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Public Discussions => General Advertisements => Topic started by: Neil Waldhauer on June 07, 2020, 02:52:57 pm

Title: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Neil Waldhauer on June 07, 2020, 02:52:57 pm
ArcaOS 5.0.5 is included with your valid ArcaOS Support & Maintenance subscription at no additional charge. To download your fresh ISO, simply visit your Arca Noae customer portal page, select the Orders & Subscriptions link on the navigation panel to the left, then click on the order for your ArcaOS license. Once there, click the download link to request a fresh ISO, and wait for your notification email.

If your ArcaOS Support & Maintenance subscription has already expired, and you missed your window of opportunity to renew at regular rates, you may still renew at less than the cost of a new ArcaOS license.

Arca Noae sells only digital versions of ArcaOS. If you want a DVD or USB stick version, you can make your own. Instructions are provided with ArcaOS.

If you would rather buy the DVD or USB stick, Blonde Guy has plenty of them on hand. See the following link to shop for ArcaOS on DVD or USB stick. International shipping is now available.

http://www.blondeguy.com/computer/BlueLion.html (http://www.blondeguy.com/computer/BlueLion.html)
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Pete on June 07, 2020, 04:00:04 pm
Hi Neil

Reading https://www.arcanoae.com/arcaos-5-0-5-now-available/ I see that USB3 support should be included.

Having download 5.0.5 and had a look at the iso I cannot find usbxhcd.sys, it is not included in the usb package \CID\SERVER\ARCAPKG\USB.WPI

Did USB3 support get withdrawn or is it hiding in another package due to "preview" status?


Regards

Pete
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Rene Hvidsoe on June 07, 2020, 05:42:28 pm
Hi Pete,

The USB 3 driver is included have just installed on a new desktop bought in Jan 2020. That has USB 3 ports  and USB 2  ports connected to the USB 3 chip. So before I needed a USB 2 PCI E addon card to install.

 Now not needed  :)

Kind Regards

Rene

Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: ivan on June 07, 2020, 06:48:54 pm
Hi Pete, 

You should be able to find them in \bootimgs\boot2.pf  You need e_pf.exe to unpack the pf file.
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: ivan on June 07, 2020, 06:55:01 pm
Hi Rene,

Out of curiosity what motherboard and processor does your computer have?  I am waiting on the delivery of a new hard disk for my AMD Ryzen 3 2200G unit so I can test before I accidentally mess up what I have.
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Doug Bissett on June 07, 2020, 07:16:44 pm
Please read section 7.7, and 7.7.1, in README.TXT. It doesn't get installed by an update, because it is still experimental software, and update does not add features (with very few exceptions). It does get installed with a new install. I really don't know why they did it that way.

I expect that  USB 3 will be formally released via the subscription channel, when it is actually completed. At the moment, it is included as a convenience for those who don't have any choice but to use USB 3 for install. It may not work, depending on what adapter you actually have, I have a Fresco Logic adapter, that will work, if the conditions are perfect. The main problem with it is that there is no additional power available, and many devices draw too much power, causing it to turn off. Even plugging in my powered hub can cause it to power off. There just isn't enough power from a PCI-e connector. This is not unique to OS/2, it also happens in windows. If I leave the powered hub connected, and powered, while I boot, it will work (when the connector makes proper contact. The connector doesn't work well).

I will mention that USB, in general (not just USB 3, and not just OS/2), is a terrible technology. Nobody seems to follow the rules, and the connectors (especially A type connectors) are really flaky. If there is anything, at all, wrong with them, they are going to cause problems. USB 3 is more likely to have problems, because there are more contacts that have to connect properly, or various inconsistencies will happen. The usual ones are:

The USB 3 device will connect at USB 2 speeds, and not at USB 3 speeds. Many causes.

The device will connect okay, then some time later it will disconnect itself, for no apparent reason (usually somebody stood up, or moved a chair, which jiggled the connector enough to break the connection). Heavy devices, or cables, may drag the contacts apart, causing disconnection.

USB extension cables usually have worse connection problems than plugging a device directly into a fixed connector on the machine (two connectors to fail, plus they may move, which can break the connection).

USB HUBS can also have the connection problems. Since USB 3 HUBS actually have two devices (one for USB 3, and one for USB2), they may work with one, or the other, but not both. To work with both (they should), both sets of contacts need to be perfect.

The physical connectors on computer, cables, and device, need to be near perfect. Unfortunately, there is no easy way way to actually tell if a USB 3 device connects at USB 2 speed, and/or USB 3 speed. Speed depends on many things, and most of my USB 3 devices are not noticeably faster while connected to USB 3. If you pay for premium devices, they should perform better, as long as the contacts work. If you pay for cheap USB 3 devices, they may work better when attached to a USB 2 controller. On the other hand, some USB 2 devices will actually perform better, when attached to a USB 3 controller (actually two controllers, one for USB 3, and one for USB 2). You may need to try different combinations.

Have fun...
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Martin Iturbide on June 08, 2020, 03:39:08 am
Hi

Is the USB 3 storage drivers working when you boot from the USB Flash to install ArcaOS?
I had tested it again on a mainboard that only have USB 3 ports, UEFI in compatibility mode I still have the this message that the CD media can not be found.

I had tested the USB flash drive to update from ArcaOS 5.0.2 to 5.0.5 on a different machine. So, I'm guessing that my USB flash is fine. The only thing that I can think about is that I have not updated the USB flash since 5.0.1, just the ISO image. Should I recreate the USB flash drive?

Regards
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Dave Yeo on June 08, 2020, 03:59:38 am
Yes, every version needs its USB stick updated for it. In the case of 5.0.5, you need the USB3 support on the stick. Kind of surprised the update seems to have worked for you.
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Neil Waldhauer on June 08, 2020, 04:17:47 am
I have successful installations from DVD, USB stick and from the hard drive.

My test systems are here. Other Arca Noae testers have other systems.

http://www.blondeguy.com/ComputersForSale.html (http://www.blondeguy.com/ComputersForSale.html)

Some pages have not been updated yet, and still talk about 5.0.4, but all system have been tested with the GA or with one of the last betas.
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Doug Bissett on June 08, 2020, 05:27:40 am
Hi

Is the USB 3 storage drivers working when you boot from the USB Flash to install ArcaOS?
I had tested it again on a mainboard that only have USB 3 ports, UEFI in compatibility mode I still have the this message that the CD media can not be found.

I had tested the USB flash drive to update from ArcaOS 5.0.2 to 5.0.5 on a different machine. So, I'm guessing that my USB flash is fine. The only thing that I can think about is that I have not updated the USB flash since 5.0.1, just the ISO image. Should I recreate the USB flash drive?

Regards

UPDATE does NOT install USB 3 drivers, and will fail, as you describe, if you try to use a USB 3 controller to do the UPDATE. The ArcaOS installer does have USB 3 drivers, but they do NOT get transferred to the drive during an UPDATE. At the moment, you either need to figure out how to transfer the USBXHCD.SYS file to the installed system and add the CONFIG.SYS entry(s), at the end of phase 1, or you need to do a new install. If you can't figure that out, you are probably not ready to try USB 3.

You don't need to create the volume on the stick, but you MUST use the current ArcaOS installer to update the stick (which does recreate the installer), or it will refuse to start the installer. You cannot just copy the new ISO file to an old stick, and expect it to work. The DFS (DFSEE) thing will create the proper stuff on the stick. The main difference is that the DFS things should run under most current operating systems. They will wipe the whole stick, and make it new, while the AOSBOOT thing must run under OS/2, and simply formats the first partition on the stick, copies the new installer, including the ISO file, then makes the stick bootable.
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Rene Hvidsoe on June 08, 2020, 07:28:12 am
To Ivan,

I have a Gigabyte A320M-SH2 V2  with a AMD Ryzen 3 1200.

Regards

Rene
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Andreas Schnellbacher on June 08, 2020, 10:55:02 am
I have a Gigabyte A320M-SH2 V2  with a AMD Ryzen 3 1200.
Interesting. How much RAM is available to OS/2? (Type mem in a command window.)

Is network and sound working?
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Eugene Tucker on June 08, 2020, 01:57:30 pm
I have a problem with the USB stick creating too small a partitcian than I need to copy the ISO to it. One time it created a FAT and the other time a FAT32. Both were under 2 GB's.
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Pete on June 08, 2020, 02:50:25 pm
Hi All

@ivan
Thanks for the e_pf.exe tip.


@Eugene
I had a similar problem with 5.0.4 and used DFSee - http://www.dfsee.com/dfsee/index.php - to create the flash drive partition.


Having discovered I had e_pf.exe installed as part of my "bootAble setup" - https://hrbaan.home.xs4all.nl/bootAble/index.html - I had a go at unpacking boot2.pf which worked fine once I figured out that I actually had to use e_pf.exe as the first couple of tries resulted in "SYS1059: The system cannot execute the specified program." due to the presence of e_pf.com in the same directory.

Having added usbxhcd.sys to config.sys and updated usb from 12.05 to 12.06 my 5.0.4 installation now has working USB3 on my Gigabyte 990FXA-UD3 rev 4.0 mainboard withAMD990FX/SB950 chipset. Obviously limited testing to date but no problems so far.

Martin may want to update the Wiki entry for this mainboard to USB3 Supported by ArcaOS 5.0.5/USB 12.06


Regards

Pete

Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: David McKenna on June 08, 2020, 06:24:00 pm
      You can also boot the disk/stick to the 'System Management' page, open a command prompt, and type 'copy Z:\USBXHCD.SYS C:\os2\BOOT <enter>' (if the normal boot drive is C:). Then add the line BASEDEV=USBXHCD.SYS to CONFIG.SYS before the other USB**CD.SYS lines (if any) but after usbd.sys. Seems to work OK so far...
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: guzzi on June 08, 2020, 07:01:58 pm
USB 12.6 has just been released by AN.
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Rene Hvidsoe on June 08, 2020, 07:22:47 pm
To Andreas Schnellbacher,

I have in total 16 GB and aound 12 GB is set to ram disk.

Yes network and sound is working. Is a replacemetn for a 10 year old HP desktop that is showing its age.

PC is working very well.

Rene
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Andreas Schnellbacher on June 08, 2020, 11:08:57 pm
Hi Rene,

I have in total 16 GB and aound 12 GB is set to ram disk.

Yes network and sound is working. Is a replacemetn for a 10 year old HP desktop that is showing its age.

PC is working very well.

thanks. I meant the RAM that's seen by OS/2, without the RAM disk. In ArcaOS, there exists the "mem" utility that shows the RAM available to the system. (I hope it's more than 2 GB.)

That mainboard has an old chipset, but is still available, what makes it so interesting.
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Pete on June 09, 2020, 03:52:46 am
Hi David

... Then add the line BASEDEV=USBXHCD.SYS to CONFIG.SYS before the other USB**CD.SYS lines (if any) but after usbd.sys. Seems to work OK so far...


Aaah!

I had added that line after usbehcd.sys - following the "traditional" order 1] uhcd, 2] ohcd, 3] ehcd.

Will try moving the line as I have experienced 2 instances of my USB3 drive not attaching - always attaches the 1st time it is used but after ejecting the drive it sometimes cannot be attached again without a reboot.


Regards

Pete



 

Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Doug Bissett on June 09, 2020, 05:08:45 am
Quote
I had added that line after usbehcd.sys - following the "traditional" order 1] uhcd, 2] ohcd, 3] ehcd.

Will try moving the line as I have experienced 2 instances of my USB3 drive not attaching - always attaches the 1st time it is used but after ejecting the drive it sometimes cannot be attached again without a reboot.

Apparently, the line order doesn't matter, as long as they all come after USBD.SYS.

A USB 3 device that won't attach, is probably a flaky connector, even if you have already used it.

I see that USBXHCD PREVIEW (with all it's warts) has been released for AN subscription holders. Get it in the usual place. It should do the install properly.

If you plan to UPDATE to ArcaOS 5.0.5, it may be a good idea to install the 12.6 package first, especially if you plan to use an USB 3 controller for the UPDATE. I highly recommend  installing the 12.6 package, plus the USBXHCD Preview package if you have USB 3 hardware.
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Rene Hvidsoe on June 09, 2020, 07:08:32 am
Hi Rene,

I have in total 16 GB and aound 12 GB is set to ram disk.

Yes network and sound is working. Is a replacement for a 10 year old HP desktop that is showing its age.

PC is working very well.

thanks. I meant the RAM that's seen by OS/2, without the RAM disk. In ArcaOS, there exists the "mem" utility that shows the RAM available to the system. (I hope it's more than 2 GB.)

That mainboard has an old chipset, but is still available, what makes it so interesting.


Hi Andreas,

it shows 3.5 GB to ArcaOS.

This mb is working very well and has bought a another PC with simular HW.


Rene



Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Andreas Schnellbacher on June 09, 2020, 04:49:26 pm
it shows 3.5 GB to ArcaOS.
Thanks, great.
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Martin Iturbide on June 09, 2020, 10:50:00 pm
Yes, every version needs its USB stick updated for it. In the case of 5.0.5, you need the USB3 support on the stick. Kind of surprised the update seems to have worked for you.

Thanks, recreating my USB stick fixed my problem and now I can load the install procedure.

Regards
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: ivan on June 10, 2020, 01:34:17 pm
As a matter of interest I now have all the USB ports working, the USB 3.1 and the USB 2 that hang off the USB 3 controller in the Ryzen processor as well as the USB 2 ports on the addin card - all 15 of them, though why I would need that many I don't know.
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Pete on June 10, 2020, 09:36:05 pm
Hi Doug

As there is no problem with attaching/ejecting the same USB3 drive to the same hardware multiple times when booted into Windows it is not likely to be a "flaky connector".

Using copy usbxhcd$ xhci_after_boot.rpt gives this information:-

   XHCI: XhciGenericDone: pRBD=fb816114 DevAdr=1 EpId=0 error=12

After an attach and eject using copy usbxhcd$ xhci_after_boot.rpt gives this information:-
 
   XHCI: XhciGenericDone: pRBD=fb816114 DevAdr=1 EpId=0 error=12
   XHCI: XhciGenericDone: pRBD=fb816114 DevAdr=1 EpId=4 error=16
   XHCI: XhciGenericDone: pRBD=fb816114 DevAdr=1 EpId=4 error=16


Not sure how important the error codes are but after the 1st eject the USB3 drive cannot be attached until after a reboot usually - very occasionally it does attach a 2nd time but never a third time.


Regards

Pete



 
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Doug Bissett on June 11, 2020, 07:02:21 pm
Quote
As there is no problem with attaching/ejecting the same USB3 drive to the same hardware multiple times when booted into Windows it is not likely to be a "flaky connector".

Windows is a completely different animal.  Error recovery is a lot more aggressive. Are you sure that it is connecting as USB3 in windows? Are you sure that it connects as USB 3 in OS/2? It is not easy to tell.

Quote
Not sure how important the error codes are but after the 1st eject the USB3 drive cannot be attached until after a reboot usually - very occasionally it does attach a 2nd time but never a third time.

I don't know what the error codes are trying to tell you. It appears that error 12 just means there is nothing connected. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that error 16 simply means it had some sort of communication error. I do know that USB 3 works, multiple times, when I have a good connection. It does what you describe, when there is a flaky connection. Type A connectors are horrible things, and they do cause problems. If you take time to adjust them, perfectly, they work a lot better. Even then, I have a couple of devices that just won't connect as USB 3, in one connector. That same device works okay in different connectors, and other USB 3 devices work fine in the one where it fails.

90% likely that the problem is caused by a flaky connector. From what I have heard, error recovery, in the OS/2 driver is still being worked on. It is a preview version, after all.
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Pete on June 12, 2020, 03:57:15 pm
Hi All

@Doug

No idea whether it is connecting as USB3 in either Windows or OS/2.

However, the failure to attach more than once per boot only occurs with OS/2 when using a USB3 lead; no problems attaching when using a USB2 lead so I think this is a USB3 problem.

I guess it is possible that it is some kind of driver error recovery problem. As AN do not want reports on this driver I can only hope that the problem(s) is(are) fixed before the driver is given a "GA" release.


As I was trying USB3 on a 5.0.4 system I thought I'd install 5.0.5 to see if that made a difference so made a USB flash drive to perform the install with as that worked well for 5.0.4.

Both AOSBoot and DFSANOS2 claim to have successfully created the USB flash drive installation disk, I manually copied the ISO file to [USBDrive]:\ARCA_ISO\ARCAINST.ISO after running DFSANOS2.

No problems booting from the USB flash drive and completing the "Boot with Menu for own values" section but it all goes wrong shortly after when I see the same message that Martin posted an image of earlier in this discussion. That message starts with "MAPISO R: Z:\OS2\EMPTY.ISO" - not sure what EMPTY.ISO is but R: is the RESERVEDRIVELETTER - I tested this by using U: as RESERVEDRIVELETTER and the message changed from using R: to U:

It seems that the USB flash drive gets lost somewhere as "\ARCA_ISO\ARCAINST.ISO" definitely exists on the flash drive.

This was a new USB 2.0 flash drive, never used before so not a case of some older files left on the drive.

As this works for other people - and worked fine for 5.0.4 - I have to ask if I have forgotten a step somewhere?


Regards

Pete
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Rich Walsh on June 12, 2020, 06:41:03 pm

No problems booting from the USB flash drive and completing the "Boot with Menu for own values" section but it all goes wrong shortly after when I see the same message that Martin posted an image of earlier in this discussion. That message starts with "MAPISO R: Z:\OS2\EMPTY.ISO" - not sure what EMPTY.ISO is but R: is the RESERVEDRIVELETTER - I tested this by using U: as RESERVEDRIVELETTER and the message changed from using R: to U:

It seems that the USB flash drive gets lost somewhere as "\ARCA_ISO\ARCAINST.ISO" definitely exists on the flash drive. This was a new USB 2.0 flash drive, never used before so not a case of some older files left on the drive.

All the stuff involving drive "R:" is just setup for a subsequent step and not relevant here. If the ISO is where it should be (guaranteed if you use 'aosboot.cmd'), then the problem is that the flash drive you used failed to mount when the script called 'lvm /rediscoverprm'.

Every instance of this failure ever reported has been attributable to the lack of an XHCI driver on a machine that only has an XHCI controller (i.e. no EHCI/UHCI/OHCI chip). In this case, the failure might also be attributable to the problem you reported with the XHCI driver.

However... so far, in every case where someone has reported this failure when updating from 5.0.4 to 5.0.5 on an XHCI-only machine, they had failed to create a NEW copy of the flash drive and instead copied the 5.0.5 ISO to their existing 5.0.4 flash drive. This can not work because only the 5.0.5 flash drive has the new XHCI driver that you need.

Now, I know you said you used both 'aosboot.cmd' and 'dfsanos2' to create the drive (both do the same thing), but please check/double-check/retry/whatever just to confirm that the flash drive and the ISO are a matched set so we can rule that out. If that proves not to be the problem, then we can use an "undocumented feature" to diagnose this a bit further.
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Pete on June 13, 2020, 12:35:13 am
Hi Rich

The mainboard has 4 * OHCI, 3 * EHCI and 1 * XHCI controllers.

A *new* 2Gb USB 2.0 flash drive was used - DFSee was used to create a partition using the full size of the drive.
The USB 2.0 flash drive is inserted into a USB1/USB2 port for attaching or booting - XHCI driver not involved in any way.

AOSBoot, running from the ISOFS mounted 5.0.5 ISO, was used to create the bootable installation drive with the flash drive letter N: and ISO path G:\OS2\ArcaNoae\ArcaOS-5.0.5\ArcaOS-5.0.5.iso as parameters.

The drive can be attached and viewed once created, the ARCAINST.ISO can be mounted using ISOFS and files can be accessed.

Once booted to the Menu for own choices screen it looks like the USB drive becomes disconnected/unattached as the led is no longer illuminated - led is always on when attached, flashes when being accessed.

After the Menu screens, during booting, the led comes on indicating it has been attached - probably. After the call to pmshell.exe the message about the "missing" ISO file is displayed.

It seems to me that the USB drive gets lost after booting to the Menu for own choices screen and fails to reattach correctly. Wonder if it would work if I accepted "Defaults" instead of booting to the Menu...

Gave it a try but no joy.

I then had another think about this problem. At some point the USB drive gets ejected, but not removed, and fails to attach with LVM /REDISCOVERPRM about the start of install. Maybe it is necessary to physically remove the USB drive rather than just using eject.

I tested that idea on my 5.0.4 desktop: I attached the 5.0.5 USB flash drive which became drive N: in the Drives folder, accessed it then ejected it but left it in the usb port. Typed a couple of the above sentences then clicked the Refresh Removable Media icon. The icon flashed, the USB flash drive led illuminated - and no drive N: (next available drive letter) appeared in the Drives folder.


Mystery solved: the ArcaOS install script needs to issue some "Remove USB drive" and "Insert USB drive" messages, pausing the process while it waits for the physical action to complete, possibly "Press a key when ready..." added to the above messages.

Having worked out when to physically remove the usb drive and when to reinsert it again I now have a basic 5.0.5 installation - hopefully I did not miss anything too important by being a little late reinserting USB drive during Phase2 and having to restart Phase2.


Interestingly I did not have this problem on this hardware when installing 5.0.4 from a different USB flash drive.


While I seem to have worked out cause and effect what is the ""undocumented feature" to diagnose this a bit further."?


Regards

Pete
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Dave Yeo on June 13, 2020, 02:28:35 am
Hi Pete, have you tested installing 5.0.5 with the USB stick that you used for 5.0.4?
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Pete on June 13, 2020, 05:48:13 am
Hi Dave

Tested whether the older USB flash drive used to install 5.0.4 can be ejected, left in the usb port and then attached a little later. No, LVM /REDISCOVERPRM does not (re)attach the drive which suggests that there will be a problem using it as an install drive.

I deleted all files on the older USB flash drive, used AOSBoot to create a 5.0.5 install USB flash drive and tested it. Same problem, drive does not get (re)attached.

As I know this USB flash drive was used to install 5.0.4 without any problems I suspect the problem could be related to the different USB drivers in use - 5.0.4 installed 12.01.

Or maybe the install script changed a bit from 5.0.4 to 5.0.5 and introduced this problem although I do not remember the 5.0.4 install asking for USB drive to be removed or inserted.


Regards

Pete
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: roberto on June 13, 2020, 08:24:22 am
Hi Pete
I would think more about the VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT.
Recently installed on a new arca505 partition, hang the system in five minutes.
Open the VLC + pmview + seamonkey
I have the virtualaddress... en 1536

Try doing the following, when booting the system, do not run any program after booting, look with mem / v in a comand com,
and look at the value of Available virtual memory: xxxx
You put that xxxx value in your config.sys in virtualaddresslimit, restart and tell us.

I did not hang the system anymore, I do not know if it will affect usb3.
But it costs little to prove it.
Saludos
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Pete on June 13, 2020, 03:11:37 pm
Hi roberto

I need to overcome the install from USB problem before worrying about "fine tuning" an installation  :-)

Will probably end up burning a dvd and installing from that... would be nice to resolve the install from USB problem though.


Regards

Pete


Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Dave Yeo on June 13, 2020, 06:00:42 pm
Hi Pete, since it is not USB3 related, perhaps a ticket is in order.
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Rich Walsh on June 13, 2020, 06:56:51 pm
If that proves not to be the problem, then we can use an "undocumented feature" to diagnose this a bit further.

Peter, change of plans. I'll PM you.
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Pete on June 14, 2020, 03:43:17 pm
Hi All

@Rich
Followed your PM instructions.


Further investigations on this install 5.0.5 from USB flash drive.

My system case has 2 front USB ports and a further front USB port is provided by my USB 2.0 internal cardreader.

All of those ports can be used to install 5.0.4 but none of those ports can be used to install 5.0.5

The same USB flash drive is involved for both 5.0.4 and 5.0.5 install attempts.


My Dell 1707FP monitor has an inbuilt 4 port USB 2.0 hub.

No problems installing 5.0.4 or 5.0.5 via any of the monitor USB ports.

I had not tried the monitor ports previously because I tend to use the system case front ports for any form of install as if the monitor gets turned off the USB connection is lost - definitely not a good thing to happen during an install.


Seems that for 5.0.5 not all USB ports are equal...


Regards

Pete



Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: guzzi on June 15, 2020, 07:11:11 pm
Hi Rene,

I have in total 16 GB and aound 12 GB is set to ram disk.

Yes network and sound is working. Is a replacement for a 10 year old HP desktop that is showing its age.

PC is working very well.

thanks. I meant the RAM that's seen by OS/2, without the RAM disk. In ArcaOS, there exists the "mem" utility that shows the RAM available to the system. (I hope it's more than 2 GB.)

That mainboard has an old chipset, but is still available, what makes it so interesting.


Hi Andreas,

it shows 3.5 GB to ArcaOS.

This mb is working very well and has bought a another PC with simular HW.


Rene

I just bought the same motherboard and have only 1519 MB available to the system.
The difference is in the processor, I use a Ryzen 3 3200, you a 1200. The 3200 has integrated graphics and the bios seems to reserve 2 gb for it. Which graphics card fo you use?

Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Rene Hvidsoe on June 15, 2020, 08:02:09 pm
Hi Guzzi,

I use a NVIDIA GTX1050 with 2 GB memory.

Rene
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Andreas Schnellbacher on June 15, 2020, 09:44:26 pm
Really bad news. I think I'll rather stick to my 2 GB FM2+ mainboard.
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: ivan on June 15, 2020, 10:49:11 pm
Strange that.  Most of my systems are using Ryzen 3 2200G processors because they give video out on all the v-out sockets.

Based on 8 GB memory mem gives the following.


[C:\]mem -v

Total physical memory:      7,906 MB
Accessible to system:       3,311 MB
Additional (PAE) memory:    4,595 MB

Resident memory:              198 MB
Available virtual memory:   3,760 MB

Available process memory:
  Private low memory:         217 MB
  Private high memory:      2,240 MB
  Shared low memory:          153 MB
  Shared high memory:       2,014 MB



[C:\]mem
7,906 MB  (3,311 MB accessible to system)

which runs everything I want without problems.
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Dave Yeo on June 15, 2020, 11:19:46 pm
Hi Guzzi, is that running AOS 5.0.5?
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: guzzi on June 16, 2020, 10:30:41 pm
Hi Guzzi, is that running AOS 5.0.5?

Yes. And it is exactly the same with a B450 mb and the same processor. Next weekend I'll plug in an old video card and set the bios to use that to see if it makes a difference. If it does, I'll just buy a modern cheapish video card, if it doesn't I'll change the processor for one without built-in video.
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: ivan on June 17, 2020, 01:39:52 am
Hi guzzi,

What is the speed of the memory sticks you are using?  I ask because I have seen Ryzen based boxes where those building them went for the latest and greatest speed for the memory and the motherboard didn't support that - changing the memory sticks for lower speed ones brought the performance up to what was expected.

Also, can you post the output of mem /v  , I would like to see how it differs from mine (Ryzen 3 2200G)

EDIT:  If the motherboard is set to grab memory for the video on the processor just plugging in a video card will not change that.

On thinking about it, how much memory do you have on the board?  If you have only 4GB then you will be seeing memory constraints, I learned that when I first started experimenting with Ryzen processors and I ended up with 8GB as standard in all my Ryzen based boards - did go to 16GB for the two Linux boxes though.
 
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: guzzi on June 18, 2020, 01:07:23 am
I have 8 GB ram, only 6 is seen. I hope, perhaps in vain, that choosing the external video adapter in BIOS will free the memory.

P:\>mem /v

Total physical memory:      6.114 MB
Accessible to system:       1.519 MB
Additional (PAE) memory:    4.595 MB

Resident memory:              157 MB
Available virtual memory:     342 MB

Available process memory:
  Private low memory:         303 MB
  Private high memory:      1.344 MB
  Shared low memory:          200 MB
  Shared high memory:         357 MB
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: ivan on June 19, 2020, 02:29:35 am
It is strange that only 6GB is found out of 8GB installed.  Either the motherboard isn't showing the correct memory assignment ot there are dud cells in the memory stick. 

It might be a good idea to use the MemTest86 from a usb stick to test the memory.
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Andreas Schnellbacher on June 19, 2020, 08:20:03 am
Yes. In my case (https://mantis.arcanoae.com/view.php?id=1665), Memtest-86 showed 7109 MB and gnome-system-monitor of Linux Mint 17, 32 bit reports 6.8 MiB, with 8 GiB installed. (I had no installed Win32 OS available to check this.) Values like that seem to be normal.

Dmitry wrote that the BIOS memory table is incorrect.
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Pete on June 19, 2020, 05:25:22 pm
Hi All

Having noticed that ArcaOS and Windows7 both report only about 2Gb physical RAM installed I just ran memtest (v4) which also shows almost 2GB (2004Mb).

Mainboard BIOS shows 2 x 2Gb RAM chips and does not indicate a problem.

I guess I need to replace 1 of the 2Gb RAM chips but how do I tell which 1 on a dual channel system? - is it simply a case of suck it and see?


Regards

Pete
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Dave Yeo on June 19, 2020, 05:51:05 pm
You could start by testing with one stick, and then the other. Most dual channel systems should revert to single channel with a loss of performance.
It does seem weird that one stick just doesn't seem to work once booted. The one time I had a stick fail, the system crashed and I lucked out as the first stick I removed (out of 4 512 MB sticks) fixed the issue.
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Pete on June 19, 2020, 06:52:25 pm
Hi Dave

Tried testing with only 1 stick installed - system does not start at all, goes into a trying to start routine after power on but does not get anywhere with either stick. Seems the mainboard needs 2 sticks installed...


Regards

Pete


Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: roberto on June 19, 2020, 10:52:29 pm
[C:\]mem -v
...
Available virtual memory:   3,760 MB
...
Hi Ivan
I understand that you have the virtualaddresslimit of the config.sys in 3072, and it will work fine for you. But could you do the test to put 3760, and tell us if it works, or if at startup it tells you that you have an erroneous value and puts it by default.?
Saludos
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: ivan on June 19, 2020, 11:03:28 pm
Hi roberto,

Will do when I reboot the computer in a few week time - it is on 24/7 until it starts to slow down.
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Doug Bissett on June 20, 2020, 07:10:10 pm
Quote
But could you do the test to put 3760, and tell us if it works, or if at startup it tells you that you have an erroneous value and puts it by default.?

Since 3072 (2048 in old versions of OS/2) is the maximum allowable, 3760 should always tell you that it is invalid (does, for me). 3072 doesn't always work either, but it won't tell you that it is an invalid number. I don't remember what happens, but it isn't good. I always use 2560 (but 2760 should also work), just so I don't have to figure out if machines work with 3072, or not. 2560 seems to be sufficient for my needs, and leaves me with 1270944 bytes of upper shared memory (varies as I use it), after everything is loaded.

I have never seen anything drop upper shared memory below 1000000 bytes, yet (I may have missed it). Lower shared memory, on the other hand, is at 217856, with most things loaded. I have seen that drop to zero (with resulting catastrophe), when something (usually multiple videos in Firefox), starts eating it. However, with the Firefox TURBO thing, I haven't seen that happen recently. I also turn off media.autoplay.enabled in Firefox about:config, which has helped a lot. It means one extra click to play a video that I do want to play, but the rest don't start automatically.
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Dave Yeo on June 20, 2020, 07:39:49 pm
For a while I couldn't link xul.dll without having VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT set to 3072. Eventually Mozilla changed the build process to not need as much memory.
As for the maximum value that works, it depends on how much of the (actual hardware) upper address space is taken by PCI devices and such.
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Rich Walsh on June 20, 2020, 07:43:36 pm
[C:\]mem -v
...
Available virtual memory:   3,760 MB
...
I understand that you have the virtualaddresslimit of the config.sys in 3072, and it will work fine for you. But could you do the test to put 3760, and tell us if it works, or if at startup it tells you that you have an erroneous value and puts it by default.?

'mem' tells you how much physical RAM is accessible by OS/2. This has NOTHING to do with Virtual Address Limit which is a software concept unrelated to actual physical memory.

Every process has 4096mb of "virtual address space". The kernel always uses the top 1024mb of addresses from 3072 to 4096 mb. Virtual Address Limit determines how much of the remaining 3072mb a program is allowed to use.
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: ivan on June 20, 2020, 10:46:37 pm
Thanks Rich,  I thought it was something like that from things I have read.  I thought I should satisfy roberto and try it but now I won't bother - rebooting the comp when things slow down is nothing more than using the reboot option from the xworkplace shutdown.
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: Andi B. on June 21, 2020, 11:13:45 am
You can easily bring the upper shared memory down with Seamonkey and I think some javascripts. When I work on some wiki sites (Atlassian Confluence) it only needs a few tabs open and you have to have an eye on upper shared memory as it is all eaten up very fast. Even VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT=2560 does not help very much here.
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: guzzi on June 22, 2020, 04:02:20 pm
Really bad news. I think I'll rather stick to my 2 GB FM2+ mainboard.

I put an old X800 in and now have:
C:\sys\install\DETECT>mem /v

Total physical memory:      8.162 MB
Accessible to system:       3.567 MB
Additional (PAE) memory:    4.595 MB

Resident memory:              185 MB
Available virtual memory:   2.920 MB

Available process memory:
  Private low memory:         315 MB
  Private high memory:      1.344 MB
  Shared low memory:          212 MB
  Shared high memory:         957 MB

Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: roberto on July 12, 2020, 01:51:16 pm
You can easily bring the upper shared memory down with Seamonkey and I think some javascripts. When I work on some wiki sites (Atlassian Confluence) it only needs a few tabs open and you have to have an eye on upper shared memory as it is all eaten up very fast. Even VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT=2560 does not help very much here.
I have also seen this problem of running out of memory in some web pages, try putting this in config.sys:
SET JAVA_HIGH_MEMORY=1
I think it improves, but you will say.
Saludos
Title: Re: ArcaOS DVD and bootable USB stick available
Post by: roberto on July 12, 2020, 02:02:36 pm
'mem' tells you how much physical RAM is accessible by OS/2. This has NOTHING to do with Virtual Address Limit which is a software concept unrelated to actual physical memory.

Every process has 4096mb of "virtual address space". The kernel always uses the top 1024mb of addresses from 3072 to 4096 mb. Virtual Address Limit determines how much of the remaining 3072mb a program is allowed to use.
Look for a computer with that defect of abnormal high memory.
Although it has nothing to do with it, the behavior is different.
I provided to put a value of virtualaddresslimit of 3100, and during the start it stopped but did not continue when pressing enter. What it does on a normal computer.Ivan was talking about amd, I have seen it in intel, so I think of something in the bios.
saludos