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Messages - Mathias

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136
Games / Re: DOS Gaming and ArcaOS
« on: February 28, 2019, 11:20:44 pm »
Martin, I`ve started with Epic`s Secret Agent Man and found it fully working (as long as you select speaker as sound source).
Next I tried Epic`s Extreme Pinball. (Both games that I loved to play back then in DOS times)

With Extreme Pinball I have a weird situation: The demo (only having one table ¨Rock Fantasies¨) works excellent in ArcaOS DOS Full Screen. The full version of Extreme Pinball however, I didn`t get working, regardless which DOS settings I tried. Can you reproduce this?


Roderick, this sounds like an awesome idea: A sound card wrapper driver, that emulates a widely used card, the SB16 or AWE32, and maps through to UNIAUD..
Hard to believe nobody made such a thing yet. :o - The SB16 driver should be open source on linux for istance, so people knowing how to write drivers (and have some spare time.. :>) should be able to write such a thing. :o

137
Games / Re: ArcaOS - Retro Gaming Machine
« on: February 18, 2019, 08:49:58 pm »
Very true, time and ressources is THE magic thing in softare development. Our company has the same problems: We simply need to find more developers to get stuff done and keep the release plan on par with reality more easily.. ; )

Martin, please don`t get me wrong, very very much appreciated!! : ))
I need to find more time also to test more myself also and bring in some results as well, regarding the gaming topic!
Also testing some jopads and sticks. (Btw.. I suppose the xbox ones might not work out of the box, but the regular USB pads and sticks basing on regular axes could be easier to get them working?!)

138
Games / Re: ArcaOS - Retro Gaming Machine
« on: February 17, 2019, 10:00:40 pm »
Martin, I also remember Lewis speaking about updated sound drivers, that helps with compatibility in DOS and WinOS/2 mode.
When seeing this thread, I get the feeling that it`s getting all too technical. Imagine some ¨user¨ who just sets up his ArcaOS machine in the hope to play his good old DOS/Win3.11/OS2 games... but aslong it is THAT complicated to get each game to work (each game might need its very own solution to get sound working..) - You might get it to work with the help of the OS/2 community (which is AWESOME btw!!), but for a mere user this would be a hopeless process. :o

I know time is pushing (Retro gaming event in May is pushing closer), but we might not yet be able to present ArcaOS as a retro gaming platform, as long as the updated drivers/sound framework aren`t available yet.

Question is though, what to do... when exactly will this updated sound driver/framework be available? - We do not know yet.
All *I* know is that, Lewis said he also recognised retro gamers as a potential market for ArcaOS, and UniAud replacement/upgrade is planned for the future.

We could...
- either build up a database for each... DOS, Win3.11, OS/2 native games that run NOW with (almost) no efforts (ruling out games, that are too complicated getting them to run properly (and with sound))
- or we could wait for that new sound driver/sound framework that is said to solve exactly these problems and build up the game database by then. (That database might need an update anyway when this sound upgrade comes)

139
Hrhr solved! Works like a charm again. : ))
Learned a lot whilst saving the machine!

Thanks to you all!! - Saaaaafe : D

140
*g* Ivan, thanks for the quick reply! I've got such an USB adapter, indeed. But I followed method #1.

Trying #2 now.

141
Turned out not to be that easy as it sounded...

Situation has worsened: As soon as the new HDD is attached to any controller, ArcaOS shows the ArcaOS logo at boot, remains there for 20 minutes... regardless if booted from this very HDD, or another HDD or a maintenance stick.
In case of the install/maintenace stick, after the logo goes away, every step tages atleast 10 minutes until the graphics build up, windows shop up, etcetc takes forever to complete... until I am able to do a thing with it.

As soon as I remove the faulty HDD it's as "fast" as usual.

So.. I took out the faulty HDD, installed a new fresh ArcaOS on the new drive.. but now ... how to copy the data over, when I cannot use the maintenance boot thing of ArcaOS? - I could of course boot into Linux via stick, which has no problems with the faulty drive, and simply copy over the data... but won't that result in weird rights for all the files? Or might that work out?
If so, I'll do that... the maintenance thing does not work for me.

142
Woah, THAT easy!! : )) I'll give this a shot later on today. - BIG thanks to you guys! : ))

I've tried to resize the partition with qparted, as it also supports jfs.
Thing is though, my ArcaOS USB stick appears to behave weirdly.. it's rather new, but when I try to boot from the stick, it shows the ArcaOS logo for half an hour, before it continues sloooooowly. - Regardless if I set it up or boot the default values for the ArcaOS stick. - Going to make a new ArcaOS stick as well for this, this evening.

143
With the current smartmontools available for ArcaOS, I found out my hard drive is dying slowly:
sectors moved: 35
sectors pending: 15

Even though there are quite a few reserve sectors left, I find it's time to move to another HDD, as the current device is untrusted now and keeps getting worse slowly. (Yesterday there were only 8 pending sectors!)

So, I've tried to move over to another HDD. Current HDD is 1 TB, but only 4 GB in use.
Source drive capacity is 1 TB, destination drive capacity is 320 GB. (The only free HDD found which is still fine and as new)

In theory this CAN work, since the ammount of data to copy is only 4 GB, destination drive capacity is 320 GB.
Now I've tried to shrink the ArcaOS partition on the source disk (JFS formatted), but this can only free up 13 MB, as it appears that there is data near the end of the partition.

So now the question is on: How to move all the stuff away from the end of the JFS partition? Ideally everything to the beginning and then ongoing?

Thank you in advance!! : ))

Mathias

144
Good news: Memtest went fine and without errors.

Dave, okay, the smily could be an unicode character, but how about the string ¨PlayTime¨ instead of the other string, that is usually there?
But I do agree, I will keep an eye on the partition, and monitor its condition, also the running tasks, config.sys and co.

I might also try out some of the tools, that Andreas has posted.. but that maybe in a virtual machine, to practice the usage of these tools.. : )

Thanks to you all, for your great ideas!! \o/
When there is something new, I will keep you posted here.

145
re,

just checked...
- chkdsk /f on cmd.exe in the ArcaNoae Maintenance Shell --> no errors found
- BIOS for temperatures and voltages --> both OK
- if I can reproduce by repeating the mount of the ArcaOS root partition under linux, created a file, wrote data in it, umounted, rebooted, had a look on "Drive C:" and it's properties dialog --> Tab "Include" --> no problems at all, everything normal

So.. I cannot reproduce. : /
I'll run a memtest later on, overnight.

____________________________

Andreas> It looks to me as if EAs got lost.

I've read about EAs in the chkdsk translation table, but not sure what this is. Are these temporary files on the partition, to store stuff about each directory?


Andreas>[..] you can try to delete EAs of a few files and folders

How do I do this? Do I need special tools for this?


Andreas>The Include setting that you describe is most-likely saved in a folder's .CLASSINFO EA. File objects like files and dirs store such info there.

How can I see these files? Are they indeed stored in each directory? Do I need to mount this JFS partition in another non-OS/2ish operating system to see them?
Sorry to ask no0bish questions, but NOT asking would be even more nO0bish.. ; )

146
Sean, this is indeed quite an old machine, Athlon X2.. I suppose atleast 10 years old. It's one of the software test PCs at home. And indeed, the compound hasn't been changed for atleast 2 years, but the overheat sensor did not indicate. I'll have a look into BIOS (yes, good old BIOS, no EFI yet) to check out temperatures.

PSU.. good question. This is still the first power supply in that machine, so it's ~10 years old, nicely maintained though. It's got a new fan (1 year old) and it's clean inside. - And ontop it does not need to deliver that much power. With ArcaOS (or OS/2) It's an office machine that requires ~80 Watts at max.
I'm sure after all this time, it will not deliver the full 500 Watts peak power anymore, but should be plenty to run an office machine. ; )

I highly doubt it's the PSU, but I can check this out too: BIOS shows the lanes and which voltage is on what.

SMART data actually looking brilliant. As part of software testing for ArcaOS, I've tried the latest smartmontools, showing that the hard drive is very young and has no issues, temperature is fine also.


Sean> Run MPrime's torture test (Option #15) to see if you can generate any errors.

Uff, that is hard to do, as this test machine only has ArcaOS 5.02EN. I cannot dualboot to anything that can run "the usual stuff", besides memtest..

=---> I will check the hardware today, including memtest, after returning home, to exclude the hardware from the list of culprits.. ; )


Sean> If you're not using JFS, you might consider changing over to it.  JFS is extremely robust having been used on midrange AIX systems for many years and is great at recovering from unclean reboots/remounts.

Nope, running JFS on all ArcaOS installations. My Warp 3 though has HPFS.

____________________________________________


DougB> It is not impossible, that some virus activity modified something that caused that. It was probably not in OS/2, but even that isn't impossible.

Let me think, on this machine I've done the following things last time:
01) tried out smartmontools 7.0 beta from the ArcaNoae subscription repository
02) booted Gentoo Linux from a stick, mounted the ArcaOS-root partition "drive C:", CD'ed into /mnt/aos/install, ran "lspci > hwlist.txt", CD'ed back to /, entered "umount /mnt/aos", entered "init 6" (rebooted), removed the stick when the machine was showing POST again --> booted from C: "ArcaOS" as usual
03) continued work as normal, opened firefox to report my test results to Lewis, sent him the hwlist.txt from C:\Install, deleted C:\install\hwlist.txt via ArcaOS GUI
04) doing some translations (still everything normal, all files and directories displayed)
05) shut down the ArcaOS machine in the usual way, no exceptions, nothing unusual
06) next day turned on, some reading in the forums, translations going on, nothing unusual
07) like 6
08) yesterday turned on.. nothing special on boot or the GUI
09) opened up firefox 45.x (experimental release) to read forum entries, look around on amazon
10) opened thunderbird (current stable release) to read and answer mails
11) finished all the above and wanted to access C:\Entwicklung (Development folder for translations and to compile stuff), but it was not displayed in the ArcaOS GUI anymore, alongside some other directories that usually were there..
12) checked some other views, just to find out, the files and directories were missing there also
13) checked the OS/2 prompt --> everything is there, as usual! --> phew... ; )
14) checked the output of "ls -la C:\" to see if I might be missing the access rights to read the directories, but naw.. everything on 777 (oh yeah xD)
15) opened up properties of "Drive C:" to check the "include" tab, just to find this werid "Playtime" output, and a graphical smily, where usually the attributes would be. --> VERY odd
16) machine freezed right away (mouse was movable, but could not click anything, or ALT+TAB to any other window)
17) did CTRL + ALT + DEL in the hope it will either cleanly shut down the file system or allow me to use top
18) the text menu showed up, I chose to start top, just to see if there were any odd processes running --> none, just the usual stuff (so IF there have been modifications to the files, the binary that caused the modifications were not running anymore)
19) left top again and returned to desktop
20) after a short black screen the desktop was shown again, greeting me with an error message "Drive C:" (the window showing the contents of C:\) has crashed --> I clicked the "close" button
21) the whole XWP was gone all of sudden, showing only the desktop background image and the usual icons --> after another short while, XWP came back and looked normal again.
22) checked "Drive C:" button again in Tree Mode, just to find out, it's all back again
23) checked the "Drive C:" properties --> "include" tab --> everything as it was and should be: "display anything that has no hidden flag", no weird smilies and PlayTime anymore..
24) fired up Firefox 45.x (experimental release from ArcaOS EXP repository) to open up this thread
25) closed everything and restarted ArcaOS like usual via button --> selected normal restart --> Click on the "OK" button
26) the status box on the lower left bottom displaying messages about the shutdown, like usual, but at one point it tried to umount the root partition "C:", showing "Exception unmounting C:" --> then it tried again, and it worked out.
27) passing POST again, ArcaOS booted up, passed chkdsk (as no dirty bit was set, as it seems), passed all the driver outputs, and between the last driver and the start of the ArcaOS GUI, the machine hung up (forever.. and I needed to push the reset button)
28) booting again, dirty bit was set, so chkdsk was ran this time --> found everything to be okay, passed the drivers, and finally loaded the ArcaOS GUI again.
29) checked "Drive C:" and its properties, but everyhting was normal
30) tried to reproduce from step 8 to 11, but could not get back the "Playtime" effect.

And from then on everything was normal again. No oddities anymore.

=--> I will boot Linux from stick again, mount the ArcaOS volume again, like back then, etcetc.. to try if this acually is a file system error, resulting from writing to that partition from outside of ArcaOS.


For an infection, I see almost no potential.. maybe besides checking e-mail (containing no spam mails though..)
The only unusual thing was the test of smartmontools and the mount and umount of the ArcaOS system partition (JFS) under Gentoo Linux, which might have damaged the file system... but then again, the effect should have happened way earlier. This was days ago, and I used the machine in the meanwhile.


DougB> If you see that every time, it may be interesting to use DFSEE to capture it, and see if JvW can tell what happened. You would need a subscription to DFSEE.

Hmm.. I'd say, I'll have an eye on this, and if "the effect" comes back, we can still consider using DFSee. : ))

147
Dave, I will definitely try this out! Thanks! : )

Pete, thanks for your hints also. I am sure though, the machine is, hardware-wise, fine. Should be a software issue indeed. For the history of what has been done before with the computer, it`s likely that the file system may have been corrupted, leading to this weird issue.

Interesting though, why does the attribute dialog says ¨PlayTime¨ with a smily (see upmost (first) post)...

148
Thank you for the answers!! Very interesting!
Never had this before... but I used to only have OS/2 Warp 3 on HPFS.

When you say this issue were there already way before ECS, could this have started with Warp 4.x and JFS?

Only asking this, because when I had finished writing the above text, I shut down the ArcaOS 5.02 machine (JFS as system partition), there is the usual dialog on the lower left of the screen, showing the status of dismounting etc..
When that dialog appeared, it was there unusually long, showing an exception unmounting the JFS partition, it tried again, and worked out then!

Reboot ArcaOS 5.02 again, it went through the usual boot sequence, said drive C: filesystem okay, went on, until after the FAT32 driver... and then hung up before graphical mode started!
Pushed the reset button after a long while (since nothing was happening) resulted in chkdsk on the next boot for C:.
But chkdsk found no errors... then everything loaded just fine and was like before.

So, I suppose in my case it could have to do with an inconsistency with the JFS-filesystem.
Another thing, that brings me to that thought is, that I had transferred a file via linux mount to the very same JFS partition of ArcaOS. (had lspci > myfile) to send Lewis an overview over my hardware to debug a problem with smartmontools)
But since then I had rebooted the ArcaOS machine atleast two or three times without noticing any problems.

So.. could have to do with this, but that`s not proven yet. I will try on, and then supply screenies if it happens again!

149
Just had a *VERY* odd situation...

Came home.. booted up my ArcaOS machine to check e-mails and then continue to translate..
When I opened the Drive C: icon in tree view, there was only half folders there, that used to be! - Opened the Drive C: view in all the other variations.. no difference...
looked on OS/2 command line with dir /ad ... and there all the directories were listed!

Okay, the directories are there.. maybe there is a filter set, for the graphical user interface... I thought, so I went straight to Drive C: - Properties and checked the "Include" tab.

*** The normal view here is:
Use ____ Attribute ____ Comparisation ____ Value ____ Class
| _______ Flags ______ is less than _______ --H- _____ File System

*** instead I saw:
Use ____ Attribute ____ Comparisation ____ Value ____ Class
| _______ Flags ______ PlayTime ________ :) <-- as graphical smily

After displaying this, the whole machine freezed, and I went CTRL + ALT + DEL --> top
just to find out that everything is normal, no unusual processes.. --> exited from there --> went back to the graphical user interface of ArcaOS
All of sudden the machine did no longer hang, but an error message was displayed "Drive C: is no longer functional" (it meant the directory listing, not the drive itself I suppose) --> I hit the close button...
XWP restarted, and everything is now back to normal:
- the directories and files are displayed normally
- the "include" tab of "Drive C:" properties looks normal now..
- everything as normal again.

WTH?!??
Should I open a ticket at ArcaNoae and send a testlog? --> there is no popuplog.os2 file on C:\
Or is this a known effect?
Should I take pictures next time, before opening a ticket, so the support sees with their own eyes?

Mhmm.. never had anything like this before, so I better ask you guys.. :o
Thanks in advance btw!

In the meanwhile trying to reproduce this..

150
Martin, mhmm.. sometimes missed something like File Commander/2. Currently it`s Shareware. Nothing revolutionary, but very handy at times : )

Or.. if we REALLY can fund some money, why not Lotus Notes and/or Domino.. ; ) - But that might be out of range, as IBM might not hand out the source code...

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