Author Topic: OS/2 on Virtualbox with 8 COM ports  (Read 55244 times)

Lars

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Re: OS/2 on Virtualbox with 8 COM ports
« Reply #105 on: March 03, 2021, 09:41:43 pm »
This has nothing to do with PCI vs. PCIe.
It has all to do with memory mapped vs. IO mapped HW registers. There are technical reasons to this.

Sean Casey

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Re: OS/2 on Virtualbox with 8 COM ports
« Reply #106 on: March 03, 2021, 11:42:49 pm »
This has nothing to do with PCI vs. PCIe.
It has all to do with memory mapped vs. IO mapped HW registers. There are technical reasons to this.

I wasn't commenting on the COM.SYS driver.  If the StarTech 8-port PCI card is supported with OS/2 drivers and a need exists to use a PCIe-only mobo to virtualize OS/2, then the StarTech adapter might be a solution.

Neil Waldhauer

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Re: OS/2 on Virtualbox with 8 COM ports
« Reply #107 on: March 04, 2021, 02:45:23 am »
I have had no issues using StarTech's PCIe to PCI low profile converter adapter (PEX1PCI1) with older PCI SCSI adapters.  It likely would also work well with StarTech's older PCI 8-port serial adapters.

I tried that, but it did not work. I don't know why, because it worked for me with other cards.

In any case there are plenty of 8-port StarTech PCI cards on eBay any time you want one.
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Lars

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Re: OS/2 on Virtualbox with 8 COM ports
« Reply #108 on: March 04, 2021, 04:44:09 pm »
This has nothing to do with PCI vs. PCIe.
It has all to do with memory mapped vs. IO mapped HW registers. There are technical reasons to this.

I wasn't commenting on the COM.SYS driver.  If the StarTech 8-port PCI card is supported with OS/2 drivers and a need exists to use a PCIe-only mobo to virtualize OS/2, then the StarTech adapter might be a solution.

I was commenting on Martin's post, not on yours. Sorry for the confusion.

Rota

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Re: OS/2 on Virtualbox with 8 COM ports
« Reply #109 on: March 04, 2021, 10:46:28 pm »
If you had the source code for the CC application, it could be modified and recompiled to use a different communication method to the PEP hardware.

That’s not good. Maybe this will be the stop point for my project.
I hope to find configuration in some .ini file...
I see there’s DIGI folder and I think is there were I must put the new board drivers, maybe renamed as the orginial DIGI XALL.SYS...

ivan

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Re: OS/2 on Virtualbox with 8 COM ports
« Reply #110 on: March 05, 2021, 12:02:42 am »
Hi Daniele,

Is it possible for you to post the dir listing of that DIGI folder?  It might give a clue as to what is being used as a driver and how it is setup.  All the manuals I have been able to find for that board give some settings but not the reasons for them.

Rota

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Re: OS/2 on Virtualbox with 8 COM ports
« Reply #111 on: March 05, 2021, 06:05:19 pm »
Hi Ivan,
how are you?
This is the DIGI folder ;)

Reagrds

ivan

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Re: OS/2 on Virtualbox with 8 COM ports
« Reply #112 on: March 05, 2021, 06:32:12 pm »
Hi Daniele,

Some of what is there rings a bell but I can't quite remember at the moment so I've passed it on to some of the people that worked for me to think about and see if they can find a copy of the software to install. 

As for me, I'm still alive but my legs hurt if I stand for too long.  A friend pointed out that I must be stronger than the garage door because I didn't break but a couple of the wood door panels did, thank goodness (I still hate hospitals).

Rota

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Re: OS/2 on Virtualbox with 8 COM ports
« Reply #113 on: March 10, 2021, 07:47:44 am »
Hi Ivan,
Some news?
Regards

Lars

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Re: OS/2 on Virtualbox with 8 COM ports
« Reply #114 on: March 10, 2021, 01:11:07 pm »
Looking into install.doc makes it clear that a Digiboard is not only a simple UART board but it also contains dual ported RAM for concurrent access between board and computer (most likely in order to quickly exchange large amounts of data). This is special HW and the application SW is likely tailored to it. There is no easy exchange with a simple UART board and driver.

Neil Waldhauer

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Re: OS/2 on Virtualbox with 8 COM ports
« Reply #115 on: March 10, 2021, 03:45:39 pm »
I think the application software only does DosDevIOCtl calls that go to serial ports. I can't really be sure. It's been a long time.

But the cards are available on eBay, so I doubt there is a practical need to replace.

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Lars

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Re: OS/2 on Virtualbox with 8 COM ports
« Reply #116 on: March 10, 2021, 06:24:39 pm »
I understood that Daniele intended to replace the UART HW by some "standard" UART HW. If not, the better.

ivan

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Re: OS/2 on Virtualbox with 8 COM ports
« Reply #117 on: March 11, 2021, 02:26:41 pm »
Hi Daniele,

Some information they dug out of the archives but I'm not sure it will help you.

The job we had was to replace the computers for a set of CAM machines  that were ancient and overheating.  We chose to dump the old computers and build new ones with extra dust prevention cases.  The buld was based on the ASUS M2N68-AM board because it had both PCI and PCIe slots as well as IDE and SATA connectors for disks as well as a gigabit LAN interface.  We also upgraded the OS to Warp 4 to take advantage of the USB 2 ports.  The only thing we kept from the old computers were the DIGI multi com port boards.

With the OS update all we did was scan the old OS for anything that was not in the standard install and save those items (there isn't a list of those in the records) and later returned them to the updated OS.  The actual machine controller software was available on CD and was installed without problems.

We did find, on a test run, that everything responded faster with the new computers so that the machine operators had to be more aware of what was going on.

The fact  that there was USB 2 on the MB enabled the removal of keyboards (people do like to poke at keys) and the faster LAN enabled nich better control over the network.

I have attached the manual for the DIGI boards that were used for those interested.

 

Rota

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Re: OS/2 on Virtualbox with 8 COM ports
« Reply #118 on: March 12, 2021, 09:49:52 pm »

ivan

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Re: OS/2 on Virtualbox with 8 COM ports
« Reply #119 on: March 13, 2021, 02:55:03 pm »
Not sure about that but they do have a section of the website where you can ask questions so you could ask them if it is a slot in replacement fot the boards you have and if it will work with the OS/2 software.