Author Topic: New OS/4 kernel :: SVN4227  (Read 148847 times)

Doug Bissett

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Re: New OS/4 kernel is available :: SVN4166 :: screen03.sys release
« Reply #30 on: February 09, 2014, 04:22:12 am »
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Quote from: Doug Bissett on February 08, 2014, 08:58:42 pm

    I just tried OS/4 on my Lenovo ThinkPad T510. This thing is a little different than the L530:

    It does not have a real COM port (it does have a software modem), but it hangs after the first "Loading" line, if I don't enable the debug port.

Hm? Can you, please, describe more precisely? I think I didn't understand that much.
So, it hangs just after you select the kernel in the loader, and it does work if you comment out the dbport statement in os2ldr.ini, doesn't it?
What's with the software modem? Is it, urgh, connected to the COM port?

It seemed a little strange to me too. The section of the OS4 OS2LDR.INI file in question is:
Code: [Select]
; Debug port
; com port address
; no debug output if statment is omited (but log still accessible
; through copy from oemhlp$ - see below)
dbport=0x3f8
;dbport=0xEC00
If I leave it as it is, I don't have a problem. If I put a semi-colon in front of "dbport=0x3f8", the system simply stops at the first "Loading" line. The machine is not frozen, a Ctrl-Alt-Del causes a reboot. One odd thing is that if I use the QSINIT loader, without even having that line in the INI file, it does not hang. I should note, that I amusing os4krnlr when it hangs.

I think I know what is happening though. The T510 has a feature called  "IntelĀ® Active Management Technology" (AMT). Part of that is a device that does "Serial over LAN" (SOL). From what I found out, the device is a serial port (as seen by the computer), but the communication path is redirected over the LAN interface as a TELNET terminal. Apparently, the OS4 loader is detecting that as a serial port, and is getting upset when it isn't told about it. There is some setup in the BIOS for SOL, but I am not sure what it actually does. Someday, I will play with it.

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What's with the software modem? Is it, urgh, connected to the COM port?

No, it isn't. It is what we commonly call a "Winmodem". It does not use a normal serial port.

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prevents you from the necessity to have two different CONFIG.SYS files.

Actually, the feature to be able to define a different CONFIG.SYS file is an interesting concept, and it works very well. I made one called CONFIG.os4 to use when testing OS/4. I may build a few more, for various reasons.

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I'll consider making somewhat a FAQ.

After I learn more about all of this, I may contribute to that, but I am not ready yet.

R.M. Klippstein

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Re: New OS/4 kernel is available :: SVN4166 :: screen03.sys release
« Reply #31 on: February 09, 2014, 05:38:02 pm »
Hi Boris, If you could find the time, Some documentacion would sure make life a lot easier for a lot of us and would be REALLY appreciated!

Thanks,  klipp

OS4User

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Re: New OS/4 kernel is available :: SVN4166 :: screen03.sys release
« Reply #32 on: February 09, 2014, 06:03:49 pm »
Doug, as I recall, 16-bit timer0.sys fail is okay because its function is now fully substituted by the clock03b.sys system driver written by Phoenix.

clock03b.sys contains two drivers:  CLOCK$ and TIMER0$  (having more than one driver per module is allowed in OS/2)

you may remove timer0.sys from your config.sys  or you may leave it as it is   -   a difference will be an appearance  of the error message only

Doug Bissett

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Re: New OS/4 kernel is available :: SVN4166 :: screen03.sys release
« Reply #33 on: February 09, 2014, 07:57:14 pm »
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Some documentacion would sure make life a lot easier for a lot of us

Actually, the documentation is mostly there. The problem is that there is little, or no explanation of what the documentation is trying to say. It is somewhat technical, and seems to assume that the user knows what a lot of that stuff is all about. Some extra samples of configuration, and an explanation of what they do, would probably help.

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you may remove timer0.sys from your config.sys  or you may leave it as it is   -   a difference will be an appearance  of the error message only

Unexplained error messages are never good. A small note in the documentation (or FAQ), to make it clear that the error is expected, and how to eliminate it, would be a good thing.

I realize that the OS/4 project is still in the early development phase, but it would appear that the documentation needs to be expanded to make it possible for the average user to test it for you. I will be going through the documentation, after I learn a bit more, and I will suggest some changes.  If Boris creates a FAQ, I will contribute to that too. I may even create a WarpIn installer, if I find the time, but first, I have to learn more.

Doug Bissett

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Re: New OS/4 kernel is available :: SVN4166 :: screen03.sys release
« Reply #34 on: February 10, 2014, 06:21:56 pm »
When I boot the OS/4 kernel, I have noticed a line, that disappears very quickly. I finally saw part of it, but I don't know the whole thing. It is something to do with "VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT". Any ideas about what that is?

dbanet

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Re: New OS/4 kernel is available :: SVN4166 :: screen03.sys release
« Reply #35 on: February 11, 2014, 04:44:02 pm »
When I boot the OS/4 kernel, I have noticed a line, that disappears very quickly. I finally saw part of it, but I don't know the whole thing. It is something to do with "VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT". Any ideas about what that is?
Somewhere in SVN3xxx the VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT tuning feature was broken. Now the VAL is fixed and set to 2048.
There's nothing bad in the error message; you can REM or remove the entire VAL statement in your CONFIG.SYS file -- it will always remain fixed to 2 GiBs.
Unfortunately I'm not aware of any plans to fix this issue and make the VAL changeable again.

Regards.

Doug Bissett

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Re: New OS/4 kernel is available :: SVN4166 :: screen03.sys release
« Reply #36 on: February 11, 2014, 08:54:38 pm »
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There's nothing bad in the error message; you can REM or remove the entire VAL statement in your CONFIG.SYS file

Okay. This is another "expected" error that needs to be documented. Whether 2048 is a good default, or not, remains to be seen. I know that it has generally been accepted that 1536 seems to be best, for most users, but other things may have changed that.

FWIW, I am finding that using the QSINIT loader, with the OS/4 kernel, is working great. I am able to use the QSINIT RAMDISK (above 4 GB), and I am not seeing any hangs while loading.

I put OS/4 onto my main machine (Asus M3A78-EM, with quad core Phenom processor, and 4 GB of memory). I was having troubles with a hang at the first "Loading" line, but I didn't have time to mess with it, so I just replaced the OS/4 loader with the QSINIT loader, and all is working well. This one has a single COM port, at 0x3f8, which has an IBM Home Controller (X-10) attached. It seems that the OS/4 loader is not happy with that because it hung whether I had the line enabled, or not (of course, it may have been something else that was causing the problem).

dbanet

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Re: New OS/4 kernel is available :: SVN4166 :: screen03.sys release
« Reply #37 on: February 11, 2014, 10:14:49 pm »
I put OS/4 onto my main machine (Asus M3A78-EM, with quad core Phenom processor, and 4 GB of memory). I was having troubles with a hang at the first "Loading" line
So, if you want to, and ready for testing...

a single COM port, at 0x3f8, which has an IBM Home Controller (X-10) attached.
What's that device, Home Controller? Can you connect another PC via COM port instead of that device?

It seems that the OS/4 loader is not happy with that because it hung whether I had the line enabled, or not (of course, it may have been something else that was causing the problem).
Could you, please, connect the test PC to another one via COM port, and get the log? The settings are 115200, 8n1, hardware flow control enabled or not depending on the 'fullcable' statement in the os2ldr.ini file.
The loader logs itself to the COM port just as the kernel does, so that's the way to debug the loader.

DTerm is a very handy terminal program for Operating System/2. Features logging the port to a file.

Dave Yeo

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Re: New OS/4 kernel is available :: SVN4166 :: screen03.sys release
« Reply #38 on: February 12, 2014, 05:51:33 am »
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There's nothing bad in the error message; you can REM or remove the entire VAL statement in your CONFIG.SYS file

Okay. This is another "expected" error that needs to be documented. Whether 2048 is a good default, or not, remains to be seen. I know that it has generally been accepted that 1536 seems to be best, for most users, but other things may have changed that.


2048 will screw up with video cards with lots of memory and probably other hardware setups.

OS4User

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Re: New OS/4 kernel is available :: SVN4166 :: screen03.sys release
« Reply #39 on: February 12, 2014, 04:34:59 pm »
2048 will screw up with video cards with lots of memory and probably other hardware setups.

VAL does not have any connection to physical memory

panorama maps 16M only

SNAP could be tuned to map as much as necessary    -   for example "gaoption vidmem 8"  will restrict  memory usage to 8M (I use this setup to save _virtual_ memory on my PC)

Doug Bissett

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Re: New OS/4 kernel is available :: SVN4166 :: screen03.sys release
« Reply #40 on: February 12, 2014, 05:41:08 pm »
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So, if you want to, and ready for testing...

I want to, but I am not ready. I got cataract surgery scheduled for Thursday PM, so I won't be doing a lot until I get over that.

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What's that device, Home Controller? Can you connect another PC via COM port instead of that device?

It allows me to computer control lights, and other devices. The one that is attached is used to turn on/off my USB hard disk, under program control. I can connect a cable to another PC (it will have to be my antique IBM ThinkPad A22e, which I have used before). The "problem" is that it is very difficult to access the cables, and I am not going to try it with one eye bandaged up.   :)

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Could you, please, connect the test PC to another one via COM port, and get the log? The settings are 115200, 8n1, hardware flow control enabled or not depending on the 'fullcable' statement in the os2ldr.ini file.
The loader logs itself to the COM port just as the kernel does, so that's the way to debug the loader.

I will give it a try, sometime next week.

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DTerm is a very handy terminal program for Operating System/2. Features logging the port to a file.

I will use ZOC. It has worked with other things, and I have it installed on the A22e.

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2048 will screw up with video cards with lots of memory and probably other hardware setups.

This should not be a problem. I use SNAP, in VESA mode. It claims to use 16 meg (1920x1680x32). Other things may cause trouble, but not so far (not quite 2 days). I think the video adapter will actually use 256 meg, if the driver would use it. The biggest user of shared memory, that I have seen, is CLAMD.EXE. I had to quit using that.

dbanet

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Re: New OS/4 kernel is available :: SVN4166 :: screen03.sys release
« Reply #41 on: February 14, 2014, 05:59:31 pm »
O-ookay, I think I've just started to work on the FAQ and somewhat installation instructions... hope I will produce useful output this weekend.

Doug Bissett

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Re: New OS/4 kernel is available :: SVN4166 :: screen03.sys release
« Reply #42 on: February 14, 2014, 07:07:05 pm »
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I got cataract surgery scheduled for Thursday PM, so I won't be doing a lot until I get over that.

This got canceled. Apparently there is something else wrong, that needs to be fixed first, so I am waiting for a new appointment.

I will see what I can find time for, later...

dbanet

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Re: New OS/4 kernel is available :: SVN4166 :: screen03.sys release
« Reply #43 on: February 14, 2014, 09:27:22 pm »
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I got cataract surgery scheduled for Thursday PM, so I won't be doing a lot until I get over that.

This got canceled. Apparently there is something else wrong, that needs to be fixed first, so I am waiting for a new appointment.

I will see what I can find time for, later...

Get well and soon!  :-\

Doug Bissett

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Re: New OS/4 kernel is available :: SVN4166 :: screen03.sys release
« Reply #44 on: February 15, 2014, 08:56:49 pm »
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Could you, please, connect the test PC to another one via COM port, and get the log? The settings are 115200, 8n1, hardware flow control enabled or not depending on the 'fullcable' statement in the os2ldr.ini file.
The loader logs itself to the COM port just as the kernel does, so that's the way to debug the loader.

Well, I got it connected, and I got a log, which simply shows that it all works okay.

I did some more testing. The hang occurs when I try to boot with the Home controller attached, but only after I use it, and only sometimes. Since it doesn't fail when I connect the Null modem cable, or leave the serial port disconnected, I am not able to trap the problem.

It seems that a timeout needs to be implemented, and the COM port needs to be ignored if it doesn't connect properly.

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Get well and soon!

Not much chance of that, with our wonderful, government run, over priced, medical system. Next stop is on April 1. By then, the problem will probably be gone, or I will be blind in one eye.