ArcaOS widescreen video not working in virtualbox

[madbrain]

...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.

[Doug Bissett]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[madbrain]

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 ?

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 .

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 ...