OS2 World Community Forum

OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical => Setup & Installation => Topic started by: Neil Waldhauer on December 06, 2013, 07:26:16 pm

Title: eCS demo CD beta 5
Post by: Neil Waldhauer on December 06, 2013, 07:26:16 pm
Posting this from eCS Demo CD

running on Thinkpad W500.

I tried to boot on VGA, but got no display. I switched the display to the LCD and then when I booted I got a display.

USB support works for my thumb drive.

Thanks Roderick and everyone for all the work you did.
Title: Re: eCS demo CD beta 5
Post by: Martin Iturbide on December 06, 2013, 09:48:32 pm
Hi Neil

Is this a private beta, or is it available for public download?

Regards
Title: Re: eCS demo CD beta 5
Post by: R.M. Klippstein on December 07, 2013, 12:16:36 am
Its a public download to be followed soon with a 2.2 beta!

klipp
Title: Re: eCS demo CD beta 5
Post by: Martin Iturbide on December 07, 2013, 03:07:00 am
I see it, it is dated as "06/12/2013", right?

A formal announcement will be nice, but for the moment I'm downloading it to check it out.
Title: Re: eCS demo CD beta 5
Post by: Pete on December 07, 2013, 05:42:05 pm
Hi Martin

The below was posted to the eCSTestTeam mailing list today (06/12/2013) and is the closest to a formal announcement I've seen so far.

Regards

Pete



[ eComStation Test Team ]

As a runup to a new eCS 2.2 beta DVD we released a new demo CD today.
It has the latest USB, Panorama, AHCI, DANIS506.ADD and ACPI onboard.

Let us know how it works. This should especially fix the USB keyboard and mouse problems.

http://www.ecomstation.com/democd

Good  luck,

Roderick Klein
Mensys B.V.
Title: Re: eCS demo CD beta 5
Post by: dpshea on December 08, 2013, 02:47:09 am
I have just tried the new demo CD - it works a lot better than the last one.  It works well on my Lenovo T500 with Intel 4965 wifi chip - genmac works - internet works.  No sound however.

David
Title: Re: eCS demo CD beta 5
Post by: David McKenna on December 08, 2013, 07:17:14 pm
 Just tried this demo...

  On my desktop it works booting with defaults... all hardware is detected properly (including sound). The screen is properly detected (1680x1050) and USB works fine. I can browse the internet. The AHCI driver is loaded, but for some reason, none of my hard drives can be read, but maybe that is by design?

   On my laptop (Gateway 7405GX), I can never get the desktop to appear - it is always a blank screen using either Panorama (which I could never get to work with anyway) or SNAP (which does work when booted from hard disk - Radeon Mobility 9600). I tried every setting on the 'boot with own values' screens, but nothing ever works. Also, during boot, the NIC is detected (VIA Rhine II) but improperly setup - there is an error: 'IRQ not properly set'. This is known to happen with the SMP kernel if a parameter in protocol.ini is not properly set for high IRQ's (which I suspect is not being done because if I choose 'legacy hardware' during setup, this error does not appear). Also, my WiFi (Broadcom b/g) is not detected, even though there is a GENMAC driver for it (it IS detected when installing eCS 2.1). It seems it is not available in the list of NICs in the 'boot with own values' page....
Title: Re: eCS demo CD beta 5
Post by: Andreas Schnellbacher on December 08, 2013, 07:41:44 pm
none of my hard drives can be read, but maybe that is by design?

Yes, that was already the case with the first demo CD.
Title: Re: eCS demo CD beta 5
Post by: Doug Bissett on December 09, 2013, 08:05:21 am
I tried it on my Lenovo ThinkPad T510. It seems to work, as expected. It picks up the Intel wired NIC, and ignores the unsupported Realtek wireless NIC (as expected). Sound works. USB works.

I was under the impression that ALL hard disk volumes would be unusable, but the FAT32 partition reads with no trouble. I didn't try writing to it, but I expect that it would work.

I also tried on my Lenovo ThinkPad L530 (with UEFI BIOS). It seems to work okay (with the same problems as seen with eCS 2.1), but there is no sound. The L530 requires the latest UniAud to produce any sounds at all (and it is not right). Earlier versions will not even load. The FAT32 drive works.

A brief test, on both machines, indicates that it should work. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of programs to test with.

It seems to be adequate to indicate whether eCS will run on a particular machine, although there are probably some situations where the demo won't run, while the real thing will probably work, with a bit of tweaking. The demo is certainly NOT going to encourage anybody to switch to eCS. The user will need more than that to even consider trying the demo, never mind pay to get the real thing.
Title: Re: eCS demo CD beta 5
Post by: djcaetano on December 10, 2013, 12:28:20 pm
It (sort of) works on my Intel DH67CL motherboard running an Intel i7. It is a lot better than previouly, when it just hangs on boot or keyboard/mouse did not work.
I was not able to boot using multi core (only single core); network card was not detected (I don´t know if it is supported: Intel
82579V Gigabit (10/100/1000 Mb/s) Ethernet LAN controll); audio support could be enabled, but no sound at all (I don´t know if it is supported: 10-channel (7.1+2) Intel High Definition Audio (Intel HD Audio) using a Realtek* ALC892 audio code).

Besides that, it really is an improvement over previous eCS iterations.

Regards,
Daniel Caetano
Title: Re: eCS demo CD beta 5
Post by: warp on December 10, 2013, 09:46:27 pm
I tried the new demo CD on my laptop and on my desktop.

It booted well on both computers, but the sound doesn't work on both of them.

About the laptop, the network card doesn't work either. Probably the Genm32 driver (which I installed on eCS 2.1) is not included in the demo CD.

The unpacking procedure of the 3 diskettes is faster on the laptop than on the desktop, which has a 4 core processor!

The ACPI on the desktop shows only one processor, instead of 4.

I would like to promote the Demo CD to people.
Title: Re: eCS demo CD beta 5
Post by: Doug Bissett on December 11, 2013, 12:34:51 am
Quote
but the sound doesn't work on both of them.

Are you sure that the volume is turned up enough to hear sound? I found that it was turned way down (probably to prevent speaker, and ear, damage).

Quote
The ACPI on the desktop shows only one processor, instead of 4.

The DEMO is set to use only one processor (not sure why).

I failed to note, in an earlier post, that the realtek wired NIC, on my Lenovo ThinkPad L530, was properly detected, and worked, as expected.
Title: Re: eCS demo CD beta 5
Post by: Roderick Klein on December 11, 2013, 09:37:42 am
The reason the demo CD runs only in single core mode is because booting from CD running in SMP mode, eCS  crashes on some systems.
This problem does not occur when booted from hard disc. The issue is on the list of items to fix as we would of course love to demonstrate the
SMP support of eCS. It has also been looked into (debugged) to try and find why this crash occurs when booted from CD.

In the preboot menu you can switch on manually the SMP support, but note eCS might crash.


Roderick Klein
Mensys B.V.
Title: Re: eCS demo CD beta 5
Post by: warp on December 11, 2013, 02:58:27 pm
I tried the Demo Cd on my desktop pc again. The network chip is a Realtek one and it works well.

About the sound, as I already said, it doesn't work. I attach a picture of the "System sound".

The first impressions about the new Demo Cd are positive ones.


Quote
but the sound doesn't work on both of them.

Are you sure that the volume is turned up enough to hear sound? I found that it was turned way down (probably to prevent speaker, and ear, damage).

Quote
The ACPI on the desktop shows only one processor, instead of 4.

The DEMO is set to use only one processor (not sure why).

I failed to note, in an earlier post, that the realtek wired NIC, on my Lenovo ThinkPad L530, was properly detected, and worked, as expected.
Title: Re: eCS demo CD beta 5
Post by: Roderick Klein on December 11, 2013, 03:32:50 pm
Most likely the audio driver works when you select it in the pre boot menu (boot with own value's).

What is a real problem is that the mixer with audio chips per mainboard/laptop manufactor are WIRED different.
The result is the audio is played but you don't hear it. We are still looking to fix this. But its not an easy one.
I forgot the technicall details.

Roderick
Title: Re: eCS demo CD beta 5
Post by: jdeb on December 11, 2013, 09:24:30 pm
Much better ! Great Job!

Default Boot...It boots up fast. 1 out of 4 cores. No audio. No flash video. Thumb drive in USB works. Posting from Demo CD. AM3 board 770 Chip-set, AMD X4-965 quad Core. Realtec Lan.

All cores show when manual SMP mode, no crash. Same with Audio, works fine.
Title: Re: eCS demo CD beta 5
Post by: warp on December 12, 2013, 02:52:37 pm
I am writing this post from the desktop pc with eCS Demo Cd 2.2. As I already said, the system works fine and the ACPI recognized all 4 processors! The 16 Gbyte Corsair USB key has been properly detected.

I have chosen "boot with your own values" and the ALSA driver was already enabled. In spite of that, the sound is still missing. Motherboard ASUS M4A88T-V EVO with AMD 880G / SB 710 chipset.

Audio ALC892 8-channel High Definition Audio Codec

Anyway, a good job!


Most likely the audio driver works when you select it in the pre boot menu (boot with own value's).

What is a real problem is that the mixer with audio chips per mainboard/laptop manufactor are WIRED different.
The result is the audio is played but you don't hear it. We are still looking to fix this. But its not an easy one.
I forgot the technicall details.

Roderick
Title: Re: eCS demo CD beta 5
Post by: arr531 on December 15, 2013, 12:06:45 am
I am running the demo cd on a Dell Insprion 8200 laptop. I don't know if this has something to do with no sound but I did notice that the audio device and the usb host controller are sharing the same interrupt. I don't know if 11 is shareable or not. They are the only 2 devices that show as sharing the same interrupt. I ran it on my desktop which is a Dell Dimension 4700 and it has a Intel ICH6 audio chip and if I recall it was using interrupt 23. On that machine there is no audible sound as well. Other than this, all the rest of the hardware in the machines seems to work.
Title: Re: eCS demo CD beta 5
Post by: ivan on December 15, 2013, 12:25:31 am
Adam,

The IRQ does not have to be shareable but the drivers have to be able to share an IRQ for anything to work correctly.
Title: Re: eCS demo CD beta 5
Post by: Joseph M. Kempf on March 29, 2014, 10:46:30 pm
I am writing this post from the desktop pc with eCS Demo Cd 2.2. As I already said, the system works fine and the ACPI recognized all 4 processors! The 16 Gbyte Corsair USB key has been properly detected.

I have chosen "boot with your own values" and the ALSA driver was already enabled. In spite of that, the sound is still missing. Motherboard ASUS M4A88T-V EVO with AMD 880G / SB 710 chipset.

Audio ALC892 8-channel High Definition Audio Codec

Anyway, a good job!

<SNIP>

I hope to try this eCS v2.2 beta on an Motherboard ASUS A88X-Plus motherboard with an AMD A10 four core CPU later this week with audio; ALC887 High Definition Audio Codec.  I'll report how it goes.   I'm please how this beta works so far on a MSI FM2 A75MA-P33 motherboard with an AMD A10 four core CPU. So far no sound with the ALC887 on the MSI motherboard.