OS/2 Driver Requirement Brainstorming

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi

I would like to do some brainstorming about which drivers are required for the OS/2 and ArcaOS platform on these days.
David from Arca Noae told at Warpstock that USB 3.0 is taking longer than expected, but the bright side is that he is working on it.  There is also a very alpha UEFI driver that I had seen on the videos.

So, being optimistic and taking aside the USB 3.0 and UEFI drivers, what others driver do you think are required for the platform?

Regards

[Matt Walsh]

Some sort of Wireless would be nice, but not as important now with good Virtual Machines.
Matt W.

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi

I also agreed that for the people running OS/2-ArcaOS on real hardware, wifi is very needed. People are using the workarround on using a little router connected to the ethernet port. But now laptops are no even coming with Ethernet ports (ethernet network apdater) anymore. 

Maybe it can be interest to have some drivers like:
- Wireless PCI
- Wireless USB Adapter
- Ethernet USB Adapter (Modern)

Regards

[Per E. Johannessen]

Driver for M.2 cards

[Martin Iturbide]

Driver for M.2 cards

Hi. I guess you mean NVMe driver for storage.
Regards

[Devid]

Driver for Smart Card Reader & smatphone MTP & PTP

[Dave Yeo]

Driver for Smart Card Reader & smatphone MTP & PTP

We already have http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/os2/apps/graphics/camera153.zip for smartphone and camera PTP. MTP shouldn't be too hard to do, I tried at one point and could transfer the odd file but the filenames were all screwed up as UTF8 was expected and after one operation, I'd have to reset the phones PTP driver (change the USB from PTP to pure charging and back to PTP) to do another operation.

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi

I also do not know if to have "GUID Partition Table" support (driver) we need first the UEFI BIOS driver ready, or if it can be accomplished without that driver.
It would be interesting to finally be able to install ArcaOS in an dual boot configuration without wiping the hard drive. I know there are workarounds like cloning hard drives, etc, but it would be great to finally have the driver for a simple installation.

Regards

[ivan]

Martin, all of this is dependant, if you are using modern equipment, on the availability of the USB 3.0 and 3.1 driver.  Without that it will be impossible to do a direct install so the only way is to clone the hard disk from a working unit and tweak the clone as necessary.

[Bernhard Pöttinger]

Hi Martin, I think the most important drivers are USB 3.X drivers. And it would be nice, if we can get beta versions of the drivers developed by arcanoae. We are waiting quite a long time and we are only hearing "we are on track ...". So public betas were nice and would help even if everybody knows that beta versions are not perfect. But everybody could see the progress.
best regards Bernhard

[Andi B.]

Bernhard, I understand what you're saying. I recently tried a board which I couldn't get to run without the USB3 drivers. Not only installation was impossible but also this board does not have PS2 connectors for keyboard and mice and the USB chips does not have working compatibility mode. So even cloning a working installation does not help. No matter how the legacy options in BIOS are set, when OS/2 booted up, no chance to use a keyboard without the USB3 driver. So even beta drivers are better than nothing. At least for such boards.

On the other hand as long as you can easily hang the whole system rock solid with simple file transfers it's perfectly understandable that AN do not spread these drivers to the public. I'm pretty sure there is not a single bug which needs to be fixed, a lot of bugs are already fixed now, there a numerous problems which arise with USB3. There is progress but there are a so much different problems it seems so it takes so long. We can only hope the can catch up sometimes before the whole USB mess changes another time.   

[Doug Bissett]

I think the most important drivers are USB 3.X drivers. And it would be nice, if we can get beta versions of the drivers developed by arcanoae.

I don't speak for Arca Noae, but I do test their software.

USBXHCD.SYS does exist, and it is about 80% working. It is getting better at each try, but USB (in general) is a terrible technology, and speeding it up isn't helping.

If you are interested in USB, have a read at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB.

Okay, what works, or not, for me (Nov. 9, 2019 driver attempt):
Asus A88XM-A motherboard, with two AMD USB 3 adapters,  my Lenovo ThinkPad T510, with a Startech plug in USB 3 ExpressCard adpter (Renesas chip set), and my Lenovo ThinkPad L530, with one Intel USB 3 adapter. I can read/write USB 1.0, and USB 2.0, sticks (I would assume USB 1.1 also works, but I don't have one of them). Using a USB 3 stick either hangs, or crashes the system. On the bright side, I can put a short USB 2.0 cable between the stick, and the controller, and the USB 3 stick will work as a USB 2.0 device. This doesn't always work, something isn't initializing properly. I suspect a bad connector, but haven't been able to prove that, yet.

One other system, an Asus M3A78-EM motherboard, has a plug in Fresco Logic card. It will load the driver, but nothing ever happens when I plug in a device (of any kind).

Booting from USB 3 works on the Asus A88XM-A machine, and on the Lenovo ThinkPad L530. Those two have built in USB 3 adapters, and the BIOS will boot from USB 3 sticks (losing connection, or crashing, when the driver loads). The others are plug in adapters, that the BIOS doesn't know about, so no boot. Of course, those machines do have USB 2 support, so I can boot from that.

So, USBXHCD.SYS exists, and it partly works, but it is certainly not ready for beta testing by the outside world. All of this works in windows, of course.

[Sigurd Fastenrath]

Hi

I also do not know if to have "GUID Partition Table" support (driver) we need first the UEFI BIOS driver ready, or if it can be accomplished without that driver.
It would be interesting to finally be able to install ArcaOS in an dual boot configuration without wiping the hard drive. I know there are workarounds like cloning hard drives, etc, but it would be great to finally have the driver for a simple installation.

Regards

If GPT will work it will be interesting to know, if there is a need for a new Bootmanager or if Airboot or (guess not) the old IBM Bootmanager can handle this.

Regarding UEFI, GPT etc it would be worth to adopt more from DFSEE, if possible.

WLAN and USB are more or less to far away.

[ivan]

Hi Doug,

All of this works in windows, of course.

While I don't know about your older AMD based boards I can state that all my AMD Ryzen based units also work with Linux.

Far be it for me to try and second guess the people working on the USB v3.XX USBXHCD.SYS but my engineering experience points to a situation where a limited wider beta testing would be an advantage if only to see how it works on a wide range of newer boards i.e. those a year or less old.

[Doug Bissett]

While I don't know about your older AMD based boards I can state that all my AMD Ryzen based units also work with Linux.

Linux has nothing, at all, to do with the OS/2 USB 3 driver. Linux put the support into the kernel, and that is not possible with OS/2, so the driver had to be written from scratch. It is also very difficult to get any information out of manufacturers, so a lot of it is simply trial, and error. Given that nobody seems to actually follow the rules, with USB, it has been a difficult path.

I mentioned windows, simply to point out that my hardware is actually working.

Far be it for me to try and second guess the people working on the USB v3.XX USBXHCD.SYS but my engineering experience points to a situation where a limited wider beta testing would be an advantage if only to see how it works on a wide range of newer boards i.e. those a year or less old.

The driver is not ready for that, yet. It may happen when all (or most) of the current testers get it working. Right now, they need to keep tight control over the testing. They just don't have the man power to try to sort out reports from those who may, or may not, know what they are reporting. It is basically ONE guy who is doing this, and he doesn't have any more time to try to figure out what testers are telling him. More of that, means less time actually working on the driver, so the benefits of wider testing are overcome by the disadvantages.

Of course, if you are an expert OS/2 device driver programmer, Arca Noae would like to review your resume.