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Messages - Olafur Gunnlaugsson

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151
General Discussion / Re: OS/2 application developers
« on: December 08, 2017, 08:09:05 pm »
Because being satisfied with the virtualization of a platform that's no longer being developed only ensures that the platform continues to NOT be developed. It's time to move forward. It's time for OS/2 environments to exist as first class citizens & run natively on current hardware. It's also time for the pool of programmers that're familiar with the platform to expand. We're not going to get new developers to write software for platforms that they consider to be dead. It's time to breath new life into this community. Otherwise, it dies with it's current users -as they eventually die.

There must be some sort of a misunderstanding here, OS/2 will not be developed in the future and has not been developed now for more than 20 years. I was giving a rational alternative for those who want to move forward while still retaining their own software for the time being, rather than take on the mammoth task of emulating the (humongous and outdated) OS/2 API from the outset. And you are contradicting yourself on technical terms, your proposal was emulation, I proposed virtualisation instead, which is a completely different technology.

152
General Discussion / Re: OS/2 application developers
« on: December 08, 2017, 05:15:16 pm »
I'm looking at 64-bit OS/2 the way Microsoft looked at 64-bit Windows.

Why?

Microsoft implemented a full software emulation of 32 bit x86 Windows  (WOW64) because they developed the 64bit version on Compaq Alpha servers that had no virtualisation support of any kind and similarly were not x86 compatible in any way. It was not until the AMD64 architecture (Which Intel licences from AMD as well) that they released it and then utilised the x86 hardware emulation available in the AMD64 architecture (they had been using Windows Server Alpha 64 in-house since 2000).

This made perfect sense 20 years ago but today we have AMD64 compatible chips with shedloads of cores, fairly reasonable virtualisation features and memory is cheap to boot. Why not implement a container based mechanism where a real instance of OS/2 lives that can communicate with other containers, and develop a 64 bit OS/2 workalike in another container. This would alleviate the need for developing any sort of OS/2 compatibility or x86 emulation in the beginning allowing developers to focus on the new OS or new shell on top of an existing OS. Already existing open source virtualisation software may actually be up to the task with some modifications.

The plus would also be the possibility of running other OS's in containers and of developing and debugging the system on the same PC using different containers.

153
Simplified OO WPS clone, no rendering engine as such but rendering offloaded to Vulcan, command line interface that is a hybrid of OS/2 CL and an interactive REXX interpreter, that would use Oberon style (much simpler) OO features glued onto REXX rather than the Smalltalk OO features that Objective REXX uses, but also offer AOS style "text interface inside a windowing environment" as an alternative for the CLI challenged. This could make the WPS feature of making everything an object pay dividends in making everything scriptable as well.

Merge the WPS "work folder" feature with the multiple desktop feature of eWPS to create a tabbed work folder that can also function as a separate virtual screen, and thus allows you to arrange your work into folder-tabs that each offers either a folder view or a desktop view or both.

Ditch the drive letter metaphor for an OO interface that works with NVMHCIS or similar, offer a plugin architecture that emulates drive letters for legacy software. Drive letters made sense in the 1970's, in 2017+ we should be using WPS objects with automatic configuration and management of storage, both local and networked.

Browser should be integrated into the WPS much like Web Explorer partly was, only more so. Some DOS compatibility on some level would be nice as well.

I would buy this ... either as software or hardware ... proprietary or not.

154
Applications / Re: What is OS/2 AO-Manager ?
« on: December 01, 2017, 04:14:00 pm »
Its "Availability and Operations Manager", part of the OS/2 Server "Hardware Management Console Services"

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=isg2d37db3ef98da032e85256e550073182c&aid=1

155
Article Discussions / Re: Sponsorship needed for new OS/2 web browser
« on: November 06, 2017, 02:34:12 pm »

Pale Moon is also buggier than most people realise
And that's not the only problem. It also lacks the support for native text encodings. Without an useable C++ development environment there's no hope for something more modern or advanced. Why should an incomplete and slow port of the Qt framework change the situation? On the other hand it's possible to use something written in C that will perform much better under OS/2-based systems. Maybe like the NetSurf (http://www.netsurf-browser.org/) for RISC OS.

Netsurf lacks an ECMAScript interpreter so you are forced to use mobile versions of most major sites.

156
Article Discussions / Re: Sponsorship needed for new OS/2 web browser
« on: November 06, 2017, 11:08:13 am »
Going with Pale Moan (a Mozilla split off at browser 24) is very likely to have the issue in the near future that Pale Moan could port code from the Mozilla foundation. And then we are stuck back to square one.

*Pale Moan* Freudian slip?

Pale Moon is also buggier than most people realise

157
General Discussion / Re: Arca Noae Website
« on: November 01, 2017, 04:24:20 pm »
So I have a complaint on the ArcaNoae website, too. After getting an email notification that my license (for Arca OS) needed to be renewed, the redirect link took a long time and then eventually failed.

Not sure I'd trust OS/2 running a website for security--because a lot of the (older) ported packages like apache or php have serious vulnerabilities.

Its not OS/2 that is the problem, it is their Wordpress based system.

158
A little bit off topic but has anyone tried to use snap or panorama to drive a hdmi monitor? 

Several video cards now have DVI-D and HDMI outputs and no VGA I was wondering if it was possible to have a hdmi  monitor driven by one of those cards.

I have a monitor that uses a DVI to HDMI converter cable, using an old Dell X600PRO card via DVI output and Snap 3.18.

Panorama should work with the HDMI output if the VESA BIOS on the card or motherboard supports it, most should.

159
Utilities / Re: Unzip 5.52 vs 6.00 date differences...why?
« on: October 21, 2017, 03:15:56 am »
Olafur,

LSZipWiz is a regularly updated alternative: http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/incoming/lszipwiz-0.99.zip

Good point...I did install this app, checked it out, was going to make some suggestions to the author on how to enhance it...for starters, I wish that the application window and it's content frames were scalable...so that if you expand the main window the child windows expand as well. For eample, the contents of a large ZIP file would then be easily viewable.

You should send him an e-mail, I had an exchange with him over a bug a few weeks ago, very friendly contact.

160
Utilities / Re: Unzip 5.52 vs 6.00 date differences...why?
« on: October 20, 2017, 08:05:45 pm »
LSZipWiz is a regularly updated alternative: http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/download/pub/incoming/lszipwiz-0.99.zip

161
Hardware / Re: OS/2 and NVMe SSD?
« on: October 19, 2017, 07:51:15 pm »
Does NVMe Drives Need Special Drivers?

Yes, NVMe is incompatible unless there is a AHCI translation offered in the BIOS. It is a wholly different standard to AHCI.

162
I'm not sure if I should open a ticket for it on ArcaOS Mantis yet. It is not a bug, but it is lack of prevention on the app to stop the users to do harmful things.  I also can not find the right "Project Category" to open the ticket.

You should, if a configuration program creates a condition that prevents the computer from operating and that was not the intention of the user, that is definitely a bug.

163
General Discussion / Re: Trying to get the forums back.
« on: September 22, 2017, 02:30:51 am »
Back in my Apple II days, I was transwarped,  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II_accelerators#TransWarp_.E2.80.93_Applied_Engineering. Replaced the 1Mhz 6502 with a 3.6Mhz 65C02 and included 256MBs of ram. With a bit pf patching, the old Apple II could run Apple //E software at a blazing 3Mhz and access most all the ram. Now I'm running a 2.4Ghz dual core CPU with 4GBs of ram and yet am only warped  :)

256Mb?

That must have cost a bundle, while it is now some 35 years ago so my memory may be failing, I am fairly sure my Transwarp I only had a 256k cache.

164
Applications / Re: Visual BASIC for OS/2
« on: June 22, 2017, 02:18:32 pm »
I have a copy of VA-BASIC v.1 somewhere and could create an ISO if someone is desperate, however this is the initial release which is full of bugs, and not one of the later fixed versions. IBM removed the fix downloads after just a few weeks and I did not have the presence of mind to download it initially.

165
Applications / Re: Visual BASIC for OS/2
« on: June 22, 2017, 02:13:28 pm »
Hi.

By the way does Microsoft Visual Basic for OS/2 exists? Or was it only a Win-16 version?
Some pictures of that, if exists, will be interesting too.

Regards

It exists as a native v1 Beta only that was shipped to those with (a then very expensive) Microsoft Developer Network subscription. Funnily enough the first edition of the manual for the VB v1 Win 16 still has sections written for OS/2 where the editor of the manual has forgotten to convert references from OS/2 to Windows references and even has a couple of screenshots from an OS/2 system where they had not had the time to replace it with a Win 3.x equivalent. The second edition of the v1 BV manual fixed this.

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