Author Topic: Test build of dooble with qt5  (Read 210461 times)

thomholwerda

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 5
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile
    • OSNews
Re: Test build of dooble with qt5
« Reply #315 on: February 20, 2025, 10:45:29 pm »
When I use dooble it takes minutes to scroll, I only have this with 2 laptops. I don't have this problem on my desktop comp. Even if I have to fill something out, it takes minutes.

I have (or had) this problem. Answer these questions to see if we have the same issue:

1) Are these machines able to emit a beep? Not a sound through the soundcard but a tone through the speaker or transducer on the mobo. If yes, it's a different problem.

2) After scrolling and finding that nothing happens, does moving the mouse around _a lot_ over the window cause the accumulated scroll actions to happen all at once?

3) Assuming you're running AOS, run 'ACPISTAT | MORE'. At the top is a list or IRQs and the number of times they've been triggered. Is the count for IRQ 0 very low (in hundreds or less) or is IRQ 0 simply missing (either of these may be true)?

If the answer to (1) is no but (2) and (3) are yes, then we have the same problem: the clock which feeds the 8254 timer circuit has been gated off.

The 8254 has 3 timers: one is used to make sound while another is used by many apps such as Dooble as a "high-resolution timer". To use it, the app sets a counter to the number of milliseconds required. Each clock pulse then causes it to decrement that counter. When that counter reaches 0, it issues an IRQ 0.

If the clock signal has been turned off, the counter never decrements, the IRQ is never triggered, and Dooble fails to scroll. There is one oddity here: for unknown reasons, significant USB activity (or at least, USB mouse activity) will trigger an IRQ 0. That's why moving the mouse may cause scrolling - it mimics the timer going off.

I spent a huge amount of time identifying the nature of the problem but never came up with a solution, only a work-around. The high-res timer can only be used by one app at a time. If it's busy, the app has to fall back to one of the system's conventional timers. So, I wrote a little util that claims the HRT for as long as possible to force Dooble and other stuff to use an alternate timer. This works fine for scrolling but multimedia performance is terrible - VLC is unusable.

AFAICT, only a firmware update would fix the problem - and that's unlikely because MS stopped using the 8254 in Win 7 or 8. Consequently there's no way to demonstrate to some Tech Support droid running Win 11 that there even is a problem.

So I seem to be running into this problem, on ArcaOS 5.1.1 using the latest version of Dooble/Qt5 (2024.12.31). Scrolling is indeed pretty much impossible, and it seems I match the criteria in the quoted post. Somehow, I find it hard to believe the cause is something as arcane as the 8254 timer controlling Dooble's scrolling of all things, but I'm no programmer or expert, so perhaps it's the real cause.

Is there really nothing else that could be the cause here? Everything else is working great, there's no CPU usage spike or anything like that when scrolling, and everything else runs and works fine. Why is it only Dooble - as far as I can tell - that suffers from this? Without Dooble, there doesn't seem to be a modern browser for ArcaOS, and that really limits my ability to use it, which makes me sad.

Martin Iturbide

  • OS2World NewsMaster
  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5188
  • Karma: +44/-1
  • Your Friend Wil Declares...
    • View Profile
    • Martin's Personal Blog
Re: Test build of dooble with qt5
« Reply #316 on: February 21, 2025, 02:05:27 am »
Welcome to the forum Thom.

Just in case, can you compare if you are using Dooble (Qt5) from this other forum thread.

- ftp://dry@ftp.os2voice.org/tmp/dooble-2024-01-09-Qt5.zip (Uploaded on 2025-01-10, I think there was a confusion on the filename year)

Regards
Martin Iturbide
OS2World NewsMaster
... just share the dream.

Dave Yeo

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5270
  • Karma: +122/-1
    • View Profile
Re: Test build of dooble with qt5
« Reply #317 on: February 21, 2025, 03:31:57 am »
Hi Thom. Rich is pretty knowledgeable and I would trust his diagnosis and the 8254 does seem to be going away.
The question is which component is having the problems. can you test the simplebrowser to see if it has the same problem? Should be at C:\usr\lib\qt5\examples\webenginewidgets\simplebrowser\simplebrowser.exe or where ever your @unixroot points.
Might need 'SET QTWEBENGINE_CHROMIUM_FLAGS="--single-process" simplebrowser.exe' (ignore the single quotes) in your environment.

thomholwerda

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 5
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile
    • OSNews
Re: Test build of dooble with qt5
« Reply #318 on: February 25, 2025, 10:36:50 pm »
Sorry for the late reply - was a bit busy!

Anyway, the build mentioned by Martin doesn't seem to exist on the FTP server? I can't seem to get to it in any way. Did it move?

As for simplerbrowser.exe, it exhibits the same problem, both with and without the --single-process flag.

The machine I'm running this on has one of the newer Intel 12th Gen chips, with the performance and efficiency cores thing. Considering that's quite a new thing for x86 and unique to Intel, could that give ArcaOS some problems others may not run into, like this scrolling issue?

Martin Iturbide

  • OS2World NewsMaster
  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5188
  • Karma: +44/-1
  • Your Friend Wil Declares...
    • View Profile
    • Martin's Personal Blog
Re: Test build of dooble with qt5
« Reply #319 on: February 25, 2025, 10:52:35 pm »
Anyway, the build mentioned by Martin doesn't seem to exist on the FTP server? I can't seem to get to it in any way. Did it move?

The date was corrected:
- ftp://dry@ftp.os2voice.org/tmp/dooble-2025-01-09-Qt5.zip
And there is also:
- ftp://dry@ftp.os2voice.org/tmp/dooble-2025-02-20-qt5.zip

Regards
Martin Iturbide
OS2World NewsMaster
... just share the dream.

thomholwerda

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 5
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile
    • OSNews
Re: Test build of dooble with qt5
« Reply #320 on: February 25, 2025, 11:26:19 pm »
Alright, tested the latest build - dooble-2025-02-20-qt5 - and no dice. Still the scrolling issue.

Assuming it is, indeed, the arcane timer issue - is there anything that could be done? It feels like it's something quite difficult to fix, which makes me sad, because I really love OS/2 and ArcaOS in particular, and really want to use it on a daily basis. However, without a capable browser that's a bit rough.

TeLLie

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 273
  • Karma: +16/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Test build of dooble with qt5
« Reply #321 on: February 25, 2025, 11:35:06 pm »
Hi

Did you try the tmr.exe from Rich
I use it and its helping alot.

Regards, Tellie

thomholwerda

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 5
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile
    • OSNews
Re: Test build of dooble with qt5
« Reply #322 on: February 26, 2025, 12:06:07 am »
Hi

Did you try the tmr.exe from Rich
I use it and its helping alot.

Regards, Tellie

Where can I find it? Thanks!

Rich Walsh

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 398
  • Karma: +30/-0
  • ONU! (OS/2 is NOT Unix!)
    • View Profile
Re: Test build of dooble with qt5
« Reply #323 on: February 26, 2025, 02:27:04 am »
Where can I find it?

See attached. Put the exe in your Startup folder as-is and set it to start minimized.

For testing, dbl-click on it now to get it going, and Ctrl-C to kill it.

thomholwerda

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 5
  • Karma: +1/-0
    • View Profile
    • OSNews
Re: Test build of dooble with qt5
« Reply #324 on: February 26, 2025, 03:12:34 pm »
Where can I find it?

See attached. Put the exe in your Startup folder as-is and set it to start minimized.

For testing, dbl-click on it now to get it going, and Ctrl-C to kill it.

Awesome, thank you! It works as intended, but is of course a workaround, as you described it.

This brings me back to my question: is there no better, more permanent solution to this? Or would that simply be too complex?

Dave Yeo

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 5270
  • Karma: +122/-1
    • View Profile
Re: Test build of dooble with qt5
« Reply #325 on: February 26, 2025, 05:34:00 pm »
This brings me back to my question: is there no better, more permanent solution to this? Or would that simply be too complex?

The code is pretty big and complex and our main maintainer hasn't had time/interest in the project since the Ukrainian war broke out.
The problem is likely in the webengine, which is basically Chromium and just building it is at the limit of our platform.
Another thing, you were wondering about your CPU and whether it might cause problems. OS/2 is basically SMP so the scheduler will put a thread on any core, performance or efficient.  Also if there is hyper-threading, another problem. Ideally you could turn of the efficiency cores and hyper-threading as ACPI accepts a bitmask on which cores are active. Easier said then done unless there are BIOS settings.