution). There may be something in VBox that will add more resolutions.

I recommend that you do NOT use Panorama, or SNAP. They use GRADD, which is modified by the VBox additions, to make it use the host video driver. Panorama, or SNAP, may not even be used, or they are simply extra overhead that you don't need.
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: Bennie Nelson on June 10, 2017, 08:04:38 pm
VirtualBox has a command for adding custom video resolutions (example: "vboxmanage setextradata "VMNAME" CustomVideoMode1 "1920x1200x32"). I tried this with and without the VB Guest Additions, and I did try the ArcaOS-supplied Gengradd driver, but nothing has worked.

VirtualBox, eComstation 2.1, Panorama, VB OS2 Guest Additions, and widescreen formats have worked for me for a few years, so I thought it would work with ArcaOS, as well.

I do recall the widescreen activator, but I have not found it this time around, and I don't have any mention in my installation notes from the past that indicates I ever tried to use it.

Thanks for the quick reply, Doug.

Bennie
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: Remy on June 10, 2017, 10:08:58 pm
Hi Bennie

I would suggest you to give a try after issue of following commands from under virtualbox path where vboxmanage.exe is
a/ VboxManage setextradata global GUI/MaxGuestResolution any
b/ VboxManage setextradata "ArcaOS v5" "CustomVideoMode1" "1440x900x32"

I think that you should be able to see the 1440x900 into tee sreen resolution for panorama and if you already have defined enough video storage, you should be able to selet it. Are you ?

Cheers/2 
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: Doug Bissett on June 11, 2017, 04:20:05 am
Quote
VirtualBox, eComstation 2.1, Panorama, VB OS2 Guest Additions, and widescreen formats have worked for me for a few years, so I thought it would work with ArcaOS, as well.

It should. There is really no difference in that part of VBox, or OS/2 video support, that I know of.

Quote
Thanks for the quick reply, Doug.

Pure luck. I probably won't be back for  a few days now. When I get a chance, I will see if I can figure it out. Feel free to experiment.
Title: [Solved] Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: Bennie Nelson on June 11, 2017, 07:10:28 pm
I built a testbed VM (Gengradd video, no Guest Additions) and ran the suggested commands:
VboxManage setextradata "VM-NAME" GUI/MaxGuestResolution any
VboxManage setextradata "VM-NAME" CustomVideoMode1 "2560x1440x32"

After the reboot of the VM, the Screen dialog was updated to include 2560x1440x32. I selected it and rebooted with no problems. Installing the Guest Additions worked with no trouble also. I'm still experimenting with the original VM to see if there is a way to feed the MaXGuestResolution and CustomVideoMode data, but have not had any success, as of yet.

I consider this one solved. Thanks for the help.

Bennie Nelson
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: madbrain on January 10, 2019, 11:50:26 pm
Bennie,
I realize this is an old topic, but I could never get any custom resolution to work in either ECS or ArcaOS under Virtualbox, even with a brand new VM and GENGRADD.
Same problem under VB 5.2 and the recently released 6.0 . I will try with 5.1.14 that you had success with, but not too hopeful.
I wonder what is different about your system.
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: madbrain on January 11, 2019, 12:32:59 am
Bennie,
I realize this is an old topic, but I could never get any custom resolution to work in either ECS or ArcaOS under Virtualbox, even with a brand new VM and GENGRADD.
Same problem under VB 5.2 and the recently released 6.0 . I will try with 5.1.14 that you had success with, but not too hopeful.
I wonder what is different about your system.

Unfortunately, VB 5.1.14 does not run at all on the current version of Windows 10, so that's not an option.
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: Bennie Nelson on January 11, 2019, 05:51:17 pm
I apologize for not following up on this issue. I did eventually discover that the higher resolutions needed to be enabled through a newer VirtualBox command:
VboxManage setextradata "VBOXname" GUI/MaxGuestResolution any

Once I ran this command (replacing "VBOXname" with the specific name of the virtual machine), I gained access to the higher resolutions, such as 2560x1440x32.

Regards,
Bennie Nelson
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: madbrain on January 11, 2019, 10:49:43 pm
I apologize for not following up on this issue. I did eventually discover that the higher resolutions needed to be enabled through a newer VirtualBox command:
VboxManage setextradata "VBOXname" GUI/MaxGuestResolution any

Once I ran this command (replacing "VBOXname" with the specific name of the virtual machine), I gained access to the higher resolutions, such as 2560x1440x32.

Regards,
Bennie Nelson

Unfortunately, I have already tried that (see above), but I still couldn't get it to work.
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: madbrain on January 11, 2019, 11:12:06 pm
I apologize for not following up on this issue. I did eventually discover that the higher resolutions needed to be enabled through a newer VirtualBox command:
VboxManage setextradata "VBOXname" GUI/MaxGuestResolution any

Once I ran this command (replacing "VBOXname" with the specific name of the virtual machine), I gained access to the higher resolutions, such as 2560x1440x32.

Regards,
Bennie Nelson

Unfortunately, I have already tried that (see above), but I still couldn't get it to work.

I think I figured out the root cause of my problem : there is a race condition in Virtualbox.

When using Vboxmanage, one must close the Virtualbox GUI, even if no VM is currently running. Otherwise, changes made by command-line are discarded by the GUI when starting the VM !

I was able to get my ECS VM with Gengradd to show all new resolutions this way.
However, there is severe display corruption at 3840x2160x32 . 2560x1600x32 seems to work OK - and that resolution actually shows out of the box. But of course it doesn't fill my screen.

I then installed SNAP and rebooted this same ECS VM, and it won't show any custom resolution, unfortunately.
Panorama shows all the custom resolutions, but has display corruption too. Some of it is related to the mouse pointer, but not all. This may be related to the lack of OS/2 additions on this VM.

On to try the ArcaOS VM now ...



Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: madbrain on January 11, 2019, 11:44:46 pm
On to try the ArcaOS VM now ...

Same deal, basically. ArcaOS will run with Panorama at 3840x2160x32 . But there is very severe display corruption.
The mouse pointer often gets "lost". It just disappears after repainting problems. I tried using the comet pointer also. It's helpful to a degree. But once I move the mouse over the corrupt areas of the display, it gets lost too, like in the Bermuda's triangle.
I tried using the GENGRADD.DLL from the VBOX OS/2 additions, but everything went crazy at this resolution, even keyboard input was messed up.
Overall, it's essentially unusable at 3840x2160x32 due to the painting/ corruption problems.
I wonder if the issue is due to the amount of VRAM required. One page takes 31.6 MB in UHD with 32 bpp.
2560x1600 at 32bpp is just under 16MB, and has no issues. Maybe 3840x2160x16 will work as it will fit in 16MB also. Going to experiment more ...
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: madbrain on January 12, 2019, 12:00:50 am
2560x1600 at 32bpp is just under 16MB, and has no issues. Maybe 3840x2160x16 will work as it will fit in 16MB also. Going to experiment more ...

So, 3840x2160x16 (64K color) worked under ECS with Panorama. I guess I was right about this 16MB VRAM issue.

However, no luck getting it to work under ArcaOS, which ships with a different version of Panorama. Only 16M color modes are showing in ArcaOS in Panorama, strangely. No 64K color modes.

I tried to revert to GENGRADD in ArcaOS with "SETUP.CMD GEN" in s:\cid\server\snap . This gets me to a state where only a single video mode is available in the display settings, 1920x1080x16M . Very odd.
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: Lars on January 12, 2019, 02:27:12 pm
1) do not use Panorama in the VM. There is absolutely no gain in doing so. GENGRADD will either work or not.
In fact, Panorama is based on GENGRADD with some very minor additional feature (saving and restoring screen parts from a memory buffer called "shadow" buffer). This speed issue is not really relevant in a VM (where the host needs to inferfere with the guest screen output anyway)

2) you can use the GENGRADD that comes with the OS/2 additions. in the past I also used the GENGRADD that comes with Panorama (it's located in \OS2\DLL) and it made no difference but I think it is a good idea to use the GENGRADD from the OS/2 additions.

2) have you increased the aperture size of the VM to 32 MB ? Of course you have to do that. If you do that you might also need to reduce the VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT value in the guest. That's because more address space is now needed for kernel addresses (due to the larger aperture size). I recommend not going beyond 2048 for VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT but you can experiment what works for you.
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: Doug Bissett on January 12, 2019, 06:53:56 pm
Quote
1) do not use Panorama in the VM. There is absolutely no gain in doing so. GENGRADD will either work or not.

I agree. Using SNAP, or Panorama, in a VM is unnecessary overhead, and does absolutely NOTHING for you.

Quote
I think it is a good idea to use the GENGRADD from the OS/2 additions.

Absolutely. It redirects video to the host video driver, probably meaning that Panorama, or SNAP, never even get used if they are installed in the guest.

Quote
2) have you increased the aperture size of the VM to 32 MB ?

I usually use 24 MB, but I have no reason to even consider using large screens. I always make the VBox window smaller than the host screen, but that is just my own preference (saves having to scroll it). The rules for the amount of video memory are the same for VBox, as they are for real machines. There is a limit, depending on how much video memory you have, and there is a limit to how much gengradd can handle (might even be 15 MB). You get the smaller of the two. The offered resolutions depend on what the BIOS offers, and VBox has ways to add custom entries to that list. If those custom entries stay within the capabilities of gengradd, and the video memory, it should work (but I must admit that I never bothered trying).

Quote
I recommend not going beyond 2048 for VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT but you can experiment what works for you.

Personally, I find that VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT, set to 2560, works best in all of my systems (even my antique IBM ThinkPad A22e, and virtual machines). Some systems will work with 3072, but most of them will produce many LIBCX log files, if I use 3072. All of them are running some version of ArcaOS, which has a patched kernel, to (partly) prevent problems with using upper shared memory space. Older versions of OS/2 probably should not go above (or below) 2048.
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: madbrain on January 12, 2019, 10:03:48 pm
1) do not use Panorama in the VM. There is absolutely no gain in doing so. GENGRADD will either work or not.
In fact, Panorama is based on GENGRADD with some very minor additional feature (saving and restoring screen parts from a memory buffer called "shadow" buffer). This speed issue is not really relevant in a VM (where the host needs to inferfere with the guest screen output anyway)

2) you can use the GENGRADD that comes with the OS/2 additions. in the past I also used the GENGRADD that comes with Panorama (it's located in \OS2\DLL) and it made no difference but I think it is a good idea to use the GENGRADD from the OS/2 additions.

So, my next question is, how to properly reinstall GENGRADD under ArcaOS ?
I tried running s:\CID\SERVER\SNAP\SETUP.CMD GEN  .
That gets me into a state where only a single resolution is shown under the "Screen" GUI tool. If I disable all custom resolutions in the VM in Virtualbox, then it only shows 1600x1200x16M .

Under ECS, reinstalling GENGRADD the same way (from ECS 2.0 CD) allows me to see all kinds of resolutions.

Quote
2) have you increased the aperture size of the VM to 32 MB ?

Actually, I increased it to 128MB. But 32MB results in the same behavior.

Quote
Of course you have to do that. If you do that you might also need to reduce the VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT value in the guest. That's because more address space is now needed for kernel addresses (due to the larger aperture size). I recommend not going beyond 2048 for VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT but you can experiment what works for you.

Looks like my VM has 2048MB in virtualbox, and the ArcaOS installer put VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT=1536 in config.sys . I left that part alone.
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: madbrain on January 12, 2019, 10:27:38 pm
There is a limit, depending on how much video memory you have, and there is a limit to how much gengradd can handle (might even be 15 MB).

Is this 15 MB limit in GENGRADD documented somewhere ? It would be nice to know if this is a problem in the GENGRADD drivers or in the Virtualbox VBE BIOS .
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: madbrain on January 12, 2019, 10:29:50 pm
Quote
1) do not use Panorama in the VM. There is absolutely no gain in doing so. GENGRADD will either work or not.

I agree. Using SNAP, or Panorama, in a VM is unnecessary overhead, and does absolutely NOTHING for you.


That's not really true. The different video drivers change the behavior of the "Screen" dialog, which is where you can select video modes.
All 3 drivers - GENGRADD, Panorama, SNAP - are showing different sets of available video modes under ArcaOS 5.0.3 .

Under ECS 2.0, GENGRADD and Panorama show the same video modes, including all the Virtualbox custom video modes.

I couldn't get SNAP drivers to show any custom video modes, either under ECS or ArcaOS .
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: Doug Bissett on January 12, 2019, 11:16:54 pm
Quote
So, my next question is, how to properly reinstall GENGRADD under ArcaOS ?
I tried running s:\CID\SERVER\SNAP\SETUP.CMD GEN

I am not sure what you have done, but that will simply install SNAP, which isn't going to help.

Just copy gengradd.dll from the OS/2 Additions to \OS2\DLL. Whether that will fix your problem(s) will depend on what else you have done. It would probably be easier to simply start over, to avoid missing something.

Quote
Looks like my VM has 2048MB in virtualbox, and the ArcaOS installer put VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT=1536 in config.sys . I left that part alone.

You misunderstand. 2048 is probably the disk size that you specified, or the virtual memory size (not clear from what you said). VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT has nothing to do with either of them. 1536 was okay, 7 years ago. It is very marginal now (depending on what software you are running). The reason to not use 3072 is that video memory reduces the total memory that is available, and video can overwrite the top of memory, or, the top of memory can be used for something else, and overwrite the video memory. Neither one is good, so I suggest 2560, which is more than safe, yet it gives you more room in the virtual memory space that OS/2 provides, than the default of 1536.

Quote
Is this 15 MB limit in GENGRADD documented somewhere ?

Not that I know about (and I could be wrong about 15 MB). I don't think I ever saw video use more than that in OS/2. Higher screen resolutions may need to be balanced, by using a lower color depth to stay within the limits.

Quote
That's not really true. The different video drivers change the behavior of the "Screen" dialog, which is where you can select video modes.
All 3 drivers - GENGRADD, Panorama, SNAP - are showing different sets of available video modes under ArcaOS 5.0.3 .

I find that unlikely, since SNAP, and Panorama, both use what gengradd tells them. Plus, all video is interfaced to the host video system, by gengradd, when using the gengradd.dll supplied by VBox additions (I doubt if SNAP or Panorama, ever get used). Gengradd simply shows the available modes, as described by the video BIOS, for VESA mode. Adding resolutions in VBox simply adds the resolution to the available list in BIOS. If gengradd can use it, it is listed in gengradd, SNAP, and Panorama. If it can't use it, for some reason, it isn't shown. Panorama is somewhat smarter about selecting resolutions though, and it should automatically choose the best one to fit the attached monitor (assuming that the monitor has the required smarts - I am not sure what support VBox has for that).

Look in the guest in C:\var\log\vbe2grad.log and that should tell you what is available, if you can make any sense out if it.
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: madbrain on January 12, 2019, 11:38:33 pm
Quote
So, my next question is, how to properly reinstall GENGRADD under ArcaOS ?
I tried running s:\CID\SERVER\SNAP\SETUP.CMD GEN

I am not sure what you have done, but that will simply install SNAP, which isn't going to help.

No, that is not correct. SNAP installation is done with :
s:\CID\SERVER\SNAP\SETUP.CMD SNAP

How am I supposed to reinstall GENGRADD ?

I have also tried DSPINSTL, but there are many different GRADD and VGA GRADD options there, and when prompted to locate the files, I am not sure what path to point.

Quote
Just copy gengradd.dll from the OS/2 Additions to \OS2\DLL. Whether that will fix your problem(s) will depend on what else you have done. It would probably be easier to simply start over, to avoid missing something.

Start over as in, reinstall the entire VM ? No, thanks. I shouldn't have to do that to switch video drivers.

Quote
You misunderstand. 2048 is probably the disk size that you specified, or the virtual memory size (not clear from what you said). VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT has nothing to do with either of them. 1536 was okay, 7 years ago. It is very marginal now (depending on what software you are running). The reason to not use 3072 is that video memory reduces the total memory that is available, and video can overwrite the top of memory, or, the top of memory can be used for something else, and overwrite the video memory. Neither one is good, so I suggest 2560, which is more than safe, yet it gives you more room in the virtual memory space that OS/2 provides, than the default of 1536.

I don't misunderstand, and I meant exactly what I wrote. 2048 MB is the amount of RAM selected in Virtualbox for my guest. It is not the disk size.
I don't believe VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT is really impacting my problems here.

Quote
Not that I know about (and I could be wrong about 15 MB).

OK, because if it was documented somewhere, that would be helpful, as that would point to a bug in GENGRADD as opposed to a bug in the VBE BIOS for virtualbox. I guess it still needs to be determined where the bug is, then.

Quote
I don't think I ever saw video use more than that in OS/2. Higher screen resolutions may need to be balanced, by using a lower color depth to stay within the limits.

Yes, and if you read my post above, you know that I already tried to use 64K color modes, but I did not succeed with any video driver under ArcaOS. All of GENGRADD, SNAP and Panorama only show 16M color modes, even when I add some 64K color modes to the guest. By contrast, in ECS 2.0, GENGRADD and Panorama work with 64K color modes, and I was able to get 3840x2160x16 to work there with GENGRADD and Panorama, without OS/2 additions, but not with SNAP.

Quote
I find that unlikely, since SNAP, and Panorama, both use what gengradd tells them.

I'm only reporting the actual behavior I'm seeing on VM here when switching between the 3 video drivers. I have been banging my head on this ther last couple days. Don't call me a liar. And please lose the condescension.

Quote
Plus, all video is interfaced to the host video system, by gengradd, when using the gengradd.dll supplied by VBox additions (I doubt if SNAP or Panorama, ever get used). Gengradd simply shows the available modes, as described by the video BIOS, for VESA mode. Adding resolutions in VBox simply adds the resolution to the available list in BIOS. If gengradd can use it, it is listed in gengradd, SNAP, and Panorama. If it can't use it, for some reason, it isn't shown. Panorama is somewhat smarter about selecting resolutions though, and it should automatically choose the best one to fit the attached monitor (assuming that the monitor has the required smarts - I am not sure what support VBox has for that).

Well, that clearly isn't how it actually works in my ArcaOS VM. The Screen dialogs are showing very different modes available. It seems some modes are being filtered somehow.

Quote
Look in the guest in C:\var\log\vbe2grad.log and that should tell you what is available, if you can make any sense out if it.

Thanks, that is actually quite helpful. Yes, I can make sense of that. Will add that info once I edit the post as I'm posting this from my Win10 host and copy/paste doesn't seem to work between guest and host.


Edit:


Panorama v1.11 log for GID=0 started at 12.1.2019 14:46:54
This copy of Panorama is licensed to Julien Pierre #XXXXX
Profile setting for Shadow...Enabled
VESA version is 200
BIOS-supplied information
OemVendorNamePtr  = C0007C7B
OemProductNamePtr = C0007C8E
VideoModePtr      = 8F000022
TotalVramSize     = 2100000
OemVendorName     = Oracle Corporation
OemProductName    = Oracle VM VirtualBox VBE Adapter
Custom resolution is disabled
VBE VRAM Base=E0000000 Size=2000000 (32768Kib) (rounded up)=2000000 (32768KiB)
Mode 0x100: 640x400x8bpp
Mode 0x101: 640x480x8bpp
Mode 0x102: 800x600x4bpp 4 1F
Mode 0x103: 800x600x8bpp
Mode 0x104: 1024x768x4bpp 4 1F
Mode 0x105: 1024x768x8bpp
Mode 0x106: 1280x1024x4bpp 4 1F
Mode 0x107: 1280x1024x8bpp
Mode 0x10D: 320x200x15bpp 1 9B
Mode 0x10E: 320x200x16bpp
Mode 0x10F: 320x200x24bpp 1 9B
Mode 0x110: 640x480x15bpp 1 9B
Mode 0x111: 640x480x16bpp
Mode 0x112: 640x480x24bpp 1 9B
Mode 0x113: 800x600x15bpp 1 9B
Mode 0x114: 800x600x16bpp
Mode 0x115: 800x600x24bpp 1 9B
Mode 0x116: 1024x768x15bpp 1 9B
Mode 0x117: 1024x768x16bpp
Mode 0x118: 1024x768x24bpp 1 9B
Mode 0x119: 1280x1024x15bpp 1 9B
Mode 0x11A: 1280x1024x16bpp
Mode 0x11B: 1280x1024x24bpp 1 9B
Mode 0x140: 320x200x32bpp
Mode 0x141: 640x400x32bpp
Mode 0x142: 640x480x32bpp
Mode 0x143: 800x600x32bpp
Mode 0x144: 1024x768x32bpp
Mode 0x145: 1280x1024x32bpp
Mode 0x146: 320x200x8bpp
Mode 0x147: 1600x1200x32bpp
Mode 0x148: 1152x864x8bpp
Mode 0x149: 1152x864x15bpp 1 9B
Mode 0x14A: 1152x864x16bpp
Mode 0x14B: 1152x864x24bpp 1 9B
Mode 0x14C: 1152x864x32bpp
Mode 0x160: 3840x2160x16bpp
Mode 0x161: 3840x2160x32bpp
Video Aperture: Base=0xE0000000 Size=0x2000000 Rounded=0x2000000
Attempt to allocate shadow buffer...Success
Shadow Buffer locked at 0x5BFE0000, Length 0x2000000 bytes
Failed to enable MTRR Write Combine caching.
PAT Write Combine caching enabled for Vram
PAT Write Combine caching enabled for VramRing0
Requested mode=160

This is with Panorama .
Looks like it sees all 32,768 KB of VRAM.

The Screen GUI is letting me select 3840x2160 resolution .
I now see that the drop-down for colors is dynamic. It depends on the resolution .
For example, at 1600x1200, the color drop-down is disabled.
But at 640x480, the color drop-down is enabled.
This is very subtle and hard to see when greyed out or not.
This is the opposite of what happened with some other OS/2 video drivers in the past, where you could always select the color depth, and then the dialog would update with the list of compatible resolutions.
When I found this, I was able to enable 3840x2160x16 bpp. It seems to work fine now with Panorama.

I still don't know why GENGRADD is messed up.

Will try again at 3840x2160x32bpp now since Panorama claims to see 32MB of VRAM, which should be enough for that mode.

Edit: looks like 3840x2160x32bpp now works. There is no major corruption like before, but still some, mostly related to the mouse pointer, which sometimes gets lost still. I will try to disable the comet pointer now.

Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: madbrain on January 13, 2019, 12:18:22 am
Edit: looks like 3840x2160x32bpp now works. There is no major corruption like before, but still some, mostly related to the mouse pointer, which sometimes gets lost still. I will try to disable the comet pointer now.

Removing the comet pointer didn't fix it. 3840x2160x32bpp still wasn't usable, even with the GENGRADD.DLL from the VB OS/2 additions, due to the mouse pointer just being "lost" and sometimes leaving a random trail.

3840x2160x16bpp seems to work, though, with Panorama. I don't know if I dare to try again with SNAP or GENGRADD now that I have it working.

SNAP has never shown any custom video modes in the Screen dialog on my VM, and GAMON / GACTRL never allowed those custom modes to work either.

And the last time I tried to revert to GENGRADD, it only showed a single video mode in the Screen dialog - no choice available at all.
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: Andreas Schnellbacher on January 13, 2019, 12:42:07 am
I don't misunderstand, and I meant exactly what I wrote. 2048 MB is the amount of RAM selected in Virtualbox for my guest. It is not the disk size.
2048 MB is also the amount that Silvan recommended, like Lars. I haven't found the thread, but it might be here. AFAIR, he wrote that setting VAL to > 2048 leads to problems. (I don't remember if that has to do with SMP or DLL unloading.)
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: Dave Yeo on January 13, 2019, 02:20:59 am
Snap will only give lots of resolution choices if using a supported chipset whereas Panorama can patch some video BIOS's to add more resolutions. In short don't bother with Snap unless you have a supported chipset (see readme in the Snap directory).
You will probably get better performance with 64K colours, only half the amount of memory involved. I see this on real hardware playing videos in the browser.
VirtualAddressLimit really depends on your hardware as IBM never really added the logic to tell where system memory ends and hardware memory starts. I've successfully used 3072 on various systems, this one got funky until I lowered it to 2560. Generally 2048 should be fine but there is a bug in the kernel where if you load DLLs high, the shared memory doesn't get released, easy to see in Theseus, hard to get more then a few days of uptime if you're opening and closing things like the browser if they're set to load DLLs high. We do only have 512MBs minus system use, so about 300MB, of lower memory.
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: madbrain on January 13, 2019, 02:57:00 am
Snap will only give lots of resolution choices if using a supported chipset whereas Panorama can patch some video BIOS's to add more resolutions. In short don't bother with Snap unless you have a supported chipset (see readme in the Snap directory).
You will probably get better performance with 64K colours, only half the amount of memory involved. I see this on real hardware playing videos in the browser.
VirtualAddressLimit really depends on your hardware as IBM never really added the logic to tell where system memory ends and hardware memory starts. I've successfully used 3072 on various systems, this one got funky until I lowered it to 2560. Generally 2048 should be fine but there is a bug in the kernel where if you load DLLs high, the shared memory doesn't get released, easy to see in Theseus, hard to get more then a few days of uptime if you're opening and closing things like the browser if they're set to load DLLs high. We do only have 512MBs minus system use, so about 300MB, of lower memory.

The hardware is a VM in this case. The 64K colors really does look worse than 16M for photos. Even the default ArcaOS logo looks worse. The gradients don't look good. But there is clearly a problem at 3840x2160x32bpp .

On bare metal, I have only nVidia video cards (many different models) and apparently Panorama cannot patch the BIOS on those either, so it is quite limited unfortunately, much more so than what I'm getting in a VM.

It still seems to me that SNAP should be able to use all the resolutions that the VESA VBE BIOS supports, which includes the custom ones for the Virtualbox VM. Somehow, Panorama can do this, and GENGRADD does this (at least on ECS), but SNAP seems to have a hardcoded set of resolutions, and nothing else works, even with GAMON / GACTRL . Anyway, I don't need 3 video drivers to work - just one is fine.

I don't think the amount of RAM is really in an issue for the OS/2 VM, whether it's 1GB or 3GB. This is a 32-bit OS that used to run just fine with <64MB of RAM. 1GB of RAM really is plenty. Maybe only browsers are pushing the envelope these days. I haven't checked how much Firefox consumes. Is there another lighter weight browser available ?

What I would really like to get to work is SMP in the guest. It seems some people have succeeded with VMWare. I won't be trying that today, though :)

Also, apparently there is a shared clipboard feature for Virtualbox.

It is referenced here :
https://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php/EComStation_2.x_as_a_VirtualBox_5.x_Guest#Shared_Clipboard

Are they talking about the Virtualbox OS/2 guest additions ? If so, which driver ? I believe I have all the additions installed in my ArcaOS VM, but shared clipboard doesn't work.

Edit: yes, it's the guest additions, which I already have. But there is a checkbox in the VM setting also, which I wasn't aware of. It works now.

Or are they referencing something else that's for ECS only ? Either way, I have an ECS 2.0 license and key, and an ECS 2.0 VM too. I haven't tried the additions in that VM yet.
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: Doug Bissett on January 13, 2019, 04:43:39 am
Quote
I don't misunderstand, and I meant exactly what I wrote. 2048 MB is the amount of RAM selected in Virtualbox for my guest. It is not the disk size.
I don't believe VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT is really impacting my problems here.

You may want to think again. VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT=2560 makes my systems usable. Without that, and without loading as much as possible in high shared memory, I get anywhere from 1 to 36 hours of uptime (usually less than 8 hours). With it, I have got as much a 7 days, and that was terminated because I had to reboot to do some updates to RPM/YUM.

Quote
3840x2160x16bpp seems to work, though, with Panorama. I don't know if I dare to try again with SNAP or GENGRADD now that I have it working.

I have no idea why you would want a resolution like that, but if it works, use it.

Quote
On bare metal, I have only nVidia video cards

NVIDIA is well known to be a very bad choice for OS/2 users, but that has nothing to do with VBox, which emulates it's own video.

Quote
I don't think the amount of RAM is really in an issue for the OS/2 VM, whether it's 1GB or 3GB.

The amount of RAM is mostly irrelevant. OS/2 will actually run with 256 MB (possibly less), but it will crawl if you try to run anything that makes it start paging. As I stated earlier, VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT has nothing to do with the amount of RAM (or disk space). Most of my OS/2 guests run with about 800 MB of memory (and VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT=2560), but I don't try to run memory hogs like Firefox in them.

Quote
But there is clearly a problem at 3840x2160x32bpp .

Does it work with a reasonable resolution (you say that it does)? Why do you want to use something like that?  It is obviously exceeding the capabilities of the OS/2 drivers. OS/2 was designed to use screen resolutions of 1280x1024x32, and the drivers have probably never been used with very large resolutions (do screens of that resolution even exist?). I use 1920x1080x32 on real hardware, with no problems, but I never tried it in a VBox. It would be larger than the host screen, forcing me to scroll it, and that becomes very old, very fast. Most of my VBox systems use 1024x768x32, but I do use 1280x1024x32 on the 1920x1080x32 monitor. I did get wide screen to work, a few years ago, but it was more trouble than it was worth, so I stopped bothering with it.

Quote
What I would really like to get to work is SMP in the guest.

I tried that a few years ago, with an eCS guest. It sort of worked, for a few minutes, then froze. I should try it again, they may have fixed something (but I doubt it). I suspect that they are using logic that mimics Hyper Threading, and that is not, at all, compatible with the OS/2 threading model. FWIW, I have tried SMP with a windows guest. The difference in performance is not that great, so I usually use single processor mode in VBox, for all guests.
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: Dave Yeo on January 13, 2019, 07:37:29 am
Snap will only give lots of resolution choices if using a supported chipset whereas Panorama can patch some video BIOS's to add more resolutions. In short don't bother with Snap unless you have a supported chipset (see readme in the Snap directory).
You will probably get better performance with 64K colours, only half the amount of memory involved. I see this on real hardware playing videos in the browser.
VirtualAddressLimit really depends on your hardware as IBM never really added the logic to tell where system memory ends and hardware memory starts. I've successfully used 3072 on various systems, this one got funky until I lowered it to 2560. Generally 2048 should be fine but there is a bug in the kernel where if you load DLLs high, the shared memory doesn't get released, easy to see in Theseus, hard to get more then a few days of uptime if you're opening and closing things like the browser if they're set to load DLLs high. We do only have 512MBs minus system use, so about 300MB, of lower memory.

The hardware is a VM in this case. The 64K colors really does look worse than 16M for photos. Even the default ArcaOS logo looks worse. The gradients don't look good. But there is clearly a problem at 3840x2160x32bpp .

OK, I agree that 16M colours look better. This is my main system and I need to be able to play videos so I compromise.
Quote

On bare metal, I have only nVidia video cards (many different models) and apparently Panorama cannot patch the BIOS on those either, so it is quite limited unfortunately, much more so than what I'm getting in a VM.

It still seems to me that SNAP should be able to use all the resolutions that the VESA VBE BIOS supports, which includes the custom ones for the Virtualbox VM. Somehow, Panorama can do this, and GENGRADD does this (at least on ECS), but SNAP seems to have a hardcoded set of resolutions, and nothing else works, even with GAMON / GACTRL . Anyway, I don't need 3 video drivers to work - just one is fine.

Testing on my T42 (ATI Mobility Radeon 7500), the stock SNAP doesn't give too many choices, but the Arca Noae Snap allows up to 2048x1536x16M with 32 MBs of video ram. Kind of irritating using it with a 1024x768 monitor but it works well. I believe you need a supported chipset to use wide resolutions.
Quote

I don't think the amount of RAM is really in an issue for the OS/2 VM, whether it's 1GB or 3GB. This is a 32-bit OS that used to run just fine with <64MB of RAM. 1GB of RAM really is plenty. Maybe only browsers are pushing the envelope these days. I haven't checked how much Firefox consumes. Is there another lighter weight browser available ?

This is about address space, not amount of ram. At one point I needed the whole 3GBs of address space to link a debug xul.dll and with only 1.5GB of real ram, even found the swapper limit of 2GB. Gave me a swap file full error and crash with lots of room, they should have used a larger type or at least unsigned:)
Firefox can use a lot of ram. It tries to allocate in high memory first. There's also the shared memory issue where loading the DLLs, especially xul.dll, into high memory helps. As mentioned, the kernel has a bug and doesn't release this memory so after a few restarts, the system will go down. I resurrected the old mozturbo for this issue, keeps the DLLs loaded and helps a lot.
There are a couple of QT4 based browsers available, they're old. Look on Netlabs, Qt4 apps.
Quote

What I would really like to get to work is SMP in the guest. It seems some people have succeeded with VMWare. I won't be trying that today, though :)

Also, apparently there is a shared clipboard feature for Virtualbox.

It is referenced here :
https://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php/EComStation_2.x_as_a_VirtualBox_5.x_Guest#Shared_Clipboard

Are they talking about the Virtualbox OS/2 guest additions ? If so, which driver ? I believe I have all the additions installed in my ArcaOS VM, but shared clipboard doesn't work.

Edit: yes, it's the guest additions, which I already have. But there is a checkbox in the VM setting also, which I wasn't aware of. It works now.

Or are they referencing something else that's for ECS only ? Either way, I have an ECS 2.0 license and key, and an ECS 2.0 VM too. I haven't tried the additions in that VM yet.

Weirdly, there was 2 guest additions updates at about the same time. the official which I assume you have, were done by Bird (Knut St. Osmunson) who did the OS/2 libc for Mozilla 1.5 and is the vbox build system maintainer at Oracle, and Valery. There's a recent thread (the one you referenced?) here on Valery's additions. They've both got positives and negatives.
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: Lars on January 13, 2019, 02:24:08 pm
"Reinstallating" GENGRADD: in fact, you don't reinstall anything but you use what is there already:

1) make sure that a file \OS2\DLL\GENGRADD.DLL exists in your guest. There should be, no matter what.
2) in the VM, load the guest extensions. You do that via the Virtualbox GUI from the VM already running. Once you do that, the CD-ROM will show the contents of the guest extensions virtual CD-ROM drive in the guest. Drill down to the OS/2 directory and copy the GENGRADD.DLL to \OS2\DLL (backup the existing one first). It is likely that you will need to unlock \OS2\DLL\GENGRADD.DLL if you want to overwrite it. You can do a "unlock \os2\dll\gengradd.dll" before you copy.
3) make sure your config.sys contains this:
SET GRADD_CHAINS=C1
SET C1=GENGRADD
if there is, delete a line starting with:
SET GREEXT
4) shutdown the guest
5) in the VM config, make sure you have set at least 32 MB of video aperture (for the screen resolution you plan to use)
6) use "vboxmanage" in your host to create the custom screen resolution, how to do this has been described multiple times
7) start the guest
8.) in the screen object in the guest, select your new resolution
9) restart the guest

The fact that the screen object looks different is due to the fact that SNAP and Panorama add additional functionality via the SET GREEXT keyword in config.sys. But this is completely irrelevant to what you are trying to achieve (to add and use your own resolution). That can be achieved with naked GENGRADD (which does not require the SET GREEXT config.sys setting).

i am using Virtualbox 6.0 under Windows, I am using GENGRADD in the guest with the guest extensions' supplied GENGRADD.DLL and I can successfully define and use a 1920x1080x32bit video mode.

If you insist on using PANORAMA, then make sure that you disable "shadow buffer" in the screen object. It is possible that this negatively interferes with what the host system needs to do.


Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: madbrain on January 13, 2019, 10:20:29 pm
8.) in the screen object in the guest, select your new resolution

Thanks. I followed your instructions. My problem is that at step 8, the only resolution shown is now 3840x2160x65536 . This is the last video mode I had chosen under Panorama. There is no "choice" of resolution that I can make. Something is messed up with the Screen object with ArcaOS with GENGRADD once Panorama has been installed previously. This bug only happens on ArcaOS. On ECS, I get a whole list of video modes to choose from, from 320x200x256 all the way to 3840x2160x16877216 .

Quote
The fact that the screen object looks different is due to the fact that SNAP and Panorama add additional functionality via the SET GREEXT keyword in config.sys. But this is completely irrelevant to what you are trying to achieve (to add and use your own resolution). That can be achieved with naked GENGRADD (which does not require the SET GREEXT config.sys setting).

I have removed SET GREEXT from my CONFIG.SYS as you instructed, yet I still have this problem.

Quote
If you insist on using PANORAMA, then make sure that you disable "shadow buffer" in the screen object. It is possible that this negatively interferes with what the host system needs to do.

Thanks, will keep that in mind.
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: madbrain on January 13, 2019, 10:32:39 pm

Quote
3840x2160x16bpp seems to work, though, with Panorama. I don't know if I dare to try again with SNAP or GENGRADD now that I have it working.

I have no idea why you would want a resolution like that, but if it works, use it.

Simple - I have a triple monitor setup. The left and center monitors are 32" and Ultra HD 4K, which means 3840x2160 is the native resolution. The third one on the right is 23" and HD, but I have it setup in portrait mode, at 1080x1920 . I want the guest to have 1:1 pixel mapping, to avoid scaling, which creates artifacts.

Quote
Quote
On bare metal, I have only nVidia video cards

NVIDIA is well known to be a very bad choice for OS/2 users, but that has nothing to do with VBox, which emulates it's own video.


Well, it is related for me, since the lack of nVidia driver for OS/2 prevents me from running on bare metal. Virtualbox is the only way for me to get a decent resolution.


Quote
Does it work with a reasonable resolution (you say that it does)? Why do you want to use something like that?  It is obviously exceeding the capabilities of the OS/2 drivers. OS/2 was designed to use screen resolutions of 1280x1024x32, and the drivers have probably never been used with very large resolutions (do screens of that resolution even exist?).

It is 2019, not 1992 . Many monitors have higher resolution. My two 4K monitors are LG 32UD59-B, which were only about $400 each last year. Some monitors exist that are even higher resolution. There are 5K displays at 5120x2800, and 8K displays at 7680x4320. Those are currently out of my price range, but I have no doubt I will move on to higher resolution at some point when they become affordable.

Quote
What I would really like to get to work is SMP in the guest.

I tried that a few years ago, with an eCS guest. It sort of worked, for a few minutes, then froze. I should try it again, they may have fixed something (but I doubt it). I suspect that they are using logic that mimics Hyper Threading, and that is not, at all, compatible with the OS/2 threading model. FWIW, I have tried SMP with a windows guest. The difference in performance is not that great, so I usually use single processor mode in VBox, for all guests.
[/quote]

I am curious how you got eCS to see more than one processor. I have not succeeded so far. Probably should be its own thread.
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: Lars on January 14, 2019, 09:08:31 am
I tried to use more than one CPU in Virtualbox 6.0 just a few days ago (the system has an Intel CPU).
When doing a long build process the system would not freeze but the processes (compiler,linker) would not finish and I had to do a Ctrl-C.

In short: it still does not work and I would not bother.
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: Doug Bissett on January 14, 2019, 09:19:43 pm
Quote
It is 2019, not 1992 .

But OS/2 is from 1996, not 2019. Arca Noae does have the source for Panorama, and SNAP, but nobody has the time to do much with them. There are far more important things to do, than try to make 4K, or 8K, screens work. You are using VBox, use a screen resolution that is more reasonable, and it will just be another window on your monitors. I haven't tried multiple monitors, in VBox, but that may work too.

Quote
I am curious how you got eCS to see more than one processor. I have not succeeded so far. Probably should be its own thread.

Have you ever looked through all of the VBox settings, for each guest? It is there, along with many other settings that can be useful (and a lot that won't do much for you). Depending on what, and how, you did the OS/2 install, you may also need to install the SMP kernel support.

I will mention, that the default VBox settings for OS/2 4.5 are far from ideal for ArcaOS, or eCS. They work fine with the default ArcaOS installer for Virtual Machines, but you can do many things to make ArcaOS work much better. If you do make changes, do not use the default ArcaOS installer for Virtual Machines, or it might not work (depending on what you do, in both VBox, and the guest). Use the highest level installer. A few years ago, I did post instructions for doing a proper setup, but I can't find that now. I will try to create a new set of instructions, when I find some time (probably not soon).

Quote
In short: it still does not work and I would not bother.

Thanks for that. From what I have seen, it appears that VBox is using a Hyper Threading model, and Hyper Threading is definitely not OS/2 friendly, even on real hardware. I would assume, that the host can use Hyper Threading, while running VBox, if a user allows it. I always keep it off, because I use ArcaOS on my real hardware too.
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: madbrain on January 15, 2019, 01:17:18 am
But OS/2 is from 1996, not 2019. Arca Noae does have the source for Panorama, and SNAP, but nobody has the time to do much with them. There are far more important things to do, than try to make 4K, or 8K, screens work. You are using VBox, use a screen resolution that is more reasonable, and it will just be another window on your monitors. I haven't tried multiple monitors, in VBox, but that may work too.

OS/2 is older than that, but since ArcaOS is being made available nowadays, I think it's fair that it should current monitors of the day. I don't know how you get to decide what's more important. This is pretty damn important to me.

Quote
Have you ever looked through all of the VBox settings, for each guest? It is there, along with many other settings that can be useful (and a lot that won't do much for you). Depending on what, and how, you did the OS/2 install, you may also need to install the SMP kernel support.

Yes, actually, I have played around with guest and with installers, and ACPI, and never had any luck getting more than 1 CPU to show.

Quote
I will mention, that the default VBox settings for OS/2 4.5 are far from ideal for ArcaOS, or eCS. They work fine with the default ArcaOS installer for Virtual Machines, but you can do many things to make ArcaOS work much better.

Any specifics as to which settings you changed that improved results ? One thing I found is that using Intel HD audio for the emulated sound device is much better. AC 97 caused sounds to break down early. Even the startup system sounds are cut off.

Quote
Thanks for that. From what I have seen, it appears that VBox is using a Hyper Threading model, and Hyper Threading is definitely not OS/2 friendly, even on real hardware. I would assume, that the host can use Hyper Threading, while running VBox, if a user allows it. I always keep it off, because I use ArcaOS on my real hardware too.

My Win10 host in this case has hyperthreading off. Hyperthreading interferes with real-time audio on my Firewire interfaces. Also, hyperthreading comes with free security vulnerabilities in the CPU. It is really best to turn it off.
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: Dave Yeo on January 15, 2019, 02:55:11 am

OS/2 is older than that, but since ArcaOS is being made available nowadays, I think it's fair that it should current monitors of the day. I don't know how you get to decide what's more important. This is pretty damn important to me.

ArcaNoae isn't a large company and has to decide how to triage needed development. Most important is basic usage on modern computers so USB type-C is pretty well at the top of the list as more and more computers only have this interface for keyboard etc.
Wireless support and UEFI are also high on the list. Support of some modern graphic boards (probably Intel) is also fairly high on the list and probably a requirement for really high resolution monitors which I guess use HDMI for input.
Not speaking for ArcaNoae but above is based on various statements made.
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: Doug Bissett on January 15, 2019, 04:45:10 am
Quote
OS/2 is older than that, but since ArcaOS is being made available nowadays, I think it's fair that it should current monitors of the day. I don't know how you get to decide what's more important. This is pretty damn important to me.

OS/2 development ceased around 1996. It would be really nice, to support "monitors of the day". In fact, it is amazing how well monitors that are not too old, are supported, considering that ONE guy does most of that, along with USB 3, WiFi, wired NIC drivers (MultiMac), AHCI, ACPI, and a lot of other things. If you are capable of writing, or modifying, video drivers, I am sure that Arca Noae would welcome the help. If not, you can wait for it, with the rest of us. We need USB3, then WiFi, UEFI, GPT disk support, and a dozen other things, before we need higher resolution screens. I hear that USB 3 is getting closer, but it doesn't exist, until it is announced.

Quote
Yes, actually, I have played around with guest and with installers, and ACPI, and never had any luck getting more than 1 CPU to show.

Show where? In the VBox settings, or in the guest? If in the guest, does it have the SMP kernel installed? The SMP kernel works fine, in one CPU, and *may* load if you define 2 CPUs, but it still doesn't work very well, if at all, in a VBox with more than 1 CPU defined. The UNI kernel will only run 1 CPU. The setting in VBox should be obvious.

Quote
Any specifics as to which settings you changed that improved results ? One thing I found is that using Intel HD audio for the emulated sound device is much better. AC 97 caused sounds to break down early. Even the startup system sounds are cut off.

The best sound device is SB16 (even with win XP as a guest, I use SB 16 - newer versions of windows won't support SB 16). More advanced devices will cause sound break up. That has always been the case in VBox. The startup sound is often cut off, it is best to eliminate that all together.

The most important settings are:

Use SATA with AHCI for disk access, also check the box that says SSD, AFTER you get it working with SATA and AHCI, (The default Virtual Machine installer settings do not support that, use the full ACPI setting). If converting, add the OS2AHCI driver, before deleting the DaniS506 driver, and changing the virtual controller settings. Add the parameters "/n /f" (without the quotes) to the OS2AHCI driver, AFTER you get it working (just like in a real machine).

Use enough memory that it never needs to swap (1536 MB is usually adequate). It cannot be more than about 3.5 GB.

Enable I/O APIC, before you install. This probably needs ACPI.

Set Paravirtualization to Default, and enable VT-x/AMD-v and Enable Nested Paging.

Video has been discussed. I never enable 2D, or 3D, support. I doubt if either one actually does anything in OS/2. There are some new settings for Graphics Controller. I haven't tried them, yet.

Audio: as mentioned above, use SB 16, and the PNP driver.

USB: select USB 2.0, until we have a USB 3 driver.

Shared folders has been enabled (in the guest) recently, in two ways. Start without that, to prevent confusion. So far, I haven't got around to trying either one seriously, and I have heard comments that neither one actually works 100%.
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: madbrain on January 15, 2019, 10:19:08 am
Quote
OS/2 is older than that, but since ArcaOS is being made available nowadays, I think it's fair that it should current monitors of the day. I don't know how you get to decide what's more important. This is pretty damn important to me.

OS/2 development ceased around 1996. It would be really nice, to support "monitors of the day". In fact, it is amazing how well monitors that are not too old, are supported, considering that ONE guy does most of that, along with USB 3, WiFi, wired NIC drivers (MultiMac), AHCI, ACPI, and a lot of other things. If you are capable of writing, or modifying, video drivers, I am sure that Arca Noae would welcome the help. If not, you can wait for it, with the rest of us. We need USB3, then WiFi, UEFI, GPT disk support, and a dozen other things, before we need higher resolution screens. I hear that USB 3 is getting closer, but it doesn't exist, until it is announced.

I have never written device drivers myself, I have been more on the application side for most of my career as a developer. My current job involves writing firmware, though, but this is completely bare metal stuff from scratch, without any OS or drivers in the picture. It keeps me very busy. If I was retired, I might play around with some of this OS/2 stuff.

Yes, the things you mention would be nice. I certainly would like to see nVidia video drivers, support for 10 gig ethernet NICs, and USB 3 . Agree about GPT. Don't really care for Wifi. And you can always get around that with a Wifi bridge and wired NIC,.
As long as there is CSM in BIOSes, I'm not sure if UEFI is so important.

Quote
Show where? In the VBox settings, or in the guest ?
Both.

Quote
If in the guest, does it have the SMP kernel installed? The SMP kernel works fine, in one CPU, and *may* load if you define 2 CPUs, but it still doesn't work very well, if at all, in a VBox with more than 1 CPU defined. The UNI kernel will only run 1 CPU. The setting in VBox should be obvious.

I think my current VMs for both ECS of ArcaOS have the UNI kernel. I'm not sure how to switch to the SMP.
I got the SMP to work on bare metal on an old AMD FX-8350 8 core chip, but not in a VM.

Quote
The best sound device is SB16 (even with win XP as a guest, I use SB 16 - newer versions of windows won't support SB 16). More advanced devices will cause sound break up. That has always been the case in VBox. The startup sound is often cut off, it is best to eliminate that all together.

Well, I used to write audio software (DMP/DSMI) so I'm pretty sensitive to this stuff. I have recently restored it from backup. had mixed results with the ICH97  in Vbox. The Intel HD in Vbox is working great. Haven't tried SB16. But back in the days, the native SB16 driver that came with OS/2 and originally written by Creative Labs had lots of bugs. Maybe SB16 in Vbox with a different driver in the guest works better, I haven't tried that yet.

Quote
The most important settings are:

Use SATA with AHCI for disk access, also check the box that says SSD, AFTER you get it working with SATA and AHCI, (The default Virtual Machine installer settings do not support that, use the full ACPI setting). If converting, add the OS2AHCI driver, before deleting the DaniS506 driver, and changing the virtual controller settings. Add the parameters "/n /f" (without the quotes) to the OS2AHCI driver, AFTER you get it working (just like in a real machine).

I hadn't noticed the SSD checkbox in the VM settings. Does that actually change anything in OS/2 (like, say, TRIM support) ?

Quote
Use enough memory that it never needs to swap (1536 MB is usually adequate). It cannot be more than about 3.5 GB.

I think MEMMAN=NOSWAP will ensure it never swaps. And enough VM RAM for the guest settings, of course

Quote
Enable I/O APIC, before you install. This probably needs ACPI.

I have ACPI already. But I think the I/O APIC wasn't set during my installs, so I need to a new VM with new install.

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Set Paravirtualization to Default, and enable VT-x/AMD-v and Enable Nested Paging.

Have those already.

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Video has been discussed. I never enable 2D, or 3D, support. I doubt if either one actually does anything in OS/2. There are some new settings for Graphics Controller. I haven't tried them, yet.

No, I don't think the 2D / 3D support do anything.

Interesting about the new graphics options in VBox 6.0 . Might have to play with that.

Quote
USB: select USB 2.0, until we have a USB 3 driver.

Thanks.

Quote
Shared folders has been enabled (in the guest) recently, in two ways. Start without that, to prevent confusion. So far, I haven't got around to trying either one seriously, and I have heard comments that neither one actually works 100%.

I tried it, and had mixed results. The shared folder didn't work in the WPS GUI at all (drives object). However, it seemed to work in most file dialogs in PM programs.
In command shells, I had great success. I was able to map a network share from my local SSD array, and HDD array on my NAS, and got much better throughput vs accessing them via Arcamapper using SMB.
We are talking about 5 Gbps vs 400 Mbps - 12.5x faster. Massive difference. Of course, it only matters if the drives you share are fast enough, but with the arrays and 10 gbps networking in the host, it was rather amazed that the old OS/2 code could manage that throughput.
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: Doug Bissett on January 15, 2019, 06:45:53 pm
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Don't really care for Wifi. And you can always get around that with a Wifi bridge and wired NIC,.

A WiFi bridge works, as long as there is a wired NIC to attach it to. apparently, newer computers don't have anything except WiFi any more (especially laptops). They don't have CD/DVD drives, or anything but USB 3, either.

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As long as there is CSM in BIOSes, I'm not sure if UEFI is so important.

Apparently, that is becoming less common too. Without some sort of BIOS support, OS/2, in it's current form, has no hope of running on new hardware. UEFI support is a much more important project, than supporting high res monitors.

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Both.

Well, if you don't enable more than one processor in VBox, you will never see it in the guest. In VBox settings, for the guest, go to System-> Processor. It is the first line.

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I think my current VMs for both ECS of ArcaOS have the UNI kernel. I'm not sure how to switch to the SMP.

Go to the file: C:\OS2\BOOT\OS2NOREV.$$$ and change the file name to something else. Now reboot, and watch when boot starts. It will tell you which kernel you are using. If you need to change it, don't use the "official" OS/2 way, do it manually (there is a comment in the  ArcaOS README under "Selective Install cautions"). In C:\OS2\INSTALL there are three directories (SMP, UNI, and W4). SMP contains the parts for the SMP kernel. replace the files of the same name , wherever they are in the boot drive. I expect that the SMP files are already installed, but perhaps not, if you used the default Virtual Machine Install.

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I got the SMP to work on bare metal on an old AMD FX-8350 8 core chip, but not in a VM.

VBox is not friendly to OS/2 SMP. As I mentioned before, it seem that they use an implementation that mimics Hyper Threading, and that conflicts with the OS/2 threading model. The results are not good. The SMP kernel works fine, if you define a single processor in VBox.

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I hadn't noticed the SSD checkbox in the VM settings. Does that actually change anything in OS/2 (like, say, TRIM support) ?

No. Trim support was needed, when SSD first appeared, Modern SSDs don't need that (and in VBox, it isn't a real SSD anyway). What it seems to do, in VBox, is eliminate the programmed delay, that simulates seek time. As long as you are using the host disk cache, the guest doesn't know the difference.

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I think MEMMAN=NOSWAP will ensure it never swaps

True, but it will also die, if it runs out of memory. I suggest that you don't use that, and let the swap code look after it.

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I have ACPI already. But I think the I/O APIC wasn't set during my installs, so I need to a new VM with new install.

I would just change the setting, and see if it works. You can always change it back if there is trouble.

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We are talking about 5 Gbps vs 400 Mbps - 12.5x faster. Massive difference. Of course, it only matters if the drives you share are fast enough, but with the arrays and 10 gbps networking in the host, it was rather amazed that the old OS/2 code could manage that throughput.

As I said, both of those shared folder things are new, and both are incomplete, so far. Since it is actually transferring data directly, it should be faster.

OS/2 is still better than win 10, in some ways. If they can ever catch up to some of the new stuff, it would probably run circles around win 10, even as a 32 bit OS. Unfortunately, windows keeps on changing the rules, and OS/2 just doesn't have the manpower to keep up. It would help, if they had the OS/2 source code, but that is either locked away in one of IBM's dungeons, or, as some reports state "they have lost it". Priorities must be established, which means that some things, like high res video, get left behind.
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: Andi B. on January 16, 2019, 09:32:03 am
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Don't really care for Wifi. And you can always get around that with a Wifi bridge and wired NIC,.

A WiFi bridge works, as long as there is a wired NIC to attach it to. apparently, newer computers don't have anything except WiFi any more (especially laptops). They don't have CD/DVD drives, or anything but USB 3, either.

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As long as there is CSM in BIOSes, I'm not sure if UEFI is so important.

Apparently, that is becoming less common too. Without some sort of BIOS support, OS/2, in it's current form, has no hope of running on new hardware. UEFI support is a much more important project, than supporting high res monitors.

As usual it depends on POV.

Doug I know you're a notebook guy. But we desktop users see these two points contrary. Wonder how the main AN customers sees this. I got the impression their company customers (which mainly pay their bills) are running dekstop systems. But maybe you've a better insight.
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: Doug Bissett on January 16, 2019, 04:33:13 pm
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Doug I know you're a notebook guy. But we desktop users see these two points contrary.

I have more desktops, than I have notebooks. This is not something unique to notebooks, desktops also have the same problems. There is no "contrary", everybody will have the same problems, and Arca Noae has put the highest priority on fixing what they can fix, in the order that they need to keep as many customers as possible happy. Unfortunately, they just don't have enough people to do all of it, immediately, and some of it takes longer than other things.

We wait, and hope. Meanwhile, it is prudent for OS/2 users to buy carefully. Manufacturers are going to create the cheapest hardware possible, for windows, simply because they can make more profit by doing that. Windows has actually changed their focus from computers to cell phones, which should give you some idea of where the computer business is headed.
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: Andi B. on January 16, 2019, 05:49:42 pm
...This is not something unique to notebooks, desktops also have the same problems.
I wasn't clear enough. I usually mean self build desktop systems. There are still a lot of good compatible boards available. And compatible industrial boards will be available even a few years from now I'm sure. Of course you have to buy proper stuff. Often not the cheapest crappiest stuff the next supermarket wants to sell you. But you've a chance to get something that works in contrary to notebooks where you don't have these option anymore.

And wifi is not needed for desktop systems. Except for the few of us who do develop wlan stuff on a desktop system ;). Otherwise no wifi needed (and often not wanted) with desktop systems.

Even USB2 is available for desktops easily. Either still on the mobo or via PCI card.

So for desktop users like me (and Julien) high resolution graphic (and/or multi-head) do have much higher priority. Of course different people - different needs. We'll see how AN sets priorities.

Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: Dave Yeo on January 16, 2019, 06:08:44 pm

And wifi is not needed for desktop systems. Except for the few of us who do develop wlan stuff on a desktop system ;). Otherwise no wifi needed (and often not wanted) with desktop systems.

Unluckily, even for desktop systems, WiFi is becoming more important. My Internet hub thingy is really designed for only WiFi access. It has one cable connection that it supports badly but works good enough for my OS/2 box. No port forwarding and such on the wired connection, only on the WiFi connections.
It's crazy, especially in highly populated areas, but it seems how residential internet is going. Generally this won't be a problem for businesses but is a consideration.
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: Doug Bissett on January 16, 2019, 08:23:06 pm
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Even USB2 is available for desktops easily. Either still on the mobo or via PCI card.

Most newer motherboards don't have a PCI slot any more. I have never seen a PCIe USB 2 adapter. Is such a thing available?

Of course, if you choose your hardware, carefully, you can still find motherboards with PCI slots, and USB 2. If you buy one of the new (even high end) machines, off the shelf, it will likely have only USB 3, no CD/DVD drive (possibly no place to put/connect one), only a couple of PCIe slots, no CSM support, and a GPT formatted disk. Even if the box comes with USB 2 connectors, there is a very good chance that they are connected to a USB 3 controller internally.

Eventually, we will run out of usable motherboards, unless you buy used (probably the best option anyway), or somebody gets these devices supported.

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Generally this won't be a problem for businesses but is a consideration.

It will be a problem for business. Perhaps not on a managed site, but lots of business people use notebooks off site, and they get to use whatever is available.
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: Andreas Schnellbacher on January 16, 2019, 09:19:06 pm
Most newer motherboards don't have a PCI slot any more.
There are a few/many, but PCI seems to die. I've searched for you, since I'm not familiar with Intel boards:

I have never seen a PCIe USB 2 adapter. Is such a thing available?
geizhals.at lists 8 pages (https://geizhals.de/?cat=ioexpcard&xf=621_PCIe+x1&v=e&hloc=de&fcols=4293&sort=p#productlist).
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: madbrain on January 17, 2019, 06:25:48 am
geizhals.at lists 8 pages (https://geizhals.de/?cat=ioexpcard&xf=621_PCIe+x1&v=e&hloc=de&fcols=4293&sort=p#productlist).

Those appear to be USB 3 cards, not USB 2.0 .
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: madbrain on January 17, 2019, 06:29:14 am
no CD/DVD drive (possibly no place to put/connect one)

As long as some form of USB is supported, this should be OK. And USB is still required for keyboard and mouse, as most motherboards lack PS/2 ports, or have only a single PS/2.

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no CSM support

I have not heard of motherboards without CSM yet.

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and a GPT formatted disk

Which is purely a software issue, not hardware.

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Even if the box comes with USB 2 connectors, there is a very good chance that they are connected to a USB 3 controller internally.

Possibly, but it would be silly to wire them that way. Most motherboards have a limited set of USB 3.0/3.1 headers, but plenty of 2.0 headers.
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: madbrain on January 17, 2019, 06:41:18 am
apparently, newer computers don't have anything except WiFi any more (especially laptops).

Have yet to see a laptop without a wired ethernet port on it. But then again, I have 5 desktops, all custom built. I hate laptops of any kind.
Even such a stupid computer still likely features a USB port, to which a supported wired USB ethernet NIC could be attached.

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UEFI support is a much more important project, than supporting high res monitors.

I really disagree there. I think there is no hope for a small community of closed source developers to catch up to all the new hardware out there. Making it work great in a VM is probably better. Seems most of the pieces are there, but not all together.

For example, reportedly, SCSI and SMP work in VMWare. Most other features work in Virtualbox. If you can just produce a few drivers/guest extensios that just work fine with the virtual machine emulators, it will be a far better use of limited developer resources, IMO, than trying to catch up to all the bare metal advancements.

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Go to the file: C:\OS2\BOOT\OS2NOREV.$$$ and change the file name to something else. Now reboot, and watch when boot starts. It will tell you which kernel you are using. If you need to change it, don't use the "official" OS/2 way, do it manually (there is a comment in the  ArcaOS README under "Selective Install cautions"). In C:\OS2\INSTALL there are three directories (SMP, UNI, and W4). SMP contains the parts for the SMP kernel. replace the files of the same name , wherever they are in the boot drive. I expect that the SMP files are already installed, but perhaps not, if you used the default Virtual Machine Install.

As I recall, there is more than just the kernel that needs to be swapped. DOSCALL1.DLL too. I ran SMP on bare metal on Athlon MP for many years, with AMD Athlon MP and the old OS2APIC.PSD .

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VBox is not friendly to OS/2 SMP. As I mentioned before, it seem that they use an implementation that mimics Hyper Threading, and that conflicts with the OS/2 threading model. The results are not good. The SMP kernel works fine, if you define a single processor in VBox.

Seems I got it to work somewhat finally, with 2 processors. 4 too, but it misbehaves (all CPUs are near full usage when idle in MPCPUPON).

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As I said, both of those shared folder things are new, and both are incomplete, so far. Since it is actually transferring data directly, it should be faster.

Yes, makes sense.

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OS/2 is still better than win 10, in some ways.

I have a hard time imagining what those could be.

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It would help, if they had the OS/2 source code, but that is either locked away in one of IBM's dungeons, or, as some reports state "they have lost it". Priorities must be established, which means that some things, like high res video, get left behind.

Very sad. I thought the OS/2 source code had been leaked in the past, and some IBM employees got fired for it. Not that I'm condoning using that, but if it is really lost, and IBM will agree to give a license, maybe it can be resurrected.
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: madbrain on January 17, 2019, 06:44:05 am
...This is not something unique to notebooks, desktops also have the same problems.
I wasn't clear enough. I usually mean self build desktop systems. There are still a lot of good compatible boards available. And compatible industrial boards will be available even a few years from now I'm sure. Of course you have to buy proper stuff. Often not the cheapest crappiest stuff the next supermarket wants to sell you. But you've a chance to get something that works in contrary to notebooks where you don't have these option anymore.

And wifi is not needed for desktop systems. Except for the few of us who do develop wlan stuff on a desktop system ;). Otherwise no wifi needed (and often not wanted) with desktop systems.

Even USB2 is available for desktops easily. Either still on the mobo or via PCI card.

So for desktop users like me (and Julien) high resolution graphic (and/or multi-head) do have much higher priority. Of course different people - different needs. We'll see how AN sets priorities.

Yes, I have 5 desktops at home, all custom built (but none with OS/2 in mind anymore). Not a single laptop. I have never bought one for myself. Only have one provided from my employer. It's connected to a docking station, KVM switch, and video adapters so it can drive my two 4K monitors. I only pop-up the screen on it because that's the only way I have found to turn it on ... Maybe I should play with the laptop's BIOS WOL options, so I don't even have to do that anymore.
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: Doug Bissett on January 17, 2019, 08:58:47 am
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As long as some form of USB is supported, this should be OK. And USB is still required for keyboard and mouse, as most motherboards lack PS/2 ports, or have only a single PS/2

"Supported", is the key. Until we have a USB 3 driver, none of that will work, unless there is a USB 2 adapter. From what I hear, new machines are all USB 3, and no USB 2. They may have USB 2 ports, but they are connected to USB 3 adapters.

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I have not heard of motherboards without CSM yet.

Apparently, there are a few around, and it is likely to go away when manufacturers decide to save a few pennies.

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Which is purely a software issue, not hardware.

True, but OS/2 does not, yet, have software that will work with a GPT format disk. In fact, Arca Noae has had to modify LVM to prevent it from damaging data on a GPT disk. That should be a temporary measure, but it is important.

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Even such a stupid computer still likely features a USB port, to which a supported wired USB ethernet NIC could be attached.

Hehe. As I understand it, there is exactly ONE USB ethernet card that works with OS/2. It is very old, and would be 100 Mbs, at best. No drivers for the rest.

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As I recall, there is more than just the kernel that needs to be swapped. DOSCALL1.DLL too. I ran SMP on bare metal on Athlon MP for many years, with AMD Athlon MP and the old OS2APIC.PSD .

Yes, there is more to it than just the kernel. OS2APIC.PSD is also very old, and unlikely to be anywhere near as good as ACPI.

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I really disagree there. I think there is no hope for a small community of closed source developers to catch up to all the new hardware out there. Making it work great in a VM is probably better.

There are too many drawbacks to running in a VM, and there are a number of VMs. Some work better than others. Some cost a lot, and VBox (one of the best, from what I have heard) is free for personal use. A VM is a poor substitute for the real thing.

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Seems I got it to work somewhat finally, with 2 processors. 4 too, but it misbehaves (all CPUs are near full usage when idle in MPCPUPON).

I gave it a try, with 2 processors. It works a LOT better than it did the last time I tried, but it eventually just stopped.

You can't believe what MPCPUMON tells you. ACPI really confuses that program. The PULSE widget, in XCenter, is far better.

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I have a hard time imagining what those could be.

Well, the big one is that OS/2 doesn't have any viruses. That doesn't mean that a virus can't do bad things to programs like Firefox, which are based on windows versions. Most of them would be totally confused by the directory layout, and if they ever tried to do something like write to a system file, they would likely just cause a crash. OS/2 will also run ancient programs, while windows is very picky about what version of a program you try to run.

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Very sad. I thought the OS/2 source code had been leaked in the past, and some IBM employees got fired for it. Not that I'm condoning using that, but if it is really lost, and IBM will agree to give a license, maybe it can be resurrected.

If it was leaked, nobody seems to know where it went. Arca Noae managed to get permission to distribute patched parts of OS/2 programs (including the kernel), but only to those who purchase ArcaOS (meaning that IBM gets a cut). They cannot (may not) distribute such things to users of older versions of OS/2.

If IBM does still have the source, it would take a large team lawyers about 3 years to sort out the licensing. Apparently, Microsoft still owns some of it, and they aren't likely to give up anything that might result in more competition. Lawyers aren't cheap, and IBM wouldn't pay a penny of it. Microsoft would probably just say "no".

OS/2 is what it is, and Arca Noae is limited in what they can do with the IBM/Microsoft code base. Others are even more limited, but they don't stand to lose the business if they get caught breaking the license terms. They may have some huge lawyer fees to pay (which could mean the end of a business), if IBM breaks tradition, and decides to go after them. So far, that hasn't happened, or it has been kept very quiet.

OS/2 is not an easy thing to work with, and those who are doing the work, are way overloaded. Hopefully, they don't burn out.
Title: Re: ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox
Post by: madbrain on January 17, 2019, 09:18:49 am
Hehe. As I understand it, there is exactly ONE USB ethernet card that works with OS/2. It is very old, and would be 100 Mbs, at best. No drivers for the rest.

Good to know. Which one is that ? And I can use LACP with 100 of them to get a 10 Gigabit connection ? ;)

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As I recall, there is more than just the kernel that needs to be swapped. DOSCALL1.DLL too. I ran SMP on bare metal on Athlon MP for many years, with AMD Athlon MP and the old OS2APIC.PSD .

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There are too many drawbacks to running in a VM, and there are a number of VMs. Some work better than others. Some cost a lot, and VBox (one of the best, from what I have heard) is free for personal use. A VM is a poor substitute for the real thing.

I disagree. In some cases, a VM is quite a bit better than bare metal. For example, I can't achieve anywhere near 4K resolution on any of my GPUs, but I can with a VM. Power management is much better also. I can suspend the VM and/or suspend the host. Suspend and resume is a vexing feature that does not work in OS/2 on bare metal.

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You can't believe what MPCPUMON tells you. ACPI really confuses that program. The PULSE widget, in XCenter, is far better.

Thanks, that does provide much better data.

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Well, the big one is that OS/2 doesn't have any viruses. That doesn't mean that a virus can't do bad things to programs like Firefox, which are based on windows versions. Most of them would be totally confused by the directory layout, and if they ever tried to do something like write to a system file, they would likely just cause a crash.

Seems there are a few.
https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/8581/how-many-os-2-viruses-were-there

In any case, the very low number of viruses is mostly a byproduct of OS/2's lack of success in the marketplace, and not anything to do with its design. It's a single-user OS, and doesn't have any notion of privileges. Any process can do anything they want, including wipe the boot sector, overwrite your motherboard's BIOS flash (if somebody ported that code to OS/2 ;)), and so on. Of course, few are going to bother with this, except maybe as an academic exercise.
I don't think it's a very good reason.

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OS/2 will also run ancient programs, while windows is very picky about what version of a program you try to run.

That's certainly true. But for these, I come back to VMs. For old programs, such as games, DOSbox is great. There are a lot of emulators for other machines, game consoles, etc.
The problems come when one wants to access physical devices that can't be emulated. For example, I recently restored a DDS backup tape I created with Bakupwiz for OS/2 in 1998. And a bunch of others made after that. Never got the Y2K bug fix for that program, if anyone has it. I couldn't do this restore on a VM, only bare metal, but it seems even that could be made to work with VMWare, if I had persisted a little bit more. I may still give it a try.

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If it was leaked, nobody seems to know where it went. Arca Noae managed to get permission to distribute patched parts of OS/2 programs (including the kernel), but only to those who purchase ArcaOS (meaning that IBM gets a cut). They cannot (may not) distribute such things to users of older versions of OS/2.

If IBM does still have the source, it would take a large team lawyers about 3 years to sort out the licensing. Apparently, Microsoft still owns some of it, and they aren't likely to give up anything that might result in more competition. Lawyers aren't cheap, and IBM wouldn't pay a penny of it. Microsoft would probably just say "no".

OS/2 is what it is, and Arca Noae is limited in what they can do with the IBM/Microsoft code base. Others are even more limited, but they don't stand to lose the business if they get caught breaking the license terms. They may have some huge lawyer fees to pay (which could mean the end of a business), if IBM breaks tradition, and decides to go after them. So far, that hasn't happened, or it has been kept very quiet.

OS/2 is not an easy thing to work with, and those who are doing the work, are way overloaded. Hopefully, they don't burn out.

Yeah, I'm sure you are right about Microsoft lawyers ...