Messages

1

Setup & Installation / Re: Is FixPak 5 for WSeB 4.52 available anywhere?

« on: October 15, 2024, 11:49:01 pm »

Actually, I think IBM had 4.51 and simply applied the fixpack, perhaps with other fixes, to create 4.52

2

Multimedia / Re: Can aswitch.exe be used for always connected/attached usb speakers?

« on: October 15, 2024, 07:18:11 am »

Don't you just need SDDHELP.SYS installed for the SNAP dependency?

3

Setup & Installation / Re: OS/2 Booting with Bootman

« on: October 15, 2024, 07:15:41 am »

Good, I'm somewhat surprised that OS/2 was happy with using BeOS to partition, OS/2 is picky and it is usually recommended to use OS/2 to do all the partitioning.
I've never actually installed OS/2 4.5.2, with OS/2 3 or 4 you use fdisk and can set the partitions startable or installable. I'd assume it would be similar but using LVM. eCs and ArcaOS have updated disk managers and installers. Also bootable JFS so no need for HPFS.

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Setup & Installation / Re: OS/2 Booting with Bootman

« on: October 15, 2024, 03:51:54 am »

I'm not totally sure what LVM does with the MBR as well. Generally LVM stashes some data in the MBR/EBR about drive letters, newer OS/2 lets you assign any drive letter you want to a partition, whereas older (Warp 4 or earlier) just assigned drive letters under the same rules as DOS. It also allows JFS volumes to span partitions.
Yes, I think that installing Bootman first, then BootManager in a small primary. OS/2 can be installed anywhere on the size of HD you likely have with the T42 and will install to an extended partition fine.
I don't know anything about Bootman and whether it respects reserved space in the MBR so guess you will have to test.

5

Setup & Installation / Re: OS/2 Booting with Bootman

« on: October 15, 2024, 02:53:34 am »

Both BootManager and Airboot can boot any file system as long as you use OS/2 tools for setting things up. I use Airboot to boot everything om my MBR drives, including BeOS and Linux. I used to use BootManager but it can't handle drives over 500GB or so. While BootManager needs a primary partition (as small as you can make it works), Airboot installs in the MBR
IIRC, if OS/2 is installed on a primary and is given the C: drive letter, you can get by without a bootmanager. I guess that is why OS/2 was working fine until you installed Bootman which likely wiped out the LVM info that OS/2 needs on the MBR. I have always installed OS/2 on an extended partition and never as C:
I don't have experience with PCMIA but likely the drivers install too late in the boot process to use for booting.
Grub can be installed in an EBR rather then the MBR, it's how I install it so I can chain load it.

As I said, it should be possible to install BootManager in a small primary, OS/2 in an extended partition and use Bootman to boot to BootManager which then loads OS/2. With a zero timeout you wouldn't even notice it.

6

Setup & Installation / Re: OS/2 Booting with Bootman

« on: October 14, 2024, 10:31:06 pm »

OS/2 needs to know which drive it is booted from. The standard way is to install BootManager in a small primary partition using LVM. You could chain boot it from your Bootman, I've done similar with Grub, or use it to boot all OS's. The newer way is to install AirBoot into the MBR, which would break your Bootman.
Understand that OS/2 is picky about the partition layout, it has to be CHS partitioned (unless using the latest ArcaOS) and the way for OS/2 to co-exist with other operating systems is that all partitioning has to be done with OS/2 tools, LVM with Warp 4.52. during this process BootManager can be installed and the OS's can be added. Afterwards you can use the other operating system tools to change partition type, format etc
If you don't want to start over, DFSee, dfsee.com might be able to save you by fixing the CHS values to how OS/2 likes them, shrinking a partition so have room for BootManager and IIRC, installing BootManager. Unluckily I don't think dfsee supports the BEOS file system so you would have to shrink the Windows partition and you still need a primary for BootManager.
Also a good idea to have a FAT32 partition for sharing data between the operating systems, FAT32 support has to be added to OS/2 after install, or use a FAT partition, which means for OS/2 8.3 name limits.
No you can't boot OS/2 from a CF card unless the hardware presents as an IDE drive.

BTW, Lenovo has (had?) a SNAP build for T42's, at least those with an ATI video display, also a sound driver. Don't know the URL as it has been a long time since I installed it to my T42. You can also use the Uniaud sound driver and the SNAP you have does work besides DPMS support.
Edit: feel free to ask more questions

7

Setup & Installation / Re: cloning OS/2

« on: October 14, 2024, 08:41:27 pm »

Sure, done similar many times. Works fine as long as the drive letters and file system (can be fixed by running sysinstx)  are the same.
Possible problems, different network driver and rarely today, other drivers. Hopefully when a driver fails to load during boot, pressing enter to continue works, otherwise you might have to boot to something like the ArcaOS maintenance thing on the install stick to rem out the bad driver. Once up and running you would have to change the network driver. There may be other minor tweaks needed such as the video resolution once booted.

8

Applications / Re: Newb question

« on: October 14, 2024, 06:52:57 am »

As Dariusz says, DOS can only see 8.3 names, including the directory or directories above where you have the program. Likely the directory name needs to be shortened. Note that the WPS (OS/2 graphical shell) will use an extended attribute, .longname if you use it to rename the directory, so perhaps copy or xcopy the directory to a short name at a OS/2 cmd prompt.
Another solution is to use a FAT32 volume, FAT32 will show a shortname like dir~tory.

9

Setup & Installation / Re: Replacing ArcaOS UEFI Boot Manager with rEFind Boot Manager

« on: October 13, 2024, 06:34:55 pm »

Hi Martin, IIRC, I originally manually installed it (unzip or untar) to the EFI partition, used F12 or maybe it was the Arca Launcher, to boot to it and used itself to change the main boot manager to it. It ends up in \EFI\refind on the EFI volume.
Afterwards I found it not quite right and replaced it with the Deb from the site, which when I updated Mint, I had to downgrade to the version that Mint supported in its repository.
There's lots of information on installing it on their pages. Seems to me that installing it from Windows should also be fine, though any way you install you may have to manually edit refind.conf, especially if like me you have CSM enabled and want to boot legacy ArcaOS via AirBoot.

10

Multimedia / Re: Can aswitch.exe be used for always connected/attached usb speakers?

« on: October 13, 2024, 06:20:26 pm »

Too bad. I only fixed SDL2. I cannot even find the SDL that we use.
Maybe it's time to build a version of dosbox that uses SDL2.

Hmm, looking, DosBoxes last release was 5 years back, so likely no SDL2 support though I didn't find build instructions.
There are forks such as DosBox-X, https://dosbox-x.com/ which would be nice to have. Even it comes with an intree heavily modified SDL as well as support for SDL2. This one would be nice to have as it is expanded to run most DOS apps including Win9x.
There is also SDL3 now

11

General Discussion / Re: ArcaOS - OS/2 - GUI Improvements Suggestions Discussion

« on: October 12, 2024, 06:32:52 pm »

- Run commands feature on X Button.

We already have this one. Click the X button and just above Shut down... is Run...

12

Multimedia / Re: Can aswitch.exe be used for always connected/attached usb speakers?

« on: October 12, 2024, 05:40:00 pm »

Hi Lars. Dosbox is an emulator, uses SDL or SDL2 for video, sound etc to emulate a DOS environment, so nothing to do with a DOS VDM.

That is really odd. I helped Jochen to implement correct default device selection and also recording capability in SDL2. And I used the SDL2 test programs and they worked ok. Maybe that did not make it into the SDL2 provided by BWW?

From SDL2 I know that it uses DART. But that should work just fine with the USB audio drivers. At least it does here.

Looking at http://hobbesarchive.com/?submit=Search&search=dosbox&stype=any&sort=type_name&dir=%2F Dosbox is using SDL. Likely a newer version would use SDL2.

13

Multimedia / Re: Can aswitch.exe be used for always connected/attached usb speakers?

« on: October 12, 2024, 01:27:21 am »

@Dave
Still have my last ISA soundcard boxed somewhere: AWE32 P'n'P which I seem to recall had drivers/software for DOS, Win16/95 and OS/2 - including midi - and worked very well.
The end of ISA was when I stopped bothering installing DOS/Win16 support - only needed it to play a few games which play better with sound support - dosbox and uniaud to the rescue  :-)

Yes I still have my ProAudio Spectrum card laying around, which worked very well under OS/2 and DOS, it included a Sound Blaster clone so it was like having 2 sound cards, one for WinOS2 and one for OS/2. Also the odd game like Simcity2000 (DOS version) could use both.
Like you, once ISA went away I didn't play many DOS games though I did have a MB (Athlon) where the BIOS emulated a sound driver along with the included OS/2 sound driver. That was the last MB I had that had any OS/2 drivers.
Wish there was a cheap simple adapter so could still use an ISA card.

14

Multimedia / Re: Can aswitch.exe be used for always connected/attached usb speakers?

« on: October 11, 2024, 06:12:02 pm »

Hi Lars. Dosbox is an emulator, uses SDL or SDL2 for video, sound etc to emulate a DOS environment, so nothing to do with a DOS VDM.

15

Multimedia / Re: Can aswitch.exe be used for always connected/attached usb speakers?

« on: October 09, 2024, 02:44:54 am »

Hi Pete, as far as I know, no sound in DOS now a days, hasn't been since basically ISA days.
Does DosBox give you any other sound driver choices? If so, try them.
At least sound is now working for you, shame only on USB2, which is getting rare in computers. I know I only have USB3 on this box.
You could consider opening an issue with Arca Noae, sounds like their USB sound could be updated and who knows, perhaps USB3 could be fixed.