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eCS 2.2 purchase

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Lars:
You will never know how much of system memory (RAM) is mapped below the 4 GB physical address line.

Newer systems tend to reserve a lot of the physical memory space below 4 GB presumably for the PCI(e) bus so that you can use older 32-bit PCI cards/devices, potentially requiring large amounts of physical address space (like, say a 32-bit PCI graphics card with 2 GB of video memory: it needs 2 GB of physical address space below the 4 GB address line). Newer 64-bit PCI cards are of course not suffering from this problem.

It's just a fact that every modern OS is 64-bit by now, which means, it has no problem accessing system memory if it is mapped to physical addresses beyond 4 GB and therefore it is not affected by this limit. And therefore manufacturers no longer care about this limit.

Dave Yeo:

--- Quote from: Lars on June 09, 2022, 04:42:28 pm ---You will never know how much of system memory (RAM) is mapped below the 4 GB physical address line.

--- End quote ---

Booting in UEFI mode, you will know how much memory is mapped below 4GB, though there is sometimes problems with fragmentation and not being able to use it all. One problem with the newest systems is starting to be having the video buffer mapped above 4 GB, which makes the system unusable to OS/2.
I used a system with 1.5 GB's of ram at one point, no SSD or ram disk and it wasn't too bad. Generally the stuff that got swapped out wasn't used much and it was only things like linking xul.dll that brought the system to its knees. Once ran out of memory and swap so learned not to have SeaMonkey running when building Mozilla. Swap file has a 2 GB limit, I guess due to signed ints.

Lars:

--- Quote from: Dave Yeo on June 09, 2022, 05:44:29 pm ---
--- Quote from: Lars on June 09, 2022, 04:42:28 pm ---You will never know how much of system memory (RAM) is mapped below the 4 GB physical address line.

--- End quote ---

Booting in UEFI mode, you will know how much memory is mapped below 4GB, though there is sometimes problems with fragmentation and not being able to use it all. One problem with the newest systems is starting to be having the video buffer mapped above 4 GB, which makes the system unusable to OS/2.

--- End quote ---

1) Yeah. Once you have bought your new computer you can then check if it works with OS/2. Unless you find someone beforehand that has the very same computer and also uses OS/2. Great deal.

2) "Video Buffer above 4 GB (physical address line)" is a perfect example of PC manufacturers no longer even considering 32-bit OSes, left alone 16-bit OSes. It would have been a better choice if AN had accepted this fact and would have become more involved with the Virtual Box team to ensure that OS/2 will continue to run virtualized. But they decided differently.


I know one thing for sure: if my fairly old desktop computer dies, I will move away from OS/2 altogether. I already do all current development under an eCS guest running under Virtualbox.

Neil Waldhauer:

--- Quote from: Lars on June 10, 2022, 10:48:04 am ---
1) Yeah. Once you have bought your new computer you can then check if it works with OS/2. Unless you find someone beforehand that has the very same computer and also uses OS/2. Great deal.


--- End quote ---

If you look at http://www.blondeguy.com/ComputersForSale.html, I list some computers that work pretty well with ArcaOS. You don't have to buy them from me. I supply the information you would need to configure BIOS and install ArcaOS. I plan to continue this after ArcaOS 5.1 makes UEFI systems available. I expect Arca Noae to solve the video above 4 GB technical issue eventually.

Dave Yeo:
There's also the option of taking a USB stick set up to install 5.1 with you and testing if it'll boot to the maintenance desktop and doing a mem /v

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