Author Topic: SNAP Driver Source  (Read 3465 times)

Doug Clark

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 376
  • Karma: +13/-1
    • View Profile
Re: SNAP Driver Source
« Reply #15 on: August 20, 2025, 06:00:07 pm »
Roderick,

That appears to be true for Intel CPU based motherboards, but does not appear to be true for AMD CPU based motherboards - at least for today.

I went to Microcenter.com (a big, national, US computer retailer/superstore) and searched for AM5 socket motherboards.  AM5 is the latest AMD socket for its processors.  AMD has announced it will support AM5 socket until 2027.  I took the first 3 motherboards from different manufacturers and checked if they had CSM - all three did.  Those motherboards are MSI MAG X870E Tomahawk Wifi, ASUS B650A ROG Strix, and Gigabyte X870E AORUS Elite.

I have no idea about that state of CSM support in laptops.

Roderick Klein

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 755
  • Karma: +16/-0
    • View Profile
Re: SNAP Driver Source
« Reply #16 on: August 20, 2025, 08:10:40 pm »
Roderick,

That appears to be true for Intel CPU based motherboards, but does not appear to be true for AMD CPU based motherboards - at least for today.

I went to Microcenter.com (a big, national, US computer retailer/superstore) and searched for AM5 socket motherboards.  AM5 is the latest AMD socket for its processors.  AMD has announced it will support AM5 socket until 2027.  I took the first 3 motherboards from different manufacturers and checked if they had CSM - all three did.  Those motherboards are MSI MAG X870E Tomahawk Wifi, ASUS B650A ROG Strix, and Gigabyte X870E AORUS Elite.

I have no idea about that state of CSM support in laptops.

Interesting. From a commercial perspective for normal mainboards there is 0 need to support CSM.  The last version of Windows to support CSM boot is Windows 10 32 bit.
And that has gone long out of support.

https://download-2.msi.com/archive/mnu_exe/mb/MAGX870ETOMAHAWKWIFI_English.pdf
On page 68 it says:
However, it still has a CSM (Compatibility Support Module) mode to be
compatible with older devices.

32-bit Windows operating system - this motherboard supports only Windows 11
64-bit operating system.

I can not find any references to other BIOS settings related to CSM support in this specific case that indicates you can still BOOT a CSM OS.
You see next to the BIOS having CSM support you must have drivers that support the new hardware.

So it all look pretty grim in my opinion. But I would not be surprised if some mainbords are still around with CSM.

Roderick Klein



Doug Clark

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 376
  • Karma: +13/-1
    • View Profile
Re: SNAP Driver Source
« Reply #17 on: August 21, 2025, 07:07:58 am »
Quote
I can not find any references to other BIOS settings related to CSM support in this specific case that indicates you can still BOOT a CSM OS.
You see next to the BIOS having CSM support you must have drivers that support the new hardware.

I am not sure what they mean there - or where it says it only supports 64 bit operating systems.
The manuals don't give very much information on CSM  - or in some cases any information at all.

With my AM4 socket MSI motherboard the way you choose whether to boot UEFI or CSM mode is through the BIOS boot menu - I suspect it is the same with AM5 socket boards.   Basically each media that is attached when the machine turns on is listed twice: once with a UEFI tag and again without the UEFI tag.  If you pick the media with the UEFI tag you boot in UEFI mode, otherwise you boot in CSM mode.  This isn't described in the manual.  With the other two manufacturers I had to look on forums where people posted about problems booting CSM or UEFI to find out that the board supported CSM.

With the choices between UEFI and CSM, MBR verses GPT, and how UEFI vs CSM affects the capabilities of both SNAP and Panorama, along with DOS and/or Win-OS/2,  setting up a system is now a very complex undertaking.

Roderick Klein

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 755
  • Karma: +16/-0
    • View Profile
Re: SNAP Driver Source
« Reply #18 on: August 23, 2025, 04:47:36 pm »
Quote
I can not find any references to other BIOS settings related to CSM support in this specific case that indicates you can still BOOT a CSM OS.
You see next to the BIOS having CSM support you must have drivers that support the new hardware.

I am not sure what they mean there - or where it says it only supports 64 bit operating systems.
The manuals don't give very much information on CSM  - or in some cases any information at all.

With my AM4 socket MSI motherboard the way you choose whether to boot UEFI or CSM mode is through the BIOS boot menu - I suspect it is the same with AM5 socket boards.   Basically each media that is attached when the machine turns on is listed twice: once with a UEFI tag and again without the UEFI tag.  If you pick the media with the UEFI tag you boot in UEFI mode, otherwise you boot in CSM mode.  This isn't described in the manual.  With the other two manufacturers I had to look on forums where people posted about problems booting CSM or UEFI to find out that the board supported CSM.

With the choices between UEFI and CSM, MBR verses GPT, and how UEFI vs CSM affects the capabilities of both SNAP and Panorama, along with DOS and/or Win-OS/2,  setting up a system is now a very complex undertaking.

Making an educated guess based on what is written it means you can for example use PCI cards that still have legacy support. Such as an old video card.

As I typed before as time moves on supporting CSM for old operating systems makes less and less sense. This because the mainboard vendor has to have drivers from the companies that make the chipsets, for example. video, audio etc.  I would be surprised if all of these mainboards could support Windows 7 for example. Hence the reason vendors will just dump CSM support.
Unless you buy a legacy refurbished system or with a industrial mainboard (but these can be expensive).

When it comes to the choice between GPT versus MBR on UEFI boot. Always grab GPT when booting an MBR system.  If you currently have a working MBR just jeep it. But in my experience MBR is fragile and especially LVM from OS/2. The genereal rule of thumb is you should ONLY use disc tools that run under OS/2 to edit your disc.  Not doing so can bring you into problems.
Especially if you want to setup a dual boot system. The design of GPT is simply more modern and less fragile.  Other people who have installed a dual boot with Windows 10 or Windows 11 on GPT I think will confirm it was never easier.

The headache is indeed with SNAP. Then you need a working mainboard with a CSM.

Roderick

Doug Clark

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 376
  • Karma: +13/-1
    • View Profile
Re: SNAP Driver Source
« Reply #19 on: August 24, 2025, 05:09:25 pm »
Quote
Making an educated guess based on what is written it means you can for example use PCI cards that still have legacy support. Such as an old video card.

Generally speaking, yes.  You have to use an adapter to plug the PCI card into the PCIe slot because of electrical and physical differences - the two use different voltages for example. And some adapters do not work - but the adapter from Startech does.  You can even plug multiple PCI cards into PCIe slots in the same motherboard - each with an adapter.  I currently have an Intel PCI network adapter and a QualTech multiport serial card plugged in one of my machines; the Intel network card because it is MUCH faster with netbios than the Realtek chip/driver on the motherboard.  This allows you to find and use hardware that matches older OS/2 specific drivers.

As for video cards: you could use an old PCI video card with an adapter but you really don't need to.  PCIe was becoming a thing right at the end of SNAP's development and you can find lots of PCIe video cards that work with SNAP.  There will be a presentation on this at Warpstock US in November.

Quote
As I typed before as time moves on supporting CSM for old operating systems makes less and less sense
Unfortunately this is true - and it appears that Intel already made that decision for most of its product line.  The good news though is that processors production runs are much longer than they used to be. The AMD Ryzen 5 5600X that I am currently using was released in November 2020 and is still for sale at Microcenter (as of this morning) now almost 5 years later - along with motherboards that support the processor.  The end of CSM is coming, but we have a few years before it vanishes - at least on the AMD side.