OS2 World Community Forum
OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical => Hardware => Topic started by: Dave Yeo on April 22, 2018, 03:05:13 am
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I've picked up a Dell XPS 720 which has a nForce 650i SLI chipset I believe (could be a 680i). Anyone have experience with this chipset and ArcaOS? I understand that nvidia chipsets aren't recommended.
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Hi Dave
No experience with that particular chipset but had some fun with the nForce4/MCP61 chipsets and early acpi releases years back.
However, acpi is now maintained by David at Arca and the situation seems to have improved as the readme for acpi history section shows :-
3.19.10 - David Azarewicz
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Removed temporary /NV switch. NVidia systems now work properly. The NVidia
chipset was never actually the problem. It was the BIOS.
If you encounter problems installing ArcaOS try using the acpi.psd /vw parameter in the pre-boot menu.
Regards
Pete
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Well, I thought to do my thing as a beta tester and tried to install 5.0.2.3 on the system as is. It has a copy of WIN 7 ultimate edition that bitches about not being genuine and hasn't been used.
Anyways, it got into a loop where both drives had partitions extending past the end of the drive. It has a 320 GB drive with a 100MBs used but not seen and the second drive is 1 TB and partitioned as C: with Win 7 installed. I repartioned the 320 GB drive thinking to install ArcaOS on it and that made the installer happy. It kept complaining about the 1TB drive and suggesting shrinking it. I did that a few times and the installer was never happy. Cancelling just led to a reboot and now I've given up.
Tomorrow I'll update my backups and swap drives and see what happens.
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I've picked up a Dell XPS 720 which has a nForce 650i SLI chipset I believe (could be a 680i). Anyone have experience with this chipset and ArcaOS? I understand that nvidia chipsets aren't recommended.
Hi Dave. I have a couple of older DELL systems. They are mostly junk, especially in the video department, but I don't think they are NVIDIA based (at least it isn't advertised). I do have a NVIDIA video card in an HP computer, and it is also junk. However, they all work with ArcaOS, even if the video needs a lot of coaxing to work in the resolution of the attached screen. A 1280x1024 screen works okay, but my 1368x768 screen ends up working in 1024x768 mode (stretched). It appears that the problem is that both DELL and the NVIDIA in the HP, just don't tell Panorama what the screen is capable of, so it only offers the old standard sizes. Otherwise, they work okay.
Well, I thought to do my thing as a beta tester and tried to install 5.0.2.3 on the system as is. It has a copy of WIN 7 ultimate edition that bitches about not being genuine and hasn't been used.
The windows "not genuine" problem is almost always caused because it detected that something changed, and wants to be activated again. Sometimes, it takes 6 months of trying to get it to go. So far, I have found that win 7 will always activate, if you try enough times. It always continues to work okay. XP Home edition, on the other hand will not activate any more (it seems that the activation server no longer exists).
Anyways, it got into a loop where both drives had partitions extending past the end of the drive. It has a 320 GB drive with a 100MBs used but not seen and the second drive is 1 TB and partitioned as C: with Win 7 installed. I repartioned the 320 GB drive thinking to install ArcaOS on it and that made the installer happy. It kept complaining about the 1TB drive and suggesting shrinking it. I did that a few times and the installer was never happy. Cancelling just led to a reboot and now I've given up.
Tomorrow I'll update my backups and swap drives and see what happens.
The problem with the 1 TB drive, is that the geometry, as set up by windows, will not be usable by OS/2 (even smaller drives can have that problem). You must wipe it, and start over, using (mini)LVM to partition it. After you do the partitions properly, you can restore windows, as long as the restore program doesn't mess with the MBR (back it up first, of course). The only backup program, that I know of, that does it properly, is Acronis. If you have a Seagate, Maxtor, or Samsung, drive (even attached as an external drive), you can use the free version known as Seagate Disk Wizard. Just be sure that it doesn't mess with the partitioning, when you do the restore.
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OK, that explains the problem with installing along side windows.
Today I swapped my drives in and it booted up fine into VGA. As you point out, Panorama doesn't allow my monitors setting of 1600x900 with the included NVIDIA video card. I'll swap that next with an ATI one. The video card also screwed up the memory, needing a lower virtualaddresslimit for the system to work right, with squid not loading and perhaps causing the network driver not to ,load.
Currently most everything seems to work with the exception of the mouse wheel on my wireless mouse and running at 1280x800 resolution.
Nice seeing the 4 cores in xcenter.
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Hi Dave
I think it can also be interesting to document the Dell XPS 720 on the OS2World wiki.
Can you please share full model number, the PCI.EXE report or any other hardware information (https://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php/Extracting_Hardware_Information_from_ArcaOS_and_OS/2) so I can include this machine on the wiki?
Regards
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Hi Martin, attached is the PCI output, have to wait till I reboot and look in the BIOS for the full model number, I think it is a XPS 720.
I'm probably going to give it to my son, which is a shame as it compiles Firefox over twice as fast.
Problems, during boot, all the USB drivers complain about not finding compliant hardware and my mouse has a non-functioning mouse wheel and pressing the middle button sends the pointer over a bit.
Can't get the video working correctly. Need 1600x900 on this monitor but can't get Panorama to display it. Looks horrible with 4:3 ratios. Wasn't too surprised with the included GeForce 460 not working. I swapped in the ATI card I was using (old but too new for SNAP) and it didn't even work as well as the GeForce. No wide screen, doesn't seem to communicate with the monitor, eg auto-adjust now just complains with "not available", even under Linux, though Linux does get the correct resolution.
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Dave & Martin,
If the DELL machine has a ServiceTag you can head on over to the DELL support site, punch that thing in and get a full dump of the machine build in a CSV format...super easy to convert to anything else you may want to use. I maintain all our DELL machine info in that way.
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Where would the service tag be?
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Thanks Dave.
This is what I got for the moment on the wiki: https://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php/Dell_XPS_720 (https://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php/Dell_XPS_720)
It will be interesting to know your experience with the Audio and the Wired Ethernet Card.
General question: Are the ecomstation.ru Panorama Widescreen activators working (http://es.ecomstation.ru/projects/panorama/?action=down) with the latest version of Panorama on ArcaOS ? or are not necessary anymore? Too bad there is no extender for NVidia. There is also an NVidia DVI Scale filter but I'm not sure what is that for.
Regards
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Where would the service tag be?
I think it is on the back of the machine within the bar code sticker. Here it is an Dell Article about it. (http://www.dell.com/support/contents/us/en/04/article/product-support/self-support-knowledgebase/locate-service-tag/Desktops)
Regards
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Where would the service tag be?
Like Martin said, take a look at the back or bottom (in case of a laptop). All my laptops have the service tag under the battery and the mini-tower has it at the back where the connectors faceplate is.
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Doesn't seem to be a service tag.
Sound and Ethernet both work.
Have to look at the wide screen stuff.
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Have to look at the wide screen stuff.
My newer DELL(GX 270) will follow what I enter in System Setup-> Screen-> Custom Resolutions, but be prepared to do some serious recovery, if you get it wrong, and/or it doesn't work (archive restore at boot time is probably enough). The older DELL (4300 series), doesn't work that way, or I haven't found the right combination. I think that both of them have Intel video adapters built in to the motherboard. That also doesn't work with the HP system, with an NVIDIA video adapter. The HP has covered connectors for on board video, but I haven't tried that (I suspect that the controller is not there). Of course, the 1368x768 screen works just fine with windows 10. The best that I can do with OS/2 is 1280x800, which is usable, but a 1280x1024 screen is much better.
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Hi Dave
Thanks for updating the wiki page (https://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php/Dell_XPS_720). Maybe what is missing right now is:
Audio: I'm guessing that you installed the UniAud driver on ArcaOS 5.0.2, right? Which Audio device is the one working 10DE:026C or 10DE:0BEB ?
Wired Network: Can you let me know the driver you installed for it? the name xxxx.OS2
Model Number. Maybe it can be shown on the BIOS.
Video: Let's see if you can find the trick to make it widescreen.
USB: Is USB working fine? Is an USB mouse and keyboard working? Or does that error on the boot with the USB is also showing issues on your USB capabilities ?
I guess that if we solve these question the wiki page will be ready :)
Regards
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Audio, the 026CH device, I believe the other is on the video card.
Ethernet, the NVETH driver from the latest experimental MultiMac package (all I've tried)
USB, the mouse problems I described. Keyboard here is currently PS2. USB sticks seem really slow and I just trapped the system trying to copy some files to a JFS formatted stick. Doing a test install of ArcaOS 5.0.2.3 from a USB stick saw the ISO get lost a couple of times. Rebooting allowed the install to continue.
Model number, according to the BIOS, it is an XPS 630i, the service tag number is also there.
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Thanks Dave, I updated the page (https://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php/Dell_XPS_720).
Now I have the doubt if I should call the page "Dell XPS 720" or "XPS 630i"
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I guess it is actually a 630i.
I found that I needed to change the USB drivers and now USB works fine.
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Hi Dave.
I updated the Wiki page: Dell XPS 630i (https://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php/Dell_XPS_630i)
Which USB driver/version is working now?
Regards
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I'd migrated my install and never thought about the USB drivers, which were set up on an Intel board to use BASEDEV=USBUHCD.SYS x6. Now I have BASEDEV=USBOHCD.SYS instead of those six instances of USBUHCD.SYS. Actually surprised how well things worked with the wrong drivers :)
Thanks for updating the model number, it's confusing when only the BIOS displays these things. I also used the service tag number to check for BIOS updates, it is at the latest.
Been experimenting with the OS/4 kernel as well, unluckily the desktop freezes at startup.
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Been experimenting with the OS/4 kernel as well, unluckily the desktop freezes at startup.
Your experience is just the opposite of mine. My desktop was freezing up a lot using the kernel that comes with ArcaOS. With the OS4 kernel, the freezes have disappeared.