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Messages - Roderick Klein

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136
Setup & Installation / Re: Informal eCS 1.2R releases
« on: August 13, 2018, 12:52:20 am »
Having worked at Mensys on eCS 1.2R it was released in English, Italian and German. The Italian version might have been 1.2 and not 1.2R.  eCo software created an eCS 1.2R Russian.

I am not aware of any other languages being created. The reason most likely nobody ever did this is because most likely nobody understands the complex technical swamp its under the bonnet of any OS/2 installer. Its not really down to the desigh of the eCS or ArcaOS installer. They both lean on portions of the IBM installers such as
SEINST/RSPINST (which install the base OS from OS2IMAGE). This is where the first fun starts, updating the pack files in the correct directories.  If you cold call this fun! Then other installers such as the PEER and MPTS installer run in different fashion. So example MPTS uses a ZIP files instead of packfiles. 
I consider it a technicall house of horrors.

Anyway stepping in and updating all of that stuff is certainly a pretty massive job... My estimate at Mensys is that we worked a full release of another language about 2 tot 3 months at least. Which should give a clue how much work it was.... And of course you need to know what your doing and how to debug a failling a installation, which can also be pretty time consuming...

137
General Discussion / Re: IBM DDK License Discussion
« on: August 02, 2018, 09:20:25 pm »
Hi Greg

I used to have a developer connection to IBM. There were no restrictions put on any of my code. Explicitly I could use the IBM libraries to develop for any OS/2 system. At no time did IBM own the code being developed by me. Only the acquistion of the developer libraries were restricted. Later, many of the same IBM libraries were openly distributed. So, what could possibly be the meaning of a non-disclosure.

If you have any older Developer Connection CD please let me know. I want to check the license of it. The changed to the IBM Code and the device driver samples are always yours for what I understand. If we find some of the device driver samples (IBM Code) under an older license distribution, that may be similar  to the IBM Toolkit license, it will be compatible with open source and it will be a base to build drivers from there, even if those are older versions.

I guess that the libraries and tool (binaries) of the IBM DDK package will be close source but at least at some point of time those were provided as freeware by IBM (Evidence).

Regards

I lost the license agreement I once printed I think it was somewhere around the year 2000 when the DUDE from IBM was still open. You could also register free of charge to get the DDK. However you did need to agree to the standard DDK license which has always seem to have the had same limitations in terms of making any source code public.

Roderick

138
General Discussion / IBM DDK License Discussion
« on: August 01, 2018, 10:37:33 pm »
Yes, ArcaOS does good job with supporting OS/2 on modern hardware. Though, it is closed. It is even more closed than eComStation. They do copy protection by branding some binaries with user's own name. Neither IBM OS/2, nor eCS did not do such bad things. Newer drivers like DANIS506 or AHCI are linked with closed-source libraries (DRV16, DRV32 etc.), so that they are not fully open source while having been published under GNU GPL. And they now port drivers from FreeBSD, because BSD license allows them to not publish sources.

Well one thing that is easier about ArcaOS and putting in drivers the user data is that you no longer have to deal with license number you have to enter. Having worked (note I no longer work @Mensys) on eCS the license key was not working to bad. But for some people it was a not that easy to enter the 40 or so character registration key in the installer.

As for your statement that 16 and 32 bit driver library is closed source most likely duo to the DDK license.
In this file Drv16-20161010.zip (download here https://88watts.net/software.html) is a readme file:

"The Drv16 Kit is a derivative work of the IBM DDK. You must have a IBM"
DDK license to use this software.
Anyway for the the 32 bit and 16 bit driver they have a library and a presentation on how to write drivers:
http://www.warpstock.eu/images/2015/presentations/David_Azarewicz-WSE2015_Writing_Device_Drivers.pd

Anyway again it might be the age old problem this caused the orginally IBM DDK license.

Why Arca Noae did not provide the source code of certain libraires I do not know.  But I have an idea, you must be aware of what the DDK states about publishing  source code! This is also the reason why UNIAUD16.SYS @Netlabs can not be published publicly, because its covered the DDK license from IBM.

As for your last statement that Arca Noae picked FreeBSD so they do not have to make the source code public.
They had a different reason, a technicall on. When I worked with David Azarewicz at Mensys on eCS the Wireless NIC driver based on Linux sources ended up being dead. Why ? The Linux guys had made such many changes to the sources you could no longer recompile the sources. Aaaah:

https://www.arcanoae.com/roadmap/
"With the aid of the MultiMac framework, Arca Noae already provides support for some Intel, Nvidia, and Realtek chipsets based on Linux drivers. Changes in the Linux driver architecture have made maintaining these drivers and porting new drivers increasingly difficult. As was announced at Warpstock 2014, Arca Noae is working on an alternative new library for porting FreeBSD drivers to OS/2."

Roderick Klein

139
Storage / Re: PMSHELL
« on: July 29, 2018, 11:32:39 pm »
I wouldn't call it a "storage" issue. It is a shortage of lower shared memory space. I find that it is only a matter of a few minutes, until my system crashes, when lower shared memory drops below 100 MB (it is probably already dead if it shows 10 MB). To avoid the problem, I add the line"
Code: [Select]
VIRTUALADDRESSLIMIT=2560to CONFIG.SYS. Some systems will be able to use 3072, but, apparently, some other systems can't use that. It only increases the available upper shared memory anyway.

Doing that does not actually change the problem, without taking further steps to mark some things to actually use upper shared memory space (there are some fixes in the ArcaOS kernel for upper shared memory support too). The easiest thing to set to use upper shared memory space, is Apache Open Office. In the Extras folder, there is a tool to set it to use upper shared memory (some experimenting may be required). If you do that, you may find that there will be a LIBC problem (usually not obvious), if you close Open Office more than once. To avoid that, use the Quickstart thing, to prevent it from actually closing.

You should also realize, that shared memory may fragment. If the largest fragment is 5 MB, and some program needs 5.5 MB, you are dead in the water. If the program is properly written, to check if it actually got the requested memory, it will probably just crash the program. If it doesn't check (apparently, most programs don't), and tries to use it anyway, it usually causes what you describe.

If I did not understand you correctly Doug. You typed:
"without taking further steps to mark some things to actually use upper shared memory space".
However GCC applications already store data (such as browser cache) into the high area.

For Remy:

The real killer is the size of the large DLL's that get loaded this can fixed by using a tool to mark the code segments to load high. Do this for Firefox DLL's, THunderbird AND Open Office.  Do not mark the datasegments high of the DLL.
Also make a backup of your DLL's before doing this.  There is a tool from Yuri called high512 that can mark the DLL's high.

You are most likely not the first and the last OS/2 user to expereince these type of lockups. It might be usefull to report this in a ticket to AN ?

Roderick

140
Internet / Re: Firefox - 45.9.0 for OS/2 GA1.1...anyone...anyone???
« on: July 26, 2018, 10:49:38 pm »
https://os2ports.smedley.id.au/index.php?page=BuildEnvDVD

If you mean Paul Smedley offers this enviroment for free ? That is true. the GCC/LIBC enviroment on OS/2 is maintained by a  volenteers and and BWW. Paul works on the GCC compiler free of charge (small sponsor amount). 

Currently BWW maintains 266 DLL (the statics Silvan/Dmitry mentioned in the presentations they gave at Warpstock Europe. See http://articles.os2voice.org/  What paragraph: 
BWW does in the background when working on major ports" for details.

The big issue that is projects like Firefox and QT are I guess just about to big for the small team that works on these tools to work on. David Yeo provides his compiles for Thunderbird and Seamonkey, but I think he recently stated he would not be able to compile new version of Seamonkey/Thunderbird without the work of BWW.



Roderick

141
Internet / Re: Firefox - 45.9.0 for OS/2 GA1.1...anyone...anyone???
« on: July 26, 2018, 06:48:24 pm »
Well if you would read the readme file of Firefox for OS/2 it says the RPM package is downloadable via your ArcaOS subscription.

Anyway if you know how to do it  better outline your plan or call BWW to provide vast quanties of sponsorship.
Otherwhise stop distributing BS if you do not know what your talking about and leave this forum.

Saldy most OS/2 and eCS versions published are indeed what you can use them for, for retro computing. Such as on a T42 laptop. It works for you that is great. Otherwhise good luck booting eCS 2.1 on new Thinkpad T540d.

Sorry about that blund response. But it clearly seems you have not educated yourself properly as to why BWW introduced YUM/RPM. When you write that you expect for "Firefox for OS/2"  then why not make a big payment to BWW to make it happen ? BWW has make clear they need funding, they are underfunded and understaffed.  BWW makes MAYOR contributions to supporting the RPM and GCC enviroment on OS/2 and they all publish the results free of charge. Hence the reason they ask for sponsorunits.

With BWW its efforts we would have not a somewhat more modern browser. 

142
Internet / Re: Firefox - 45.9.0 for OS/2 GA1.1...anyone...anyone???
« on: July 26, 2018, 06:40:13 pm »
Well if you would read the readme file of Firefox for OS/2 it says the RPM package is downloadable via your ArcaOS subscription.

Anyway if you know how to do it  better outline your plan or call BWW to provide vast quanties of sponsorship.


Saldy most OS/2 and eCS versions published are indeed what you can use them for, for retro computing. Such as on a T42 laptop. It works for you that is great. Otherwhise good luck booting eCS 2.1 on new Thinkpad T540d.

143
Internet / Re: Firefox - 45.9.0 for OS/2 GA1.1...anyone...anyone???
« on: July 25, 2018, 11:31:36 pm »
Thanks Dave for the information.  Now the fun begins trying to sort out which implementation of each dll is the one that works - I have found that libcx does not work with anything else unless I have the magic incantation loaded in config.sys.  Things should work better when they get the buildlevel info included -I can't help wondering who had the bright idea to try and convert OS/2 into SUSE linux and so create all the problems for all of us that have been using OS/2 from version 2.1.

Tha basic gist is that BWW said that the stand alone files in ZIP and install requirements was costing about 8 hours of support per week in tickets. If you take in consideations that software and downloads are provided free of charge. ..
With lack of human man power they had to make chooses.

Plenty of people are using ArcaOS without much issue's. The bottom line is the ported applications need these DLL's. I do not know how you can keep the ported DLL's off OS/2 if you want to run modern ported applications.

Roderick

144
You can give a try to this "speedtest' too
https://openspeedtest.com/Get-widget.php

I get very low upload of only 2 megabit. That said I have no clue where this server is located. Also take into account that you also need to know where your download test server is located on the globe. In this case the speedtest.net I use is about 20 KM away. So does test resulsts do not say me anything.

Do they have local server around the globe or just one server ?
Running an IP trace I get 18 hopes... I get send over to Texas to the IP adress 45.79.12.7.
But this is not even the end of the trace route. Anyay for a European user a pretty bad example to use for speedtest in my opinion.


145
I did new tests... (use of DHCP in both test from default install)

Booting ArcaOS disk -> speed test nearly 10Mbps

I then did a test installing ArcaOS into Virtualbox (using default "NAT mode" Virtualbox network driver then the native installation one without virtualbox) under windows 7 -> speed test gives nearly 58Mbps !!

For me it looks the native driver used with my onboard network card (RealtekĀ® 8111G Gigabit LAN) is not well working and is the culprit of bad speed. The driver has to be corrected and is buggy and this test confirms other tests I already did. 
 

But how do you know this is NOT the IP stack of OS/2 ?

* With my Intel E1000B.OS2 driver I get about 25 megabyte per second over my local LAN to a Linux server.

* Speedtest.net indicates a 100 megabit and 67 megabit upload speed via the internet.

* I have a website I only get 350 KB per second from. Windows delivers 6.4 megabyte per second to the same website. Now here in the interesting, I repeated the test and hooked up a ethernet  to wifi adapter and setup my mobile phone as wifi hotspot to connect to the same website. Guess what its faster then 350 KB second!
So purely changing the data path shows the issue can also have todo with the IP stack somehow. Tracing that is part 2!

I am currently looking at IP trace and wireshark to see if something is going wrong with packet processing!
Like re-transmits or packets out of sync.

146
Setup & Installation / Re: bus master error
« on: July 11, 2018, 09:50:03 pm »
Well what is more imporant about your boot screen is kind of dead give away. The IDE driver is extremely outdated and the advise to use danis506.add/danatapi.flt is correct. What you see is that the CD player its controller is supported but the hard disc controllr is not. Try the danis506.add and daniatapi.flt as suggested.

Roderick Klein

147
Events / Re: Announcing Warpstock Europe 2019!
« on: July 08, 2018, 09:10:48 pm »
Sigurd, sorry for the misunderstanding I typed it to fast. All I was trying to point is that Warpstock Europe has alwasys costed per day around 25 to 30 Euro.  I was not trying to compare it your event.

And the only thing I compared to the event in Cologne is that the lunch is 7 Euro in the youth hostel. You can not get that much cheaper. That was all.

Your event is different in the sense that is takes place at the same location. I organize the event in the spring so its not in the way somehow interfere with your event or Warpstock US.

I wish I could BTW give people free access to Warpstock Europe, but that is to expensive  I try to organize the event around in the Netherlands or Germany.  Moving the event around makes it less cheap. A youth hostel is possibly one of the most cheapest locations you could organize the event. On average the cost is between 2000 and 2400 Euro for two days... Also more and more event locations they force a lunch into the package.  Infact the location for 2019 is a Youth Hostel.

We also publish what Warpstock Europe costs which is also BTW just 100% volenteer work.
Here you can see the year reports: http://www.os2voice.org/reports.html If you want I can publish the orginal invoices from the hotels as well. This year it cost me 700 Euro in total to travel to Berlin and book a little appartment. The cost where not paid by VOICE of course.  Even the stamps and phone cost for VOICE I pay out of my own pocket.

That you find it to expensive I respect that.

Roderick

148
Events / Re: Announcing Warpstock Europe 2019!
« on: July 02, 2018, 12:42:02 am »
Of course and sadly that 105 Dollars is only for access but lunch is included both days. Dinner is not included, more information will follow later. Roderick

Thanks for the Information, but this is to expensive for me. All the best and good luck!

Uhuu well previous Warpstocks where between 25 and 30 Euro's per year.

The 105 Dollars translates to 89 Euro's. It includes lunch twice.
How much is that in Cologne in the Youth Hostel ? I forgot ? 7 Euro ?
It includes tea and coffee the whole day.

Also the rent of the room is more expensive on Saturday since I renting it for the evening as well. So people can stick around if they want...

So for 45 Euro a day. If you would look at your travel expenses from Germany if you would come and stay at a youth hostel or Hotel. I consider the cost small compared to the rest of the travel cost.

But that is just my 1 cent :-)

Roderick

149
Applications / Re: OS/4 (technical details only)
« on: July 01, 2018, 11:57:26 pm »
Well that driver as far as I can tell does not provide all the support that the ACPI.PSD provices.

150
Applications / Re: OS/4 (technical details only)
« on: July 01, 2018, 10:48:31 pm »
No. to the best of my understanding you can not install the OS/4 kernel with the current versions of ACPI.

Best regards,

Roderick Klein


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