Author Topic: Curious about these old patches  (Read 5892 times)

David Graser

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Curious about these old patches
« on: March 05, 2018, 06:20:43 am »
These are some patches I have used in the past.  Are any of these still relevant for ArcaOS?

1. http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/system/patches/PMFIX.zip

FIX1: SYS3171 (Stack Overflow) on PMSHELL.EXE and others. FIX2: USING PM_SystemFonts->DefaultFont CHANGES ALL FORM SIZES


2. http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/system/patches/mixed/pipepatch.zip

This patch will increase the pipe buffer size of pipes instantiated with the pipe operator | of CMD.EXE from 512 bytes to 65024 bytes (by default). This will significantly improove the throughput and reduce the CPU load. In fact it reduces the minimum number of task swiches per megabyte from 4096 to about 33.


3. http://ca-arnold.de/download/newcalls104.zip

patch for pmmerge.dll to increase performance of writing INI-files.


4.http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/util/system/cpuspeed1.4.zip

Tries to keep the CPU as cool as possible without affecting system performance by adaptive throttling using ACPI 2.0. Version 1.4.

Doug Bissett

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Re: Curious about these old patches
« Reply #1 on: March 05, 2018, 07:53:58 am »
You should ask Arca Noae about them. They may already be included, replaced by something better, or not used because they cause instability. I would suggest that #4 would probably conflict with ACPI, which does it's own cooling methods.

David Graser

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Re: Curious about these old patches
« Reply #2 on: March 05, 2018, 08:10:51 am »
These are some patches I have used in the past.  Are any of these still relevant for ArcaOS?

1. http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/system/patches/PMFIX.zip

FIX1: SYS3171 (Stack Overflow) on PMSHELL.EXE and others. FIX2: USING PM_SystemFonts->DefaultFont CHANGES ALL FORM SIZES


4.http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/util/system/cpuspeed1.4.zip

Tries to keep the CPU as cool as possible without affecting system performance by adaptive throttling using ACPI 2.0. Version 1.4.


I tried all four patches and the system seems pretty stable.  I can definitely tell that my CPU load has dropped. 

If you read the readme file for the first patch, and then look at the information one is to look for, it appears to me that the patch has not been applied to the pmmerge shipped with ArcaOS.  The version number and file size after expansion match up with what the pmmerge.dll is supposed to look like after expansion and before the patch is applied. 

As for number four, I see no adverse reaction to using it.  CPU usuage is down to next to nothing when machine is idle.

I can definitely see a speed increase across the system and so far, not one crash.  In fact, right now, I compare my ArcaOS to a thoroughbred race horse and my windows 7 partition to a tired old nag.  ArcaOS boots faster and is far more responsive than my windows 7 partition.  Every time I add another program to windows 7, it boots slower and is slower doing things.  ArcaOS does not have this problem, especially now with these patches I applied.

I use the XWorkplace startup folder.  I like to slow down how fast the programs load.  Sometimes, I think this contributes to the system hanging.

What has crashed or locked up my computer more than anything is trying various XCenter pluggins that can be found on line.

Where can one go to ask these questions to the ArcaOS development team?  It is said that they are too busy to participate in the forums.  However, the amount of traffic on the forum is small right now and it takes me less than 5 minutes to read through the posts.   One does not even have to respond unless it pertains to an issue the developer may be interested in.  I for one appreciated any time one of them finds time to respond to an issue.
 
« Last Edit: March 05, 2018, 10:20:01 am by David Graser »

Martin Iturbide

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Re: Curious about these old patches
« Reply #3 on: March 05, 2018, 02:27:45 pm »
Hi David

3. http://ca-arnold.de/download/newcalls104.zip

patch for pmmerge.dll to increase performance of writing INI-files.

This one looks interesting for me. It is a "DOS32OPEN" function replacement of DOSCALLS as called by PMMERGE.DLL. So, PMMERGE.DLL instead of calling "DOS32OPEN" from DOSCALLS will call it from "NEWCALLS.DLL". It uses the technique explained by Peter Fitzsimmons on his NEWCALLS (Hook code to circumvent built-in methods of OS/2) . I can not say if is good or bad, but it is interesting.

Here it is part of the readme of newcalls104:

Quote
The file PMMERGE.DLL opens the INI files with the flag OPEN_FLAGS_WRITE_THROUGH which has the consequence that these files are written uncached to the HD, so that the WPS is blocked partially  quite a long while. IBM made for exaggerated safety reasons, in my opinion that is not necessary.

This Tool goes back on an idea from Peter Fitzsimmons.

At this the module entry DOSCALLS will replaced in pmmerge.dll by NEWCALLS. The NEWCALLS.DLL contains so-called Forwarder on all functions in DOSCALLS except DOS32OPEN, this function its by own _DOS32OPEN replaced.  If opening files, _DOS32OPEN removes the flag OPEN_FLAGS_WRITE_THROUGH and calls then DOS32OPEN in DOSCALLS.

Regards
« Last Edit: March 05, 2018, 05:22:11 pm by Martin Iturbide »
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Andi B.

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Re: Curious about these old patches
« Reply #4 on: March 05, 2018, 07:01:38 pm »
I used newcalls years ago for systems with flash memory instead of a harddisk. I don't think it's very useful/necessary nowadays with SSD.

Andreas Schnellbacher

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Re: Curious about these old patches
« Reply #5 on: March 05, 2018, 10:56:51 pm »

1. http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/system/patches/PMFIX.zip

FIX1: SYS3171 (Stack Overflow) on PMSHELL.EXE and others. FIX2: USING PM_SystemFonts->DefaultFont CHANGES ALL FORM SIZES
Thanks for reminding me that Holger's patch wasn't made to the kernel, as I've thought before, but to pmmerge.dll.

Therefore I haven't tried it out before on ArcaOS. I use it on my currently main system, eCS, with all available patches. About the fonts patch (the other one behaves noiseless here): I find it essential. It's great to have 9.WarpSans in all dialogs.

The only app, that behaves unexpected, is old IBM view.exe. But the texts show correct, only the sizes of the controls don't scale (reduce in that case) with the font dimensions. (That's also mentioned in Holger's readme.)

David Graser

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Re: Curious about these old patches
« Reply #6 on: March 10, 2018, 05:46:27 am »
To begin, ArcaOS 5.02 is pretty rock solid.   But I am always testing things.   I have been using these patches now for around a week and the system has been doing great.  There is another utility I find very useful and wish it was part of XWP.  It is called title.  It is very simple to install.

http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/util/wps/title.zip

This program modual was designed to add some missing funcitonality to OS/2. The specific features are: 1) right-click on the Titlebar pushes a window back in the z-order. *2) ctrl-right-click shrinks a window to its titlebar size.

Roderick Klein

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Re: Curious about these old patches
« Reply #7 on: March 10, 2018, 10:34:04 pm »
These are some patches I have used in the past.  Are any of these still relevant for ArcaOS?

1. http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/system/patches/PMFIX.zip

FIX1: SYS3171 (Stack Overflow) on PMSHELL.EXE and others. FIX2: USING PM_SystemFonts->DefaultFont CHANGES ALL FORM SIZES


2. http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/system/patches/mixed/pipepatch.zip

This patch will increase the pipe buffer size of pipes instantiated with the pipe operator | of CMD.EXE from 512 bytes to 65024 bytes (by default). This will significantly improove the throughput and reduce the CPU load. In fact it reduces the minimum number of task swiches per megabyte from 4096 to about 33.


3. http://ca-arnold.de/download/newcalls104.zip

patch for pmmerge.dll to increase performance of writing INI-files.


4.http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/util/system/cpuspeed1.4.zip

Tries to keep the CPU as cool as possible without affecting system performance by adaptive throttling using ACPI 2.0. Version 1.4.

One thing I do know. Do *not* use cpuspeed1.4... It can make an OS/2 system unstable as it modified the timing of the system. I have used it the past. If it works you, great. But because it lowers the CPU frequency be prepared for potential system lockups and/crashes. But this may depend on the system as this i a timing sensitive issue!
The HLT support seems to do pretty well in keeping the CPU cool.

As for these other fixes. Arca Noae does not read the forums (they keep telling this to the community).
Or if they read they do not do this every day or week.
So if you really want to have an answer to your questions open a ticket at https://mantis.arcanoae.com.

Roderick Klein

Andreas Schnellbacher

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Re: Curious about these old patches
« Reply #8 on: March 10, 2018, 11:25:27 pm »
http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/util/wps/title.zip
1) right-click on the Titlebar pushes a window back in the z-order.
I had used that 15 years ago. Unfortunately that feature didn't made it into XWP. I had missed it a lot.

2) ctrl-right-click shrinks a window to its titlebar size.
AFAIR, I had found that it has bugs. Other WPS enhancements that provide that feature work better (Nice, ALWALTFX, Object Desktop).

David Graser

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Re: Curious about these old patches
« Reply #9 on: March 11, 2018, 07:22:09 am »
http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/util/wps/title.zip
1) right-click on the Titlebar pushes a window back in the z-order.
I had used that 15 years ago. Unfortunately that feature didn't made it into XWP. I had missed it a lot.

2) ctrl-right-click shrinks a window to its titlebar size.
AFAIR, I had found that it has bugs. Other WPS enhancements that provide that feature work better (Nice, ALWALTFX, Object Desktop).

The program has worked flawlessly for me.   

Here is another old program I enjoy dearly.  I have tried it with XWP lite that comes with ArcaOS 5.02 and so far it has worked great.

http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/util/wps/npswp182.zip

Over 20 functions to enhance OS/2. 

http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/util/wps/npswa01.zip

2 additional window animation sets

Some of these functions I have not seen anywhere else.
« Last Edit: March 12, 2018, 03:18:40 am by David Graser »