UVC Webcam Support for OS/2 in an SMP environment

[Wim Brul]

Stichting Voice International has donated me a refurbished DELL LATITUDE E6500 laptop which enables me to develop and test my OS/2 software in an SMP environment.

I have been busy the last couple of months trying to solve the webcam timeout issue when running on an SMP system. I had to make a small change in the usbehcd.sys device driver. I modified Lars' latest source code i.e. the source code of his 10.207 USBEHCD.SYS device driver as he maintains it in the Netlabs USB repository. Moreover I had to modify my webcam programs to avoid a trap in usbehcd.sys upon exiting these. Now I am able to run the laptop internal webcam as well as the Logitech C250 webcam while running eComStation 2.0 with 2 CPU's active and I did not encounter any timeout nor traps anymore.

Several German people as to Webcam and Mehrkernprozessoren - Wim Bruls Treiber) have already been busy testing with good results too. Therefore I have updated my UVC Webcam Support web page with WebSee11.zip and WebSee11s.zip and I have put these now open source products on hobbes too. I have attached uvcsmp1.zip containing my 13.20160904 USBEHCD.SYS device driver with installation instructions  for any volunteers to try and test on their systems.

[Doug Bissett]

First, thanks for your work. It is much appreciated.

Now, I have a problem, that I can't seem to get a handle on. At one time (months ago), WebSee10.zip was working, with the Ricoh camera in my Lenovo ThinkPad L530. I don't remember the USB driver version, but I do remember complaining to Arca Noae, that websee did not work with whatever was the current USB driver stack at the time. They fixed the problem, but I don't remember if I ever tried it with the 11.14 version (I think I did).

Before trying the new websee, I tried the old one, and all I get with uvcview.exe, and weblook, is a flash of an opening window, and it closes. No error messages, that I can find. PMDLL indicates that all DLLs are present. USBDOCK shows the camera, and the camera works in windows (of course). Webview opens a black window.

Okay, so I tried Lars' 10.207 driver. It is the same, so I tried your updated USBEHCD.SYS. No change.

Then, I tried WebSee11.zip, and it does the same thing.

It appears that something may be missing. Any suggestions?

[Wim Brul]

Perhaps \OS2\DLL\USBCALLS.DLL has not been replaced because it was locked? Perhaps wrong version \ECS\DLL\USBCALLS.DLL still exists?

[Doug Bissett]

Perhaps \OS2\DLL\USBCALLS.DLL has not been replaced because it was locked? Perhaps wrong version \ECS\DLL\USBCALLS.DLL still exists?

Well, that looks like a possibility. I found USBCALLS.DLL, from 2014, in the RPM/YUM directory structure (which is the one that will be used). I am not too sure why it is there, the package that is supposed to do that isn't installed (but I may have installed it, and uninstalled it, at one time). After quickly removing it, and rebooting, I still have the same problem. I did verify that there is only one copy, from Aug 30, in \OS2\DLL.

I will have to try to figure it out later.

Thanks...

[Doug Bissett]

Well, I am not sure why it didn't work before. It must have known I was in a hurry.    It is working now.

[David McKenna]

 Thanks, Wim! This works great with my Logitech C250 and no more hangs. I had one snag at first - I was getting a 'UVC camera not found!' message when I started uvcview, even though the camera showed up in USBDock. It turned out I had a line in CONFIG.SYS for your usbecd.sys driver to run the webcam on older software. Once I took that out, everything worked great.

 Do you (or anyone) know if there is a driver for the microphone in this webcam? Would be great if audio could be added to the weblook/webview software. Would make a nice 'Skype' like conferencing setup.

[ivan]

Out of interest, I would like to get a camera working, what version of USBCALLS.DLL does this require?  If the answer is the latest one then I have a problem since TAME will only work with the one supplied with it and I need the USB scanner to work.

[Greg Pringle]

Sounds like good work on the camera. It might be noted that standalone web cameras have a java interface in addition to the windows based web version. For this type of camera I hacked the interface and posted the results on another thread here that shows how to use standalone cameras by only having java installed in OS/2.

[Wim Brul]

Out of interest, I would like to get a camera working, what version of USBCALLS.DLL does this require?  If the answer is the latest one then I have a problem since TAME will only work with the one supplied with it and I need the USB scanner to work.

You need the latest version i.e. usbdrv207.zip from Lars Erdmann.