OS/4 (technical details only)

[OS4User]

Patched DIVE.DLL can increase video speed on OS/4 system.

At the same time the patched DIVE.DLL is not compatible with original OS/2 -  to avoid missboot do the following:

1) Create C:\OS4 dir
2) Put the patched DIVE.DLL into C:\OS4
3) Insert C:\OS4; exactly after LIBPATH=  into your CONFIG.OS4 so you will have LIBPATH=C:\OS4;.;.......

This way the patched DIVE.DLL will be loaded instead of original DIVE.DLL and  original DIVE.DLL will remain for booting with CONFIG.SYS (for ex. original kernel).

http://gus.biysk.ru/os4/test/patched_dll/patched_dive.zip

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi OS4User

Can it be possible for the author to explain a little bit what was patched on this DIVE.DLL ? like which functions of the OS4 kernel is now using to increase the video speed?

Regards

[OS4User]

Can it be possible for the author to explain a little bit what was patched on this DIVE.DLL ?

Hi Martin

some details is here https://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php/Phoenix_OS/4#Video_bus_bandwidth_.28VBB.29

[Dariusz Piatkowski]

OK, OS4User, time for me to get off of my butt and get the debug info to troubleshoot the hard trap right after PMSHELL comes up. With FreeRDP making progress and VBox supporting extra features of the OS4KRNL I have no reason to delay further.

I re-read the Wiki you posted above and will get the debug kernel setup and ready to go. Beyond this though, is there anything specific I need to do in order to capture the "moment" the system traps?

My assumption is that maybe through the debug kernel I have some way to communicate with the OS/2 box, but even if that is the case, once the trap occurs, how do I know what additional information to log? Can you provide any 'working instructions' for this? Even high-level stuff might help...

Thanks!

[OS4User]

I re-read the Wiki you posted above and will get the debug kernel setup and ready to go. Beyond this though, is there anything specific I need to do in order to capture the "moment" the system traps?

My assumption is that maybe through the debug kernel I have some way to communicate with the OS/2 box, but even if that is the case, once the trap occurs, how do I know what additional information to log? Can you provide any 'working instructions' for this? Even high-level stuff might help...

Welcome on board

You do not need anything specific, you will see trap info in your comport log.
Additional info always depends on trap info, working instruction is quite big,  it is called
"The OS/2 Debugging Handbook"  for ex. https://openlibrary.org/works/OL8414318W/The_OS_2_Debugging_Handbook

[David Graser]

Lenovo Thinkpad x220

Dual boot to either Windows 7 or ArcaOS 5.02

lSVN5094_unoff.zip

I really like this kernel.  The system is more responsive, less CPU trashing, and my CPU operates cooler.  My system even appears to operate in a more stable condition.  It even shows one how bad  Firefox is with all its jumbled code.  The CPU maxes out, but Firefox still remains responsive and the CPU continues to remain cool.

I have encountered a problem and it deals with RAM drives.  I use the ArcaOS ram drive in HPFS.  If I reboot, everything is fine.  However, when I power down and then power up to boot to ArcaOS, the RAM drive disappears and I cannot get it back.  Playing with the RAM drive settings does no good.  The only way to get it back is to install an archive.  I can reboot nothing changes.  Only when my computer is powered down and then turned back on that the RAM drive problem surfaces.  I like my RAM drive, however, if I have to, I can do without it to continue to use this kernel.

[ivan]

Hi David,

What you are seeing with power down and the ramdisk is what you should expect.  What is on a ram drive is lost when the system is powered down - Ramdisks are only there as long as there is power to the ram and the refresh mechanism is working - no power, even for a very short time, results in no ramdrive.

[David Graser]

Hi David,

What you are seeing with power down and the ramdisk is what you should expect.  What is on a ram drive is lost when the system is powered down - Ramdisks are only there as long as there is power to the ram and the refresh mechanism is working - no power, even for a very short time, results in no ramdrive.

Hi Ivan

Yes, but should not the RAM disk be rebuilt when the system is booted back up.  The RAM drive is no longer there.  The driver is listed in the config.os4 file.  Now I can boot using the IBM loader and kernel and the RAM disk is there after power up and boot up. The IBM kernel had no problem with the disappearing RAM drive.  Once the RAM disk was selected in the RAM disk setting, it is always present whether one rebooted or powered down and powered  back up.  Yes, the information should be lost when powering down, but the whole RAM should not disappear when booted back up.

[Valery Sedletski]

2David Graser: I don't understand you. The ram disk disappears when the system is powered down, because power is switched off, and RAM is not refreshed, as Ivan said. This is what happens. Or, do you mean that the .ZIP file does not unzip to ramdisk? BTW, do you use QSINIT, or OS/4 os2ldr? The ram disk works only with QSINIT (or Arca Noae os2ldr, which is a crippled version of QSINIT). OS/4 os2ldr does not create the ram disk, possibly, that's because you lose your ramdisk. So, did you tried QSINIT, and does it change something?

PS: Note that you should disable the OS/4 logo, by adding "NOLOGO" to kernel parameters, or QSINIT will cause system to hang on VESA mode detect. This is unsolved problem, yet.

PPS: The ram disk is in fact created by QSINIT. hd4disk.add only allows this disk to be mounted under OS/2. So, hd4disk.add without QSINIT will not work. Arca Noae loader should work too, instead of QSINIT, theoretically, if you'll boot OS/4 kernel with it. But AFAIK, it does not support choosing multiple kernels from the menu. So, you'd better install QSINIT, instead.

[Valery Sedletski]

Also, I should note that I don't know, how does Arca Noae loader restores the ram disk. For QSINIT, it requires creating the qssetup.cmd file in the root directory, with the following lines:

ramdisk z:
unzip /boot /q qsinit.ldi c:\

-- This will create the single FAT/FAT32 z: disk under OS/2 (drive letter c: under QSINIT) and unzip the qsinit.ldi file to the ramdisk.

To get it formatted with HPFS, you should use qssetup.cmd with the following contents:

ramdisk z:
format c: /fs:hpfs
unzip /boot /q qsinit.ldi c:\

QSINIT supports multiple ramdisks with different FS-es, like this:

ramdisk z: q: div=565
format c: /fs:exfat /a:1k /q /wipe
mount d: hd3 1
unzip /boot /q qsinit.ldi c:\

-- This will create disk z: (c: or 0: under QSINIT) formatted as exFAT and extract qsinit.ldi to it, and disk q: (d: or 1: under QSINIT), 565 MB in size, formatted with FAT16 (empty). For more details, refer to QSINIT documentation. exFAT ramdisk can be mounted via fat32.ifs.
You can use exFAT or FAT32, or FAT16, or HPFS for your ram disks the same way.

[David Graser]

2David Graser: I don't understand you. The ram disk disappears when the system is powered down, because power is switched off, and RAM is not refreshed, as Ivan said. This is what happens. Or, do you mean that the .ZIP file does not unzip to ramdisk? BTW, do you use QSINIT, or OS/4 os2ldr? The ram disk works only with QSINIT (or Arca Noae os2ldr, which is a crippled version of QSINIT). OS/4 os2ldr does not create the ram disk, possibly, that's because you lose your ramdisk. So, did you tried QSINIT, and does it change something?

PS: Note that you should disable the OS/4 logo, by adding "NOLOGO" to kernel parameters, or QSINIT will cause system to hang on VESA mode detect. This is unsolved problem, yet.

PPS: The ram disk is in fact created by QSINIT. hd4disk.add only allows this disk to be mounted under OS/2. So, hd4disk.add without QSINIT will not work. Arca Noae loader should work too, instead of QSINIT, theoretically, if you'll boot OS/4 kernel with it. But AFAIK, it does not support choosing multiple kernels from the menu. So, you'd better install QSINIT, instead.

Hi Valery

I believe I understand now. 
Although I have Ramdisk enabled in ArcaOS, it will not work with OS4 kernel unless QSINIT is installed. 
Whereas, with the IBM kernel, with RAMDISK enabled in ArcaOS, QSINIT is not needed for the RAMDISK to mount.
I am presently not using QSINIT.  I am using the kernel loader that comes with OS4.

I guess what is confusing to me is that the both use hd4disk.add to mount the RAM disk.  ArcaOS with the IBM kernel and loader loads the RAM disk just fine.  However, if I understand what has been said, OS4 kernel and loader will fail to mount the RAMDISK if the computer has been turned off.  The OS4 loader must be replaced with QSINIT.

Since I am not using QSINIT at the moment, I can use the OS4 loader to select option 2 which switches to the OS2 loader and kernel to boot to ArcaOS.  The RAM drive is mounted.  So long as I do not turn my computer off and I reboot and select option 3 to boot using OS4, the RAMDISK is mounted and shown in ArcaOS.

[Valery Sedletski]

> ArcaOS with the IBM kernel and loader loads the RAM disk just fine.

ArcaOS does not use IBM os2ldr. It uses a "stripped-down" variant of QSINIT, with some features ripped-off (like the boot menu and some QSINIT apps which usually present on the ram disk). You see the ramdisk with OS/4 kernel and loader after warm reboot because the ramdisk remains in memory as RAM is refreshed. If you turn it off, and back on, the ram disk gets lost. So, it requires QSINIT, or Arca Noae loader for the ram disk to be created again. OS/4 os2ldr knows nothing about ram disks, the same way original IBM os2ldr does.

So, you have two oprions:

1) use QSINIT, which is more flexible and allows to boot multiple kernels from the menu, and which is compatible with OS/4 loader "os2ldr.ini" config file.
2) boot Arca Noae loader from OS/4 os2ldr with "restart" option, like this:

os2ldr.arc = Arca Noae loader, restart

-- where os2ldr.arc is your renamed version of Arca Noae loader. But it will boot kernel with fixed "os2krnl" name, only.

[David Graser]

Valery

A big thank you!  I am using QSINI now.

I made my QSSETUP.CMD

ramdisk x: hpfs
format x: /fs/hpfs
unzip /boot /q qsinit.ldi d:\

I left my original OS2LDR as OS2LDR.ORY

I am using the OS2LDR.INI I created for OS4.

Copied the QSINIT.LDI file to the root of my D drive.

I also disabled the RAMDISK option found in the COMPUTER\SYSTEM SETUP\RAM DISK

Powered down and started back up an everything works great.  With your help and the docs supplied it so not hard setting up.  Thanks again.

David

[David Graser]

One last comment.  I am a user of eCo essentials.  I like the eComstation Device Manager, the PCI Dock, and the Removable Drive Format Tool.  When using the OS4 kernel, the Removable Drive Format Tool won't come up.  It gives the following error message:

Cannot start D:\sys\system\refomat.exe

Make sure the path for the program is correct and the file is an os/2 for Dos program.  There might not be enough memory to run the program etc....

Now I can boot using the ArcaOS kernel and the program work great.  This is the only program so far that does not work with the OS4 kernel that I have come across.

[Doug Clark]

I have downloaded os2krnlscn5096_unoff.zip

The HOWTO file says this only works with acpi-3.23.0-1

I have acpi-3.32.02.zip, and later versions. I also have an eCS and ArcaOS subscription. Where can I get the version of acpi-3.23.01 that works with OS4?