OS2 World Community Forum
OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical => Hardware => Topic started by: Dan Eicher on August 13, 2025, 01:45:03 am
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** This question is not meant in a negative way towards Arca Noae **
I noticed this article:
https://www.arcanoae.com/arca-noae-licenses-snap-graphics-os2-code/
from 2015
It do not remember seeing, a lot of use of this source code to expand the drivers to newer chips sets, instead more of a focus on vesa as a write once, run anywhere solution.
Just curious as to what happened/how that works, as I remember the early days of graphics chips having 100's of pages of manual explaining how to program them, then came CGA/Hercules - again with lots of, even bigger manuals explaining how to program them, then EGA - with even bigger books, then finally, I don't own a copy, but one really thick book on programming the 'VGA' chip.
Now, I don't know how programmers learn about the capabilities of various graphics chips, which continue to develop at a breakneck pace, both Nvidia, Intel and AMD.
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Back in the day, Scitech was on fairly good terms with the various graphic chip manufacturers, and there were a lot more of them and they supported an accelerated driver that supported most all chips. This was in the 2D world and I think there was some limited support for 3D at the end. They basically stopped development about the time of PCIx with a few cards supported, notably ATI Radeon X800/X850 series, also NVIDIA GeForce 6600, actually I had a 6700 that worked with the experimental setting. Also the Thinkpad T42/43's chip was fully supported, I think IBM paid them. Dariusz for example uses an X850 IIRC and has a dual monitor setup.
At one point they were going to GPL the source, only happened with the SDK and eventually Arca Noae bought the rights. They're planning on extending it to support at least recent Intel chips. No idea how that is going.
Currently the VBE driver is the only one that generally works unless you have an old ATI PCIx card. You can easily switch to it if you want to test it. Don't even have to switch to VGA first anymore as both SNAP and Panorama are based on IBM's gengradd driver. It is on your ISO, see the readme. If you were using your T43, it would give much better performance.
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** This question is not meant in a negative way towards Arca Noae **
I noticed this article:
https://www.arcanoae.com/arca-noae-licenses-snap-graphics-os2-code/
from 2015
It do not remember seeing, a lot of use of this source code to expand the drivers to newer chips sets, instead more of a focus on vesa as a write once, run anywhere solution.
Just curious as to what happened/how that works, as I remember the early days of graphics chips having 100's of pages of manual explaining how to program them, then came CGA/Hercules - again with lots of, even bigger manuals explaining how to program them, then EGA - with even bigger books, then finally, I don't own a copy, but one really thick book on programming the 'VGA' chip.
Now, I don't know how programmers learn about the capabilities of various graphics chips, which continue to develop at a breakneck pace, both Nvidia, Intel and AMD.
From what I understand its very simple. Simply a lack of human resources.
Current chipsets no longer really comply with well a standard. You have UEFI GOP but this is effectively a frame buffer address to write to.
If you want to know how chipsets work in native mode you need to read Linux/FreeBSD code or Spec sheets. Its all extremely time consuming.
And then you have one chipset! In daily live the return on investment for SNAP on modern hardware, you will most likely not even notice it really that you are running Panorama.
Primary interests to have SNAP: Change output port on a laptop to HDMI for example or to have 2 screens connected.
Other then that I am afraid SNAP is currently frozen in time.
Roderick Klein
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...Dariusz for example uses an X850 IIRC and has a dual monitor setup...
For what it's worth, I cannot even imagine a Desktop environment with a single display anymore. The fact that I can enjoy such a hardware setup on our OS/2 platform is THE reason why I will continue to use SNAP.
...At one point they were going to GPL the source, only happened with the SDK and eventually Arca Noae bought the rights. They're planning on extending it to support at least recent Intel chips. No idea how that is going...
So back in Jan_2016 I reached out to Lewis (AN) volunteering to help with the updates to the SNAP solution. My contribution would have been a tiny little thing, however having successfully used the previously available SDK and written some ATI X850 specific utils (such as GPU engine and memory speed adjusters) I thought I could at least help up with the mundane utils side of things.
Lewis explained some of the plans they had at that time, Steve Levine was going to lead that work, which over time transitioned to David A for basically caretaker type of a thing. Point being: I am not aware of ANY new capabilities having been added to the SNAP drivers since, short of a single SMP hang related fix (I believe).
I wish the case was different and perhaps part of my frustration stems from the fact that we could have done something, even the little things to continue to keep this thing afloat and heck, maybe even expanded by a tiny little amount to the more upgraded chipsets that still largely followed the same proven architectures of past releases.
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Hi Dan!
I noticed this article:
https://www.arcanoae.com/arca-noae-licenses-snap-graphics-os2-code/
from 2015
It do not remember seeing, a lot of use of this source code to expand the drivers to newer chips sets, instead more of a focus on vesa as a write once, run anywhere solution...
If you want the latest publicly available ScitTech SDK let me know and I can toss that up on my webserver. This is NOT the current AN owned SDK/source.
BTW: it is the same thing you can stil d/l from here => http://web.archive.org/web/20080907115037/http://scitechsoft.com/ftp/devel/full_depot_r23.zip (http://web.archive.org/web/20080907115037/http://scitechsoft.com/ftp/devel/full_depot_r23.zip)
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Thanks for the information Dariusz.
The press release seemed to hold a lot of promise. You have cleared up for me, what happened.
Thank You.
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...Dariusz for example uses an X850 IIRC and has a dual monitor setup...
For what it's worth, I cannot even imagine a Desktop environment with a single display anymore. The fact that I can enjoy such a hardware setup on our OS/2 platform is THE reason why I will continue to use SNAP.
...
I used the X300 mit dual monitor setup (2x 1920x1200) many years. For the newer system I have to put in a ATI 550 which after some work from David A. (ticket) could drive my new 42,5" 3840x2160 monitor with nativ resolution using Panorama. Intel integrated couldn't be convinced to do it right.
Now again about 8-10 years later my current system could not drive this resolution with current Panorama using AMD internal GPU. Additional ATI550 can be convinced to setup the right resolution. But then I've to set Virtualaddresslimit<=1536 as otherwise the system crashes immediately. But that's no useful option for me.
So after about 15-17 years using OS/2 with 3840x >=1200 I now have to switch to another primary OS. Or live with crappy 2560x1440 displayed on a 3840x2160 screen. :-( Or hope David accidently can fixes this memory problem.
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To Andi B.
What is the current status of widescreen activation? => custom videomodes
* it's necessary use ati amd radeon ?
* nvidia allows use custom modes?
* Intel video cards - custom modes?
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Hey Andi!
...Now again about 8-10 years later my current system could not drive this resolution with current Panorama using AMD internal GPU. Additional ATI550 can be convinced to setup the right resolution. But then I've to set Virtualaddresslimit<=1536 as otherwise the system crashes immediately. But that's no useful option for me...
Just on a hunch, have you played with the 'Video Memory Limit' setting of the gaoption.exe?
Options for ATI Radeon X850 Series (device 0):
Invert .................. Off
Rotation ................ Off
Flipped ................. Off
Reduced DVI Timings...... Off
Prefer 16 bit per pixel.. On
Prefer 32 bit per pixel.. On
Compressed Framebuffer... On
Allow DDC BIOS........... On
PCI bus mastering........ On
Video memory packets..... On
Hardware acceleration.... Full
Multi Head Display....... Yes
0: 1920 x 1200 ( 0, 0,1920,1200)
1: 1920 x 1200 (1920, 0,3840,1200)
VESA DPVL Mode........... Off
Global options for all devices:
Force VBE Fallback ...... Off
Force VGA Fallback ...... Off
Allow non-certified ..... On
Disable write combining . Off
Use BIOS for LCD panel... Auto
Video Memory Limit....... 24 Mb
Shared AGP memory size... 4096 Kb
Use system memory driver. Off
Disable DDC detection.... Off
Enable AGP FastWrite..... Off
Maximum AGP data rate.... 8X
Virtual Display.......... Off
Once you execute that gaoption command that setting is saved and upon next reboot you'll find something like this in your graphics.log file ('==>' is mine for emphasis):
...
GA_enumerateDevices: Found 1 PCI/AGP display devices
Global options for all devices:
Force VBE Fallback ...... Off
Force VGA Fallback ...... Off
Allow non-certified ..... On
Disable write combining . Off
Use BIOS for LCD panel... Auto
Shared AGP memory size... 4096 KB
Use system memory driver. Off
Disable DDC detection.... Off
Virtual Display.......... Off
Loading driver for device 0 (radeon.drv)
---------------------------------------------------------
==> Video memory limited to user supplied value of 24MB
Attempting to enable write combining, base = 0xD0000000, length = 0x01800000 ...
Failed: UNKNOWN ERROR!
Loading chipset filters...done.
Loading splash screen...done.
Graphics device configuration:
Manufacturer......... ATI
Chipset.............. Radeon X850 Series
Bus Type............. PCI Express
==> Memory............... 24576 KB
DAC.................. ATI Internal 24 bit DAC
Clock................ ATI Internal Clock
Memory Clock......... 400 MHz
Default Memory Clock. 400 MHz
Maximum Memory Clock. 400 MHz
Driver Revision...... 3.2, Build 29
Driver Build......... May 2 2017
Certified Version.... Not Certified
Graphics device options:
Invert .................. Off
Rotation ................ Off
Flipped ................. Off
Prefer 16 bit per pixel.. On
Prefer 32 bit per pixel.. On
PCI bus mastering........ On
Hardware acceleration.... Full
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I run a huge JFS cache of 1G...and given that my ATI X850 card is a 256M card I was running into issues early on allocating enough RAM for the cache. It is not until I pared that back to just about 24M (to account for 24-bit and resulting resolution over the two displays) that I was able to free up the system RAM for cache use.
Sooo...seeing as you have to play with the Virtualaddresslimit setting I wonder if that is worth a try (if you haven't done so already of course)?
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...Dariusz for example uses an X850 IIRC and has a dual monitor setup...
For what it's worth, I cannot even imagine a Desktop environment with a single display anymore. The fact that I can enjoy such a hardware setup on our OS/2 platform is THE reason why I will continue to use SNAP.
...
I used the X300 mit dual monitor setup (2x 1920x1200) many years. For the newer system I have to put in a ATI 550 which after some work from David A. (ticket) could drive my new 42,5" 3840x2160 monitor with nativ resolution using Panorama. Intel integrated couldn't be convinced to do it right.
Now again about 8-10 years later my current system could not drive this resolution with current Panorama using AMD internal GPU. Additional ATI550 can be convinced to setup the right resolution. But then I've to set Virtualaddresslimit<=1536 as otherwise the system crashes immediately. But that's no useful option for me.
So after about 15-17 years using OS/2 with 3840x >=1200 I now have to switch to another primary OS. Or live with crappy 2560x1440 displayed on a 3840x2160 screen. :-( Or hope David accidently can fixes this memory problem.
I have seen your ticket. I will mention this to Steve Levine if he can find out what is going on!
Roderick
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To Andi B.
What is the current status of widescreen activation? => custom videomodes
* it's necessary use ati amd radeon ?
* nvidia allows use custom modes?
* Intel video cards - custom modes?
In a lot of cases the wide screen activators on modern systems no longer work (UEFI).
Panorama has the code for ATI and Intel build in.
On UEFI systems you already get with laptops a lot of high screen resolutions where its a question if you still need the wide screen enabler.
Remember UEFI GOP is ONLY a memory address to write no other screen features etc.
Roderick Klein
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The big benefit of SNAP for me is that currently SNAP is the only way (that I know of) of getting Win-OS/2 to reliably work on a screen size larger than 1920x1080. Which in my case is SNAP with a dual monitor setup running 3840x1080 (I don't have two monitors that will display larger than 1920x1080. I do have a single 4k monitor).
Because of AndiB's post on 4k screen sizes awhile back, I purchased a Sapphire pulse RX 550 video card (from England - the shipping was more than the card) to see if I could get it to work on my Ryzen. What I found (on the Ryzen with RX550 video card and virtual address limit = 2048) was:
1) you have to boot as CSM in order to set colors to something less than 16M. 64K colors seems to work well. 16M colors not so good.
(first screen shot - the card name shows up as LEXA for some reason). Win-OS/2 will not work
2) If you boot as UEFI you can only use 16M colors - there is no other color option and I did not get custom resolutions to work. I did not try messing with virtual address limit
3) with UEFI boot (and 16M colors) you can get Win-OS/2 to work - but not very well.
On the second screen shot you can see the screen not getting updated correctly - noticeable for example below the "Initializing" text in the grey window at the lower left of the
Visual Builder screen.
4) There are some Win-OS/2 apps, like Paint Brush, that won't work correctly at 16M colors, even with SNAP.
5) The type of video "connection" used makes a difference. Even though the RX550 video card supports both HDMI and DisplayPort, and my monitor supports both connections, 4k will only work on with a DisplayPort connection. I also tried hooking up a 4K TV via HDMI and it will not display 4K for Panorama even though the TV and video card say they support HDMI at 60 HZ. This was also true when testing with an Intel i5 8600 with integrated UHD graphics 630, which also supports HDMI, DisplayPort and VGA.
6) for the Intel (virtual address limit = 1536) I had the same issue of needing to boot CSM in order to set the colors at something other the 16M, and the resolution at something other than 640x480.
When booting CSM WIn-OS/2 will not work in seamless mode, but will work in full screen. OS/2 seemed to work correctly - although I didn't do extensive testing.
(screen shot 3)
When booting the Intel in UEFI - at 16M colors and 640x480 (the only color and resolution choice) - Win-OS/2 would work in seamless mode and full screen.
There are some points to remember:
The older Radeon video cards that will work with SNAP are probably not going to be GOP enabled - meaning they won't work unless CSM is on, and the AOS installer will not work with them. They will work fine once AOS is installed and with CSM support turned on.
Intel has removed CSM support from most of its processors by now. AMD is removing CSM support from its graphics video cards starting at the Radeon 9000, but appears to be keeping CSM for its processors, at least at this point.
I was thinking of doing this a presentation at Warpstock Little Rock if you guys think anyone would be interested.
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The big benefit of SNAP for me is that currently SNAP is the only way (that I know of) of getting Win-OS/2 to reliably work on a screen size larger than 1920x1080. Which in my case is SNAP with a dual monitor setup running 3840x1080 (I don't have two monitors that will display larger than 1920x1080. I do have a single 4k monitor).
Because of AndiB's post on 4k screen sizes awhile back, I purchased a Sapphire pulse RX 550 video card (from England - the shipping was more than the card) to see if I could get it to work on my Ryzen. What I found (on the Ryzen with RX550 video card and virtual address limit = 2048) was:
1) you have to boot as CSM in order to set colors to something less than 16M. 64K colors seems to work well. 16M colors not so good.
(first screen shot - the card name shows up as LEXA for some reason). Win-OS/2 will not work
2) If you boot as UEFI you can only use 16M colors - there is no other color option and I did not get custom resolutions to work. I did not try messing with virtual address limit
3) with UEFI boot (and 16M colors) you can get Win-OS/2 to work - but not very well.
On the second screen shot you can see the screen not getting updated correctly - noticeable for example below the "Initializing" text in the grey window at the lower left of the
Visual Builder screen.
4) There are some Win-OS/2 apps, like Paint Brush, that won't work correctly at 16M colors, even with SNAP.
5) The type of video "connection" used makes a difference. Even though the RX550 video card supports both HDMI and DisplayPort, and my monitor supports both connections, 4k will only work on with a DisplayPort connection. I also tried hooking up a 4K TV via HDMI and it will not display 4K for Panorama even though the TV and video card say they support HDMI at 60 HZ. This was also true when testing with an Intel i5 8600 with integrated UHD graphics 630, which also supports HDMI, DisplayPort and VGA.
6) for the Intel (virtual address limit = 1536) I had the same issue of needing to boot CSM in order to set the colors at something other the 16M, and the resolution at something other than 640x480.
When booting CSM WIn-OS/2 will not work in seamless mode, but will work in full screen. OS/2 seemed to work correctly - although I didn't do extensive testing.
(screen shot 3)
When booting the Intel in UEFI - at 16M colors and 640x480 (the only color and resolution choice) - Win-OS/2 would work in seamless mode and full screen.
There are some points to remember:
The older Radeon video cards that will work with SNAP are probably not going to be GOP enabled - meaning they won't work unless CSM is on, and the AOS installer will not work with them. They will work fine once AOS is installed and with CSM support turned on.
Intel has removed CSM support from most of its processors by now. AMD is removing CSM support from its graphics video cards starting at the Radeon 9000, but appears to be keeping CSM for its processors, at least at this point.
I was thinking of doing this a presentation at Warpstock Little Rock if you guys think anyone would be interested.
CSM has not been removed from the CPU its the BIOS that provides this support in conjunction with the video card.
I am not certain that SNAP goes ALL the way to 3840 x ???? resolution. With waht I know about the GRADD architecture WIN/OS2 depends on the GRADD component and not the accelrated SNAP portion of the code. But I could be wrong. Can you post a screenshot of your WIN/OS2 screen as I think the resolution support of WIN/OS2 can be increased that high.
Roderick
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Rodrick,
I am attaching a screen shot of a seamless win-os/2 application at 3840x1080, and a pic of a full-screen win-os/2 session running at 3840x1080, both using SNAP.
As for GRADD and how SNAP and Win-OS/2 works - and for that fact BIOS/CSM - I am no expert. I'm just Ken (and I am not even blond.)
The limitation for SNAP seems to be in the vertical direction rather than the horizontal direction. I am guessing this is due to the fact that support for new chipsets ended before DisplayPort became common and so we are bound by the display resolution limitations of DVI.
The graphical performance of seamless, and full-screen Win-os/2 sessions, seems to be fine. The card I am using (Radeon X600) is a first generation PCIe but it seems to have more than enough performance for OS/2. I am not counting frame rates or running games - I am judging by how fast text scrolls, how responsive window dragging is, and how many movies I am play on VLC at the same time (it is at least 4 - the limitations appear to be VLC related rather than graphics performance)
As for CSM/BIOS/CPU - once again I'm just Ken. There are lots of links about Intel and CSM - including this one
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/content-details/630266/removal-of-legacy-boot-support-for-intel-platforms-technical-advisory.html
A couple of weeks ago I was wondering the same question as you asked - is it the CPU or the BIOS/motherboard that determines CSM support - so I looked at some new Intel based motherboards from MSI, Gigibyte and ASUS to see if the new boards have CSM support. I could not find any mention of CSM in the manuals for the motherboards, or listed on their web sites. This of course is not conclusive, either for the BIOS verses CPU question or for whether CSM is now gone from Intel based motherboards.
But if CSM is now discontinued for Intel based systems it might drive some OS/2 users to AMD based systems - especially those who need DOS/Windows support and/or are using older hardware that really requires BIOS support - such as some graphics tablets, etc. Right now it appears that we need CSM for Panorama to access the full range of color depth and/or resolutions that are available on modern monitors/video cards.
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Rodrick,
I am attaching a screen shot of a seamless win-os/2 application at 3840x1080, and a pic of a full-screen win-os/2 session running at 3840x1080, both using SNAP.
As for GRADD and how SNAP and Win-OS/2 works - and for that fact BIOS/CSM - I am no expert. I'm just Ken (and I am not even blond.)
The limitation for SNAP seems to be in the vertical direction rather than the horizontal direction. I am guessing this is due to the fact that support for new chipsets ended before DisplayPort became common and so we are bound by the display resolution limitations of DVI.
The graphical performance of seamless, and full-screen Win-os/2 sessions, seems to be fine. The card I am using (Radeon X600) is a first generation PCIe but it seems to have more than enough performance for OS/2. I am not counting frame rates or running games - I am judging by how fast text scrolls, how responsive window dragging is, and how many movies I am play on VLC at the same time (it is at least 4 - the limitations appear to be VLC related rather than graphics performance)
As for CSM/BIOS/CPU - once again I'm just Ken. There are lots of links about Intel and CSM - including this one
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/content-details/630266/removal-of-legacy-boot-support-for-intel-platforms-technical-advisory.html
A couple of weeks ago I was wondering the same question as you asked - is it the CPU or the BIOS/motherboard that determines CSM support - so I looked at some new Intel based motherboards from MSI, Gigibyte and ASUS to see if the new boards have CSM support. I could not find any mention of CSM in the manuals for the motherboards, or listed on their web sites. This of course is not conclusive, either for the BIOS verses CPU question or for whether CSM is now gone from Intel based motherboards.
But if CSM is now discontinued for Intel based systems it might drive some OS/2 users to AMD based systems - especially those who need DOS/Windows support and/or are using older hardware that really requires BIOS support - such as some graphics tablets, etc. Right now it appears that we need CSM for Panorama to access the full range of color depth and/or resolutions that are available on modern monitors/video cards.
Interesting thank you for this screenshot never seen WIN/OS2 on two screens spread out.
Since circa 2022 No mainboards or PC are made with a CSM. Except for legacy PC's or industrial mainboards.
Roderick Klein
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Roderick,
That appears to be true for Intel CPU based motherboards, but does not appear to be true for AMD CPU based motherboards - at least for today.
I went to Microcenter.com (a big, national, US computer retailer/superstore) and searched for AM5 socket motherboards. AM5 is the latest AMD socket for its processors. AMD has announced it will support AM5 socket until 2027. I took the first 3 motherboards from different manufacturers and checked if they had CSM - all three did. Those motherboards are MSI MAG X870E Tomahawk Wifi, ASUS B650A ROG Strix, and Gigabyte X870E AORUS Elite.
I have no idea about that state of CSM support in laptops.
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Roderick,
That appears to be true for Intel CPU based motherboards, but does not appear to be true for AMD CPU based motherboards - at least for today.
I went to Microcenter.com (a big, national, US computer retailer/superstore) and searched for AM5 socket motherboards. AM5 is the latest AMD socket for its processors. AMD has announced it will support AM5 socket until 2027. I took the first 3 motherboards from different manufacturers and checked if they had CSM - all three did. Those motherboards are MSI MAG X870E Tomahawk Wifi, ASUS B650A ROG Strix, and Gigabyte X870E AORUS Elite.
I have no idea about that state of CSM support in laptops.
Interesting. From a commercial perspective for normal mainboards there is 0 need to support CSM. The last version of Windows to support CSM boot is Windows 10 32 bit.
And that has gone long out of support.
https://download-2.msi.com/archive/mnu_exe/mb/MAGX870ETOMAHAWKWIFI_English.pdf
On page 68 it says:
However, it still has a CSM (Compatibility Support Module) mode to be
compatible with older devices.
32-bit Windows operating system - this motherboard supports only Windows 11
64-bit operating system.
I can not find any references to other BIOS settings related to CSM support in this specific case that indicates you can still BOOT a CSM OS.
You see next to the BIOS having CSM support you must have drivers that support the new hardware.
So it all look pretty grim in my opinion. But I would not be surprised if some mainbords are still around with CSM.
Roderick Klein
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I can not find any references to other BIOS settings related to CSM support in this specific case that indicates you can still BOOT a CSM OS.
You see next to the BIOS having CSM support you must have drivers that support the new hardware.
I am not sure what they mean there - or where it says it only supports 64 bit operating systems.
The manuals don't give very much information on CSM - or in some cases any information at all.
With my AM4 socket MSI motherboard the way you choose whether to boot UEFI or CSM mode is through the BIOS boot menu - I suspect it is the same with AM5 socket boards. Basically each media that is attached when the machine turns on is listed twice: once with a UEFI tag and again without the UEFI tag. If you pick the media with the UEFI tag you boot in UEFI mode, otherwise you boot in CSM mode. This isn't described in the manual. With the other two manufacturers I had to look on forums where people posted about problems booting CSM or UEFI to find out that the board supported CSM.
With the choices between UEFI and CSM, MBR verses GPT, and how UEFI vs CSM affects the capabilities of both SNAP and Panorama, along with DOS and/or Win-OS/2, setting up a system is now a very complex undertaking.
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I can not find any references to other BIOS settings related to CSM support in this specific case that indicates you can still BOOT a CSM OS.
You see next to the BIOS having CSM support you must have drivers that support the new hardware.
I am not sure what they mean there - or where it says it only supports 64 bit operating systems.
The manuals don't give very much information on CSM - or in some cases any information at all.
With my AM4 socket MSI motherboard the way you choose whether to boot UEFI or CSM mode is through the BIOS boot menu - I suspect it is the same with AM5 socket boards. Basically each media that is attached when the machine turns on is listed twice: once with a UEFI tag and again without the UEFI tag. If you pick the media with the UEFI tag you boot in UEFI mode, otherwise you boot in CSM mode. This isn't described in the manual. With the other two manufacturers I had to look on forums where people posted about problems booting CSM or UEFI to find out that the board supported CSM.
With the choices between UEFI and CSM, MBR verses GPT, and how UEFI vs CSM affects the capabilities of both SNAP and Panorama, along with DOS and/or Win-OS/2, setting up a system is now a very complex undertaking.
Making an educated guess based on what is written it means you can for example use PCI cards that still have legacy support. Such as an old video card.
As I typed before as time moves on supporting CSM for old operating systems makes less and less sense. This because the mainboard vendor has to have drivers from the companies that make the chipsets, for example. video, audio etc. I would be surprised if all of these mainboards could support Windows 7 for example. Hence the reason vendors will just dump CSM support.
Unless you buy a legacy refurbished system or with a industrial mainboard (but these can be expensive).
When it comes to the choice between GPT versus MBR on UEFI boot. Always grab GPT when booting an MBR system. If you currently have a working MBR just jeep it. But in my experience MBR is fragile and especially LVM from OS/2. The genereal rule of thumb is you should ONLY use disc tools that run under OS/2 to edit your disc. Not doing so can bring you into problems.
Especially if you want to setup a dual boot system. The design of GPT is simply more modern and less fragile. Other people who have installed a dual boot with Windows 10 or Windows 11 on GPT I think will confirm it was never easier.
The headache is indeed with SNAP. Then you need a working mainboard with a CSM.
Roderick
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Making an educated guess based on what is written it means you can for example use PCI cards that still have legacy support. Such as an old video card.
Generally speaking, yes. You have to use an adapter to plug the PCI card into the PCIe slot because of electrical and physical differences - the two use different voltages for example. And some adapters do not work - but the adapter from Startech does. You can even plug multiple PCI cards into PCIe slots in the same motherboard - each with an adapter. I currently have an Intel PCI network adapter and a QualTech multiport serial card plugged in one of my machines; the Intel network card because it is MUCH faster with netbios than the Realtek chip/driver on the motherboard. This allows you to find and use hardware that matches older OS/2 specific drivers.
As for video cards: you could use an old PCI video card with an adapter but you really don't need to. PCIe was becoming a thing right at the end of SNAP's development and you can find lots of PCIe video cards that work with SNAP. There will be a presentation on this at Warpstock US in November.
As I typed before as time moves on supporting CSM for old operating systems makes less and less sense
Unfortunately this is true - and it appears that Intel already made that decision for most of its product line. The good news though is that processors production runs are much longer than they used to be. The AMD Ryzen 5 5600X that I am currently using was released in November 2020 and is still for sale at Microcenter (as of this morning) now almost 5 years later - along with motherboards that support the processor. The end of CSM is coming, but we have a few years before it vanishes - at least on the AMD side.