OS2 World Community Forum

OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical => Hardware => Topic started by: ivan on May 21, 2019, 03:23:20 pm

Title: Warpstock Europe
Post by: ivan on May 21, 2019, 03:23:20 pm
I suppose that someone has to ask and it might as well be me since I was unable to attend because of a prior engagement.

Were there any earth shattering revelations at Warpstock Europe?  It appears that there was some good news but...

Reading the presentations of the video (no sound here) I see that USB 3.0/3.1 is no closer to being available. the fact there are problems with Intel chipsets it doesn't bode well for AMD Ryzen chipsets and it does make me wonder what chipsets they are testing on (is there even a Ryzen chipset in the mix?).

I know I appear to have a one track mind regarding USB 3.0/3.1 but, even though I am retired I still think about my old clients and the fact that they are considering upgrading some of their computers with new AMD units that require the USB 3.x drivers for such things as keyboards and trackballs (example: Gigabyte B450M Ds3h that has a serial port or the MSI B450M Bazooka that has both parallel and serial ports).  Both of those examples are ideal for connecting to the machines using existing interface equipment.
Title: Re: Warpstock Europe
Post by: Roderick Klein on May 21, 2019, 09:17:48 pm
I suppose that someone has to ask and it might as well be me since I was unable to attend because of a prior engagement.

Were there any earth shattering revelations at Warpstock Europe?  It appears that there was some good news but...

Reading the presentations of the video (no sound here) I see that USB 3.0/3.1 is no closer to being available. the fact there are problems with Intel chipsets it doesn't bode well for AMD Ryzen chipsets and it does make me wonder what chipsets they are testing on (is there even a Ryzen chipset in the mix?).

I know I appear to have a one track mind regarding USB 3.0/3.1 but, even though I am retired I still think about my old clients and the fact that they are considering upgrading some of their computers with new AMD units that require the USB 3.x drivers for such things as keyboards and trackballs (example: Gigabyte B450M Ds3h that has a serial port or the MSI B450M Bazooka that has both parallel and serial ports).  Both of those examples are ideal for connecting to the machines using existing interface equipment.

I really do not see the point if Intel Chipsets do not work that that would be bad news for AMD Ryzen chipsets ?
It seems Arca Naoe is aware of the issue and is working on it.  Having organized Warpstock Europe it seems more bugs need to be fixed and then it send of the testteam. Before final release.

Good news was the public demonstration performed by Alex Taylor booting ArcaOS on a laptop in which only UEFI boot was switched on! No CSM was active. This was proof of concept. BWW continues to work on QT and the first applications where demonstrated that have been compiled with QT for OS/2.

Roderick Klein
Title: Re: Warpstock Europe
Post by: ivan on May 21, 2019, 09:59:15 pm
Thank you Roderick.

It is indeed good news that ArcaOS can boot with direct UEFI active, hopefully that will also be a workround for using a DVD to boot from (usual problem with the Ryzen chipset is that when it tries to unpack the the disks at the start a message pops up saying there isn't enough memory when there is 4GB available.

My comment regarding Intel chipsets was prompted from past observations that Intel gets drivers first and if they work with AMD chipsets then ok.

A great pity I was unable to attend, the prior engagement was arranged last year, I might have been able to ask specific questions to get clearer answers.

Again, thank you for taking the time to reply.
Title: Re: Warpstock Europe
Post by: Mathias on May 21, 2019, 10:42:02 pm
Most interesting (for me) was Lewis' announcement, where DTA is renamed to DTAudio (no idea what A stand for before), but it's initial release is planned for ArcaOS 5.0.5 . This means sound in WinOS/2 sessions and DOS VDM via wrapper to Uniaud. - Very cewl for retro gaming! *__*
Title: Re: Warpstock Europe
Post by: Roderick Klein on May 21, 2019, 11:34:25 pm
Thank you Roderick.

It is indeed good news that ArcaOS can boot with direct UEFI active, hopefully that will also be a workround for using a DVD to boot from (usual problem with the Ryzen chipset is that when it tries to unpack the the disks at the start a message pops up saying there isn't enough memory when there is 4GB available.

My comment regarding Intel chipsets was prompted from past observations that Intel gets drivers first and if they work with AMD chipsets then ok.

A great pity I was unable to attend, the prior engagement was arranged last year, I might have been able to ask specific questions to get clearer answers.

Again, thank you for taking the time to reply.

UEFI BTW is new kind of BIOS. Has nothing todo with DVD boot...
Look it up on google.

Intel chipsets is we like it or not are used more often. I guess its a good think they do not release the USB until it works.

ROderick Klein

Title: Re: Warpstock Europe
Post by: Tom on May 21, 2019, 11:58:27 pm
Most interesting (for me) was Lewis' announcement, where DTA is renamed to DTAudio (no idea what A stand for before)

Data Transport Agent
Title: Re: Warpstock Europe
Post by: Digi on May 22, 2019, 12:11:16 am
Of course it's all good. But it looks like Java is no longer in the Arca Noae's plans. This is very sad.
Title: Re: Warpstock Europe
Post by: Doug Bissett on May 22, 2019, 06:31:29 am
Of course it's all good. But it looks like Java is no longer in the Arca Noae's plans. This is very sad.

Java is included in ArcaOS. It is done by BWW, not Arca Noae. The "plan" is (and always has been) to include the latest official release, that is available, when a new version of ArcaOS is  made available. If that ever becomes a liability for the OS, it may be dropped. If nobody does an update, it will likely remain as it is.

"Sad" perhaps, but the reality is that Arca Noae can't do everything. If you want more from BWW, donate to them. Perhaps they will be able to afford another programmer, and more things will happen.
Title: Re: Warpstock Europe
Post by: Sigurd Fastenrath on May 23, 2019, 08:34:52 am
As a read at os2.org it was a nice and well organized event - well done, Roderick!

If I understand the videos correct things are the way I expected them. WLAN is on the bottom of the list and will probably never come, unless someone else will step in. The same goes with UNIAUD.

What I would like to know if there was any information about the problem with the RAM on modern hardware, usually a maximum of 1GB of RAM can only be seen and used with ArcaOS, what makes the system unfortunately pretty useless.

I guess that the UEFI and RAM problem will be/can only be solved with QSINIT.
 
Meanwhile my OS/2 Warp 3 Retro PC (AMD 486 DX2-80, 16MB RAM, 420MB HDD, VLB System) https://www.os2.org/viewtopic.php?p=11783#p11783 (https://www.os2.org/viewtopic.php?p=11783#p11783) and my OS/2 Warp 4 Retro PC (Pentium III 600, 512MB RAM, 80GB HDD, AGP Graphic)  https://www.os2.org/viewtopic.php?p=11816#p11816 (https://www.os2.org/viewtopic.php?p=11816#p11816) are well on there way and I am looking forward to test their functionality and what really makes a difference to modern systems (beside Internet access).
Title: Re: Warpstock Europe
Post by: Martin Iturbide on May 23, 2019, 02:15:58 pm
Hi

I understand the priorities on device drivers:
- USB 3 = Because machines are comming without USB 2.x and ArcaOS can not be installed. (except with HDD cloning)
- UEFI = Because Intel will remove compatibility support on the BIOS by 2020.

But Sigurd's points are right:
- Wifi ?
- Uniaud ?

Some progress was announced at previous Warpstocks, but those driver haven't saw the light yet. 

It seems like Urgent things are taking over the Important things, and it notice a clearly shortage of device driver developers on ArcaOS (and in the world  :D ). If Arca Noae strategy is to support OS/2 Warp on current hardware it seems they need to invest on preparing people for that task. I would even say that they are missing to hire full time developers for device driver development, but I don't know if their business are going good enough to have two or three full time developers, plus the time to train them in the OS/2 kernel and device drivers develpment.

So, what can we do about it? I still insist to keep supporting Arca Noae, but also the need to consolidate the OS/2 kernel and device driver knowledge for the community. Even that we have the evil IBM Device Driver Kit license that does not allow to share the source code publicly, there are some workarround like what Lar's is doing with the USB driver and Netlabs. We need to stop believing that device driver development or even kernel development is just for aliens and start sharing the knowledge about it. Otherwise it is just the never-ending process of asking Arca Noe for driver after driver as the PC components change over time.

Any more suggestions? Bounty systems to open source device driver development ? Will we ever get some consensus on which device driver has priority?

Regards
Title: Re: Warpstock Europe
Post by: Tuure Linden on August 29, 2019, 03:23:43 pm
I'll have commend that Arca Noae is doing a fine job when we think of what huge amount work they have ahead... And remember that they have accomplished a lot in only a couple of years. They only had about 25 years old operating system without source code to work with. If I understand right, they've accomplished much more in about three years than eComstation did in over a decade.

Developing and selling OS/2 isn't a gold mine. Far from it. There are no statistics available of how many customers Arca Noae has but the number must be very small. And how many emplyees and developers they have? Compared to amount of work needed, too few for sure. I think we should be grateful that Arca Noae excists because eComstation seems to be dead. Or has someone here more inside info on the matter? We just need patience.

Arca Noae has also received lots of publicity even here in Finland. One can't say same about eComstation. Actually I thought that whole OS/2 had died long time ago until I heard of ArcaOS and bought a license in 2017.
Title: Re: Warpstock Europe
Post by: Dave Yeo on August 29, 2019, 04:46:29 pm
There are still quite a few OS/2 installations hiding in the back rooms of banks, railroads and such. I'd assume they make up the bulk of their customers as I can't imagine there are enough of us hobbyists to make it worthwhile. I also doubt that anyone is getting rich on ArcaOS or even making a full time living just on developing ArcaOS.