OS2 World Community Forum

OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical => Hardware => Topic started by: Martin Iturbide on January 20, 2022, 01:48:52 pm

Title: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: Martin Iturbide on January 20, 2022, 01:48:52 pm
Hi

I like to discuss the wish list hardware compatibility from time to time since the hardware and necessities changes in time. 

What is your hardware compatibility request with ArcaOS these days?

I personally have in my list:
- Intel Wifi support
- Intel HD dual screen support. (To mirror screen or extend screen)
  - Easier Hot plug to projectors. (To mirror screen or extend screen)

What's yours? No matter if it is a wild shot.

Regards
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: Neil Waldhauer on January 20, 2022, 03:36:49 pm
I also think WiFi would be a high priority. Both WiFi and dual screen have been mentioned by Arca Noae on their roadmap.

I'd add an item that is partly software and partly hardware -- I'd like to see video conferencing on our platform. This also seems to be in progress, but at BitWise and in discussions here. That is both audio and video hardware.
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: roberto on January 20, 2022, 04:39:37 pm
I also think WiFi would be a high priority. Both WiFi and dual screen have been mentioned by Arca Noae on their roadmap.

To this would add GPT support for large disks.



Saludos
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: Rene Hvidsoe on January 20, 2022, 06:56:48 pm
Hi,

I think same as Neil video conferencing would be vey handy in todays world.

Wifi would be nice, but have been using a travel adapter for few years now.

Rene

Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: Eugene Tucker on January 20, 2022, 07:37:15 pm
Make that another to agree with Neil. Ditto
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: Lars on January 20, 2022, 08:09:37 pm
I also think WiFi would be a high priority. Both WiFi and dual screen have been mentioned by Arca Noae on their roadmap.

I'd add an item that is partly software and partly hardware -- I'd like to see video conferencing on our platform. This also seems to be in progress, but at BitWise and in discussions here. That is both audio and video hardware.

Funny enough, the video support is better under VirtualBox then it is on plain HW. My built-in notebook webcam is detected in VirtualBox as a USB video device with bulk endpoint. The combination of libuvc+libusb has no problems using it. What we now need is a port of a Linux web app based on QT (for display) and  livuvc+libusb (for the data streaming). I am not yet clear about audio (synchronized to video).
The OS/2 MMPM subsystem is built upon streams that can be synchronized. But if you use libusb + libuvc, they know nothing about the OS/2 MMPM streaming (manager). You just read video and potentially audio directly from the device but then, these are not synchronized.

Lars
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: Craig Miller on January 20, 2022, 08:26:46 pm
I agree, Dual Monitor support and WiFi support would be the biggest items when it comes to hardware.

As a secondary wish for hardware, perhaps basic Bluetooth support (even keyboards and mice) would be great.

Lastly, I am not sure if we need new drivers for 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express? If so, that would be good to start looking at what that would take.

On the software side I have a few more wishes =)

Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: Dave Yeo on January 20, 2022, 11:47:07 pm
I also think WiFi would be a high priority. Both WiFi and dual screen have been mentioned by Arca Noae on their roadmap.

I'd add an item that is partly software and partly hardware -- I'd like to see video conferencing on our platform. This also seems to be in progress, but at BitWise and in discussions here. That is both audio and video hardware.

Funny enough, the video support is better under VirtualBox then it is on plain HW. My built-in notebook webcam is detected in VirtualBox as a USB video device with bulk endpoint. The combination of libuvc+libusb has no problems using it. What we now need is a port of a Linux web app based on QT (for display) and  livuvc+libusb (for the data streaming). I am not yet clear about audio (synchronized to video).
The OS/2 MMPM subsystem is built upon streams that can be synchronized. But if you use libusb + libuvc, they know nothing about the OS/2 MMPM streaming (manager). You just read video and potentially audio directly from the device but then, these are not synchronized.

Lars

Usually the video and audio are compressed and muxed into a container, AVI, Matroska(webm) etc with syncing happening there. FFmpeg or libavcodec can handle that.
It also raises the question of licensing and such. If something is expecting H264 and AAC, well they're patented. There's libvpx, vorbis etc, does any video conferencing software support them?
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: Roderick Klein on January 21, 2022, 01:15:10 am
I also think WiFi would be a high priority. Both WiFi and dual screen have been mentioned by Arca Noae on their roadmap.

To this would add GPT support for large disks.



Saludos

ArcaOS 5.1.0. already has large GPT disc support in conjunction UEFI support.
But this is of course not yet released.  See the Warpstock Europe video's for more information.

Roderick
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: Remy on January 21, 2022, 01:58:45 am
I also think WiFi would be a high priority. Both WiFi and dual screen have been mentioned by Arca Noae on their roadmap.

I'd add an item that is partly software and partly hardware -- I'd like to see video conferencing on our platform. This also seems to be in progress, but at BitWise and in discussions here. That is both audio and video hardware.

Funny enough, the video support is better under VirtualBox then it is on plain HW. My built-in notebook webcam is detected in VirtualBox as a USB video device with bulk endpoint. The combination of libuvc+libusb has no problems using it. What we now need is a port of a Linux web app based on QT (for display) and  livuvc+libusb (for the data streaming). I am not yet clear about audio (synchronized to video).
The OS/2 MMPM subsystem is built upon streams that can be synchronized. But if you use libusb + libuvc, they know nothing about the OS/2 MMPM streaming (manager). You just read video and potentially audio directly from the device but then, these are not synchronized.

Lars

Usually the video and audio are compressed and muxed into a container, AVI, Matroska(webm) etc with syncing happening there. FFmpeg or libavcodec can handle that.
It also raises the question of licensing and such. If something is expecting H264 and AAC, well they're patented. There's libvpx, vorbis etc, does any video conferencing software support them?

My current working on AVxCAT (v2 beta) works well with webcam using Wim's webcam.exe progam.
I can record video + audio in syncro or record video only or audio only.
(no stream out to the network)

Currently, I only enable high quality which is copy received streams into output which is then AVI for video or WAV for audio.
I did a few test to have output into any other format (it works but I have to adjust some coding parts in this mode and should be available in a several days - use of any other video format results into higher storage use which increase up to several 10th of megabytes (between 8M to about 35M) into share low memory)

If some are interested into testing my current v2 beta, please left a comment here.
(Of course, it has many other added features like icecast, front cover when copy disc or using discid etc... and many other improvements, optimizations, all available with ffmpeg 4.x)

Rémy

Update (ffmpeg): I did a test streaming my webcam video+audio directly as mp4 to udp and it works (having both video and audio in the stream)
e.g.  I tested using my webcam stream as input and using for final output ( -tune fastdecode -tune zerolatency -fflags nobuffer -f mpegts "udp://127.0.0.1:8888?pkt_size=1316" )
I opened VLC player and put in udp://@127.0.0.1:8888?pkt_size=1316  and got video + audio  (with a latency of course) 
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: Dave Yeo on January 21, 2022, 02:03:06 am
WebRTC is probably the solution for video conferencing. QT5 supports it, as well as our Firefox. Of course it needs to be coded for our platform and currently as far as I know, only USB audio supports microphone input.
https://webrtc.org/ (https://webrtc.org/)
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: Andy Willis on January 21, 2022, 04:45:34 am
My current working on AVxCAT (v2 beta) works well with webcam using Wim's webcam.exe progam.
I can record video + audio in syncro or record video only or audio only.
(no stream out to the network)

Currently, I only enable high quality which is copy received streams into output which is then AVI for video or WAV for audio.
I did a few test to have output into any other format (it works but I have to adjust some coding parts in this mode and should be available in a several days - use of any other video format results into higher storage use which increase up to several 10th of megabytes (between 8M to about 35M) into share low memory)

If some are interested into testing my current v2 beta, please left a comment here.
(Of course, it has many other added features like icecast, front cover when copy disc or using discid etc... and many other improvements, optimizations, all available with ffmpeg 4.x)

Rémy

Update (ffmpeg): I did a test streaming my webcam video+audio directly as mp4 to udp and it works (having both video and audio in the stream)
e.g.  I tested using my webcam stream as input and using for final output ( -tune fastdecode -tune zerolatency -fflags nobuffer -f mpegts "udp://127.0.0.1:8888?pkt_size=1316" )
I opened VLC player and put in udp://@127.0.0.1:8888?pkt_size=1316  and got video + audio  (with a latency of course)
I may be able to borrow a Logitech Pro Stream Webcam, any idea of it would be supported?
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: Remy on January 21, 2022, 05:21:11 am
My current working on AVxCAT (v2 beta) works well with webcam using Wim's webcam.exe progam.
I can record video + audio in syncro or record video only or audio only.
(no stream out to the network)

Currently, I only enable high quality which is copy received streams into output which is then AVI for video or WAV for audio.
I did a few test to have output into any other format (it works but I have to adjust some coding parts in this mode and should be available in a several days - use of any other video format results into higher storage use which increase up to several 10th of megabytes (between 8M to about 35M) into share low memory)

If some are interested into testing my current v2 beta, please left a comment here.
(Of course, it has many other added features like icecast, front cover when copy disc or using discid etc... and many other improvements, optimizations, all available with ffmpeg 4.x)

Rémy

Update (ffmpeg): I did a test streaming my webcam video+audio directly as mp4 to udp and it works (having both video and audio in the stream)
e.g.  I tested using my webcam stream as input and using for final output ( -tune fastdecode -tune zerolatency -fflags nobuffer -f mpegts "udp://127.0.0.1:8888?pkt_size=1316" )
I opened VLC player and put in udp://@127.0.0.1:8888?pkt_size=1316  and got video + audio  (with a latency of course)
I may be able to borrow a Logitech Pro Stream Webcam, any idea of it would be supported?

Following webcam's are working with Wim's webcam.exe
Logitech
c250/c270/pro9000/C920 HD pro

I tested output streamming using following sample with mine parameters providing good results
(do not invert input file order or you not been able to get a correct syncro)

warning: It consumes many MiB of shared below storage (could be above 35MiB, up to nearly 70MiB)
If after tests, you see that below is low and not well freed, restart wps only should return many memory   

To resume:  ffmpeg with both pipe inputs \Audio and \Video to pipe output into ffmpeg (for single file with syncro audio/video) to output udp   

/* ------------ ffmpeg version : 4.2.2 ------------ */
/* ------------------------------------------------ */
ffmpeg_exe=" fullpath ffmpeg including ffmpeg.exe  "
ff_outfile="udp://127.0.0.1:8888?pkt_size=1316"
ff_outfile='-f mpegts "'||ff_outfile||'"'
Out_AVmap=" -map 0:0 -map 0:1"
/* new for test */
ffmpeg_prms="-use_wallclock_as_timestamps 1 -thread_queue_size 32 -i \PIPE\Webcam\Audio -itsoffset 1.250 -use_wallclock_as_timestamps 1 -thread_queue_size 48 -f mjpeg -i \PIPE\Webcam\Video"
ffmpeg_prms=ffmpeg_prms||" -r 25 -video_track_timescale 25.00 -c:v copy -c:a copy -map 1:v:0 -map 0:a:0 -f avi - |"||ffmpeg_exe||" -y "
/* ------------ */
ffmpeg_prms=ffmpeg_prms||' -i - -hide_banner '||Out_AVmap||' -c:v libx264 -b:v 800k -async 1'
ffmpeg_prms=ffmpeg_prms||' -movflags faststart -preset medium'
ffmpeg_prms=ffmpeg_prms||' -tune fastdecode -tune zerolatency'
ffmpeg_prms=ffmpeg_prms||' -c:a aac -strict -2 -b:a 128k -threads 1'
ffmpeg_prms=ffmpeg_prms||' '||ff_outfile
''||ffmpeg_exe||' -y '||ffmpeg_prms
Return

Before run it:
e.g.  Start webcam.exe /u/n/x640/y480/a:32000
Start VLC opening a network resource  udt://@127.0.0.1:8888?pkt_size=1316    (LVC is than waiting on UDP inputs)

By default VLC is buffering 1s before play (this introduces a latency of 1s and you may see about 1s additional latency from the full process + UDP 

In cas of out of syncro between audio and video, try to adjust -itsoffset 1.250  (this value is ok with C270 webcam)
Only need to adjust one time. 

About webcam.exe => https://www.os2world.com/forum/index.php/topic,2712.60.html
You can use my little tool (widget) to control webcam.exe  ( [  S  ] for settings, show to display webcam, green or red button to on/off the webcam )
http://remydodin.levillage.org/doc/realisations/downloads/WCC_26072020.zip
regards

Update (20220122): replacing libx264 by mpeg4  reduces a little latency
It should be possible to send the udp stream to a server converting them into hls stream readable by browsers.   
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: Lars on January 21, 2022, 06:30:05 am
WebRTC is probably the solution for video conferencing. QT5 supports it, as well as our Firefox. Of course it needs to be coded for our platform and currently as far as I know, only USB audio supports microphone input.
https://webrtc.org/ (https://webrtc.org/)
libuvc is totally generic in handling video input: it effectively sets up iso in transfers for the video in endpoint to receive video data. It could do the very same for the audio in endpoint to receive audio data but it does not (I think but I would need to check).
This is completely independent of any OS/2 audio drivers. It works via libusb which in turn works via USBCALLS and USBRESMG.
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: Dave Yeo on January 21, 2022, 07:41:29 am
Yes, but how does the video (and audio) stream get to an application such as a web browser? And how does the application control the camera (perhaps focus for example), get capabilities and such? It does look like Mozilla will handle the transcoding and likely the muxing
Guess I could enable webrtc and see where the compile breaks.
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: Lars on January 21, 2022, 10:00:21 am
Yes, but how does the video (and audio) stream get to an application such as a web browser? And how does the application control the camera (perhaps focus for example), get capabilities and such? It does look like Mozilla will handle the transcoding and likely the muxing
Guess I could enable webrtc and see where the compile breaks.
Yes, we need an application that actually uses libuvc. As to controls, the libuvc example app schedules an irq in transfer in addition to the iso in transfers for the video data. The irq endpoint then delivers a message when you pres/release the camera button (at least it does for my camera). The application will need to decode that message to find out if a button has been pressed or released (2 different messages) and if yes, which one in case there are more buttons than one (I hope this is standardized).

As far as I understood BWW, the new browser (which is currently on hold) will use libuvc to get data and send over www and hopefully display received data in a browser tab (?) but maybe I got that wrong.

But it would be great if we could port webrtc to work on our platform.
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: Roderick Klein on January 21, 2022, 03:50:37 pm
Browser development is going to pickup again. We have collect SOME funding, but we need more.

Roderick Klein
OS/2 VOICE
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: Dave Yeo on January 21, 2022, 05:25:42 pm
But it would be great if we could port webrtc to work on our platform.

Well, QT5's web engine also supports webrtc, which I guess is what BWW is planning on enabling. For Mozilla, it would require someone who knows what they're doing. Hopefully BWW will solve the remaining problems with the new browser.
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: Martin Iturbide on January 21, 2022, 06:07:34 pm
Hi

Just trying to organize the ideas without any order or weights we have:

- Audio and Camera support for a Videoconference tool.
- Bluetooth support for Keyboard and Mouse.
- GPT support for large disks.
- 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express.
- Intel Wifi support.
- Dual Screen Support
   - Intel HD dual screen support. (To mirror screen or extend screen)
   - Easier Hot plug to projectors. (To mirror screen or extend screen)

I think I would like to add to the list:
- Hibernate support for PCs  / Laptops.

Regards
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: Roderick Klein on January 21, 2022, 06:46:47 pm
Hi

Just trying to organize the ideas without any order or weights we have:

- Audio and Camera support for a Videoconference tool.
- Bluetooth support for Keyboard and Mouse.
- GPT support for large disks.
- 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express.
- Intel Wifi support.
- Dual Screen Support
   - Intel HD dual screen support. (To mirror screen or extend screen)
   - Easier Hot plug to projectors. (To mirror screen or extend screen)

I think I would like to add to the list:
- Hibernate support for PCs  / Laptops.

Regards

That large hard disc support with GPT is already working. See the readme file of the AHCI driver of Arca Noae.
http://trac.netlabs.org/ahci/browser/trunk/src/os2ahci/ReadMe.txt
Added support for 48/64 bit LBA operations.

But it seems you need the GPT filter driver for this to work which is included in ArcaOS 5.1.0. beta.

Roderick
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: Roderick Klein on January 21, 2022, 06:50:17 pm
- 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express.

Best I can tell this requires no special support. If somebody has such a chipset is not supported open a ticket at Arca Noae if you have such a chipset,
https://www.arcanoae.com/wiki/multimac/

"These drivers exist and are included in the MultiMac distribution because someone needed them and requested a driver.  MultiMac drivers are typically very easy to create. If you have a specific network adapter that is not supported by an existing MultiMac driver and you need a driver for it, please open a ticket and request a new driver. Make sure you attach a TestLog log file to your ticket."

Roderick
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: Andreas Schnellbacher on January 22, 2022, 02:03:13 pm
I have another one: Support up to 4 GB RAM for the system with addition of Physical Address Extension.
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: Roderick Klein on January 22, 2022, 03:22:54 pm
I have another one: Support up to 4 GB RAM for the system with addition of Physical Address Extension.

Discussed in this forum before plenty of times. Maybe the os/4 team can comment.
My technicall estimate to get this in current os/2 kernel.
Well not going happen...

Putting in this support will require big big changes.


Roderick
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: OS4User on January 22, 2022, 03:40:43 pm
I have another one: Support up to 4 GB RAM for the system with addition of Physical Address Extension.

Maybe the os/4 team can comment.
My technicall estimate to get this in current os/2 kernel.
Well not going happen...

Roderick

OS/4 uses PSE-36 for quite a long. But for ram drive only.
To use PSE-36 or PAE for general propose memory   requires   totally  rewrite kernel component "Pager" and all PDD at least.  So "Well not going happen... (С)".
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: Roderick Klein on January 22, 2022, 04:27:14 pm
I have another one: Support up to 4 GB RAM for the system with addition of Physical Address Extension.

Maybe the os/4 team can comment.
My technicall estimate to get this in current os/2 kernel.
Well not going happen...

Roderick

OS/4 uses PSE-36 for quite a long. But for ram drive only.
To use PSE-36 or PAE for general propose memory   requires   totally  rewrite kernel component "Pager" and all PDD at least.  So "Well not going happen... (С)".

Thanks for the technical clarification.

Roderick
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: Andreas Schnellbacher on January 22, 2022, 05:17:48 pm
Thanks, OS4User. RAM disk is not an option, when only 1 GB or less is recognized for the system. AMD systems suffer since a longer time from this, with 1.5 - 2 GB. According to Sigurd, newer Intel (i7) systems have that problem, too.

Virtualization seems to be the only option then.

Are there any newer systems that support 3 GB?
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: OS4User on January 22, 2022, 05:25:32 pm
RAM disk is not an option, when only 1 GB or less is recognized for the system.

OS/4 PSE-36 RamDrive  uses mem above 4Gb,  so 1Gb recognized by the system   is  for system :)
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: Dave Yeo on January 22, 2022, 06:24:44 pm
Thanks, OS4User. RAM disk is not an option, when only 1 GB or less is recognized for the system. AMD systems suffer since a longer time from this, with 1.5 - 2 GB. According to Sigurd, newer Intel (i7) systems have that problem, too.

Virtualization seems to be the only option then.

Are there any newer systems that support 3 GB?

Even with only 1.5GB of actual ram recognized by the system, you still should have about 3.5 GB of memory space, it'll just swap and the swap file can go on the ram disk.
At one point I was using a system with 1.5GB's of ram installed, linking xul.dll required VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT set to 3072 to avoid running out of memory, the swap file would grow to close to 2 GB (occasionally over which killed the system with a swap file full error, there seems to be a 2GB limit), things would be slow but work.
With 1.5 GB of ram under normal usage you should only see light swapping.
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: Andreas Schnellbacher on January 22, 2022, 11:42:00 pm
Here are 2 GB recognized. When the Mozilla browser eats up all memory and the system has started to swap (SSD), it becomes unstable. I guess that's rather a browser problem with newer Web pages.

Sometimes, to be sure, I close the browser before starting VAC 3, just for to release its memory.

I don't try to use AOO and Mozilla simultaneously, because of the negative experience on my previous system (2.5 GB, HDD). 2.5 GB hasn't lasted for both, maybe due to the slow HDD.
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: Dave Yeo on January 23, 2022, 01:47:04 am
Somewhat surprising, my T42 with 1GB of ram is quite stable, takes forever to start SeaMonkey but once running, it's fine.
One thing is to set the size of the swap file as fairly large (1GB?) as growing it can cause problems.
The other day I had to reboot as cpp (the preprocessor) was dying trying to allocate 64 KB's of memory, SeaMonkey was still stable.
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: Andreas Schnellbacher on January 23, 2022, 01:05:03 pm
One thing is to set the size of the swap file as fairly large (1GB?) as growing it can cause problems.
Thanks, I have set it now to 1 GB and will report:
Code: [Select]
SWAPPATH=C:\OS2\SYSTEM 2048 1048576
When that works better, it's time to use the RAM disk.
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: Doug Clark on January 24, 2022, 03:22:17 am
Are you guys saying that AOS on newer systems with more than 4 GB of ram installed cannot utilitize all 4 GB of RAM for the system?

 

 
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: Dave Yeo on January 24, 2022, 07:07:09 am
For some systems, yes. It varies but some systems have holes (used by the hardware I believe) in the memory address map creating the problem that Andreas has, only a couple of GB's accessible in the lower 4GB's of address space.
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: OS4User on January 24, 2022, 07:14:58 am
Are you guys saying that AOS on newer systems with more than 4 GB of ram installed cannot utilitize all 4 GB of RAM for the system?

OS/2 only works with 32-bit physical addresses (kernel and drivers). So it is possible to address RAM (and other devices) that the motherboard maps below 4Gb. Some recent developments allow utilize of RAM above 4 GB, but so far only for ramdrive (AOS uses PAE, OS/4 uses PSE36).

Unfortunately, newer motherboards map the bulk of RAM above 4GB and below 4GB by only 1GB or so.
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: Andreas Schnellbacher on January 24, 2022, 08:15:08 pm
Unfortunately, newer motherboards map the bulk of RAM above 4GB and below 4GB by only 1GB or so.
Here large parts of the RAM are below 4 GB, but Dmitry's loader recognizes just the largest contiguous block.
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: Doug Clark on January 24, 2022, 08:19:01 pm
Thanks guys for the response.  After reading this I started to remember this was covered in one of the WarpStock 2021 presentations  by David Azarewicz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk6iwx43lM8&list=PL4pjffCdj7wRBQfyneCN8kETgFesTSEy2&index=5

Looks like a list of compatible motherboards is more important than ever - or buying from Blond Guy and letting him do the hard work of discovering what works and what doesn't.

I have learned, the hard way, that it is worth the time and money to get hardware that is compatible, e.g. postscript printers instead of Windows printers, etc.  I believe the saying is: buy well and only cry once.
Title: Re: Hardware Compatibility Wishlist for 2022
Post by: OS4User on January 24, 2022, 08:29:31 pm
Unfortunately, newer motherboards map the bulk of RAM above 4GB and below 4GB by only 1GB or so.
Here large parts of the RAM are below 4 GB, but Dmitry's loader recognizes just the largest contiguous block.

His loader recognizes all blocks of RAM - it is really pies of cake. But os2kernel has a bug and cannot work with some kind of blocks. That is why the loader reports to kernel about available memory with some correction - not all the blocks are shown.

Meanwhile os4kernel does not have that bug  -  and os4loader reports about ALL the blocks. On some system one can see that os4kernel shows more "RAM in machine" then os2kernel for this reason. (actually, difference is not very big)