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4.52 Convenience Pack CD's

Started by Patrick_, 2008.10.17, 20:38:15

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ddan

Patrick: I'm a bit less amiable than my usual surly self this weekend, for no particular reason (though there is a pesky robot attempting to hijack this thread). Sorry as appropriate. I'm willing to advise, BUT I'm cursed with only being able to tell you what has worked for me. I stick to safe and simple.

Now, here again, I don't believe that you have to bother config.sys at all, and that you're going on a snipe hunt with that, and I'm simply not going to follow you. From what you've said, that you got to LVM, then evidently your hardware doesn't have any problems getting to points that in my experience mean that all will go well once you've done FDISK as I describe.

As I mentioned in my first post, you don't yet believe that the cause is SIMPLE, that LVM isn't able to touch drives that it doesn't like the partitioning of, when its exact purpose is to SET that, but it's typical from what I've seen, one of the charming quirks of OS/2.


saborion2

With an high degree of interest in OS/2 Convenience Pack 4.52... (and this exercise/undertaking by Patrick) does anyone know if any support whatsoever (paid engagements...) is currently being provided by IBM or Serenity/Mensys to clients still depending on/running OS/2 Convenience Pack 4.52?

Thanks.

SAB


kim

Well, via IBM you're able to open support case for a fee and as well they have special support contracts available to handle specific needs. But, the price for the last type of contract is quite expensive. I would assume that Mensys would be able to offer some kind of support as well; but I can't recall that I've seen anything about this. Guess that Roderick at Mensys can enlighten us on this topic.

RobertM

#18
Patrick,

This is a wild guess... but OS/2 may be balking at the fact that the hard drive is "clipped" to 2GB... OS/2 v4.52 stops relying on the BIOS once the boot loader and IDE drivers load - and may be bypassing it for setting up it's own drive geometry. That would be a possible cause for the problems you are experiencing (especially if clipping support isnt properly/fully working on the drive). It may be trying to read or write to areas outside of the 2GB boundary via it's on geometry mapping algorithms. You may be able to determine if this is the cause by adding the /V parameter to the IBM1S506.ADD driver and seeing what it tells you (check the geometry information - it will tell you what the drive reports, and how it is mapping it, and what of the space it is able to map using it's own geometry). A better scenario that would resolve it, assuming my wild guess is correct starts next:

Setting the drive to normal (full capacity) and then following ddan's or Saijin's suggestions will work. dfSee is actually pretty easy - you just need to create the bootable media (instructions on the page Saijin provided) - and it works flawlessly in every event I have used it. Simply delete all partitions on the drive, and re-start the OS/2 installer. OS/2 will take care of the rest. No need to go through the daunting steps of setting up the partitions using dfSEE... just delete the old ones.

A copy of XP will work as well... boot off the CDs, have it remove all partitions, and when it offers to create a NTFS partition, take the disk out, turn the machine off and start the OS/2 install (the key being to take the disk out and turn off/restart between the partition deletion phase and the partition creation phase).

Failing having a DOS 6.22 copy, dfSEE is probably the easiest, and least likely to cause trouble.

As for installing, you can simply set up a boot partition for OS/2 using HPFS - just keep it under 60GB. I find 30-40 seems best. Over that, dont panic when a format seems to finish and continue formatting (it doesnt seem to register the percentage formatted correctly - but does correctly know when it is finished).

The remaining space can then be allocated to JFS (or multiple HPFS partitions under 64GB, or a combination thereof). There is no bootable JFS with v4.52 - though you can modify the disks to utilize it for a boot partition, it may be a real pain (no... it will be a real pain).

Just remember to install BootManager first if you intend to use it. Even if you are not booting to multiple OS's, I find it handy, as I can "auto-reboot" the computer by simply calling "SetBoot /B" from a command prompt or script - that little gem requires BootManager to be installed though (which is why I install it on all my machines, even though I dont run anything but OS/2 on them). You can then trigger a reboot any variety of ways for any variety of reasons.

And as a usability note, I would ensure that you to make at least one JFS partition - it is the only way you will have support for files over 4GB - and is the preferred partition for apps like Firefox, Virtual PC, Ceres Sound Studio and others. In addition, you can set larger amounts of memory to the cache (HPFS is limited to 2MB - which is useless nowadays).

Hope some of that helps,
Robert


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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
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RobertM

Quote from: saborion2 on 2008.10.23, 07:10:02
With an high degree of interest in OS/2 Convenience Pack 4.52... (and this exercise/undertaking by Patrick) does anyone know if any support whatsoever (paid engagements...) is currently being provided by IBM or Serenity/Mensys to clients still depending on/running OS/2 Convenience Pack 4.52?

Thanks.

SAB

A more thorough answer could be provided by you indicating what type of support you need. For instance, defect support? Additional drivers? Added functionality? Or simply support to maintain, install and/or keep various OS/2 systems running on v4.52?

I support and maintain various v4.52 and eCS v1.2MR installs - and IIRC, I am not the only one in the NY area who does. (for the first 3 above, it would probably be IBM, Serenity, Mensys, eComStation.ru or some of the gang here - for the last scenario, your options expand greatly).

Perhaps if you provide a better idea of what type of support you need (and the geographic location), others may be able to better direct you to a person or business who can help.

Robert


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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
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RobertM

#20
Quote from: ddan on 2008.10.20, 04:59:27
Patrick...

As I mentioned in my first post, you don't yet believe that the cause is SIMPLE, that LVM isn't able to touch drives that it doesn't like the partitioning of, when its exact purpose is to SET that, but it's typical from what I've seen, one of the charming quirks of OS/2.

ddan is entirely correct (which I only point out because it seems you - quite logically - think something so simple cannot be the issue at hand - unfortunately LVM is far from logical in it's (lack of) handling of "unknown" partition types).

LVM will fail with all sorts of spectacular, and not so spectacular errors depending on what unknown (to LVM) file system type it encounters. Every time I re-purpose an XP drive to OS/2 (I sometimes buy used drives and for a while many of the new drives I was buying came pre-formatted FAT32 or NTFS), I run into the same problem - and various errors about not being able to operate the disk, and even occassionally, LVM reporting incorrect disk and partition sizes for the unsupported partitions. Invariably, most of the time it ends with the red screen of nonsense about (paraphrased) "not being able to operate the disk", or "no (space to create a) bootable partition big enough (must be at least 120GB)" message.

One additional note though, LVM will also report errors in non-existant partitions for things like media bays (card readers, etc) with nothing in them. Ignore those errors. Those seem to usually show up as 96MB "corrupt" (per LVM) partitions. They are simply the BIOS's pointer to those media slots (if I understand it correctly). Occassionally, the same occurs with certain CD-RW and DVD-R/RW drives that have weird cache segments/memory that act almost like a second drive - again, ignore those errors... the actual hard disk should be partitionable and work fine (assuming you follow ddan's and/or saijin's steps below).

Robert


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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
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