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OSmess fr the other coast- more of the same?

Started by ModZilla, 2008.11.04, 16:04:27

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ModZilla

here is the link of screen shots for OS7...(cannot repeat the code name here):

http://www.informationweek.com/galleries/showImage.jhtml?galleryID=268&articleID=211601289

...thing I do not understand is, why do we still use this stuff...why os7 and not os2?

for sh*ts_n_giggles

MZ ...once upon a time the light shown down fr above upon me olde forehead, I looked up towards lights on my desktop and then to the sky [!!!] yikes...then down...upon my mouse-filled hand, there suddenly it was written: "666"
someday os2 will be ruled by the young and famous-at least in the open-source world!

Saijin_Naib

#1
Because OS/2 is severely limited by poor hardware support and other issues that will be nigh on impossible to fix with it's closed source nature. We can only hope to have these critical issues addressed by efforts such as OSFree and Voyager.

Also, it's not OS7, its NT7, or simply Windows7. They have eschewed code-names for this project.

Edit: I'm also excited, it supposedly is optimized for netbooks as well which means it's power-management will be exceptional. XP does a great job already, Vista ACPI/APM is vastly improved, this should be no different. It will be great when many of these features and tweaks filter down into the various Linux distros, and we may get some of that back ourselves as eCS ACPI/APM is derived from the same source as the Linux ACPI/APM if I read correctly.

RobertM

#2
Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2008.11.04, 17:16:02
Because OS/2 is severely limited by poor hardware support and other issues that will be nigh on impossible to fix with it's closed source nature. We can only hope to have these critical issues addressed by efforts such as OSFree and Voyager.

Fortunately, that is not true for any driver whatsoever. All device drivers are simple "plug-in" solutions for OS/2. All that is needed is the Device Driver Toolkit, a good working knowledge of how a driver must interoperate with the kernel and loader (and of course with the subsystems that use the driver) - and most importantly the following two criteria (which are the real stumbling blocks): (1) sufficient documentation for the hardware to write a driver, and (2) sufficient manpower to write a driver.

Even "64bit" drivers are possible - such as JFS.

Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2008.11.04, 17:16:02
Also, it's not OS7, its NT7, or simply Windows7. They have eschewed code-names for this project.

Edit: I'm also excited, it supposedly is optimized for netbooks as well which means it's power-management will be exceptional. XP does a great job already, Vista ACPI/APM is vastly improved, this should be no different. It will be great when many of these features and tweaks filter down into the various Linux distros, and we may get some of that back ourselves as eCS ACPI/APM is derived from the same source as the Linux ACPI/APM if I read correctly.

As well as hopefully some more drivers (such as we already have with the UniAudio project). Having a base starting point makes such things a lot easier. And fortunately (for OS/2), much of what the driver does in OS/2 is actually act like a data pass-through device, while the next driver or subsystem up handles anything more intricate. Another reason why certain of the Linux drivers are viable candidates - while various Windows drivers are soooo large in comparison, as some of their nature is more monolithic than their OS/2 counterparts.

Robert


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

The driver model itself may not be limited, but the scope of development certainly is. DANI's drivers are quite epic, but maintained soley by her. Uniaud is a small project as well with much work being done by Paul. ACPI/APM seems to be the exclusive property of the eCo Software team and it is getting better but there are many unresolved issues. For one, lack of support for VIA CPU scaling technology.

Graphics drivers with hardware features are also non-existant due to the end of support for SDD (a loss I sincerely mourn), but may possibly begin anew one day with the advent of the Open SDD project.

USB peripherals can also be very limited (scan/print/camera/media players/web cams/etc) but is also improving slowly.

If I'm not mistaken, we've run into the limit of the current OS/2 Kernel/loader correct? Is that not why a new one is being developed?

RobertM

#4
Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2008.11.04, 21:37:31
The driver model itself may not be limited, but the scope of development certainly is. DANI's drivers are quite epic, but maintained soley by her. Uniaud is a small project as well with much work being done by Paul. ACPI/APM seems to be the exclusive property of the eCo Software team and it is getting better but there are many unresolved issues. For one, lack of support for VIA CPU scaling technology.

Graphics drivers with hardware features are also non-existant due to the end of support for SDD (a loss I sincerely mourn), but may possibly begin anew one day with the advent of the Open SDD project.

USB peripherals can also be very limited (scan/print/camera/media players/web cams/etc) but is also improving slowly.

Which sadly all boils down to lack of resources (money, people, docs for how the drivers communicate with the hardware in question, etc).

Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2008.11.04, 21:37:31
If I'm not mistaken, we've run into the limit of the current OS/2 Kernel/loader correct? Is that not why a new one is being developed?

Yes, no and maybe. I suspect that the kernel is still capable of a lot more than we know. My suspicions are based off real world experience and some info gleaned from EDM/2 - and may be incorrect. It seems kind of like HPFS, which is artificially limited to 64GB partitions and 2GB files (yes, HPFS is actually written to support more and limited at those, by not using the full pointer/address spaces - while in contrast, certain aspects are not artificially limited, such as the number of files one can store on an HPFS partition).

When it comes to the kernel and loader, I have found some interesting things that I cannot explain adequately, or get sufficient answers to (or get various contradicting answers to). For instance, my OS/2 Certified (by IBM) Netfinity supports 8GB of RAM and utilizes the SMP kernel - what happens when I install 8GB? (I dont know - I sadly dont have the second memory board to populate - though I do have the RAM). Does the kernel, knowing it's on this box, switch to the Intel PAE mode (like XP Pro and various Windows server versions do)? Does it page map the additional memory? Does it allocate it towards swap? Does it (the OS) simply not load? Or does it simply ignore everything over 4GB? Not a clue.

One thing I have noticed is OS/2 Warp Server for e-Business on my machine seems to think it has the full 4GB (which is the amount installed) available. Now, the Netfinity does not have resource/address intensive hardware like a 512MB video card or such, but it does have a plethora of hardware, much of which is quite specialized. 4 system busses, 3 or 4 controller chipsets for them, a system controller board, 3 networking interfaces, an RS-485 port, a U160 ServeRAID card with cache memory installed, multiple memory controllers, 4 separate-but-not memory busses. I would assume those should take resources... yet I still have 4GB available. How does the kernel map their memory addresses on this beast without deallocating a certain amount of available memory? Or does this monstrosity just use so little address space that it's not noticeable? (and if so, that's a neat trick)

Or perhaps, like someone else suggested, 4GB is the per processor limit of the kernel, and thus, WSeB can actually see up to 16GB? But, someone else also suggested that 4GB is the total available regardless of the number of processors...

So, who knows? If OS/2 supports memory based off installed processors, then the kernel, as it is, hasnt yet reached it's life expectancy. If some of the EDM/2 docs are correct, and someone figures out how to patch the kernel, then it will be able to access more than 4GB on a single CPU.


Then there's the question of threads... 4096 total - or per CPU? Again, another one I have gotten conflicting opinions on.


No one seems to have the answers, and no one (or no one speaking up) seems to have the code to the kernel to come up with a definitive answer....


-Robert



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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
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Fahrvenugen

Robert,

While I don't know the answers to your questions, I can think of one person who probably could shed some light on to the subject.

Does anyone know if Scott Garfinkle is still with IBM and (or more importantly) his  current email address?


RobertM

Quote from: Fahrvenugen on 2008.11.05, 07:16:35
Robert,

While I don't know the answers to your questions, I can think of one person who probably could shed some light on to the subject.

Does anyone know if Scott Garfinkle is still with IBM and (or more importantly) his  current email address?



Hey Fahr,

Yes...

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/6/123/3a0

While I am just curious (well, a little more than curious) about the answers to the questions posed, I do think those answers and any insites may be quite useful to eCS.


-Rob


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

Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2008.11.04, 17:16:02
Because OS/2 is severely limited by poor hardware support and other issues that will be nigh on impossible to fix with it's closed source nature. We can only hope to have these critical issues addressed by efforts such as OSFree and Voyager.

That hope will certainly be in vain. AFAIK OSFree hasn't moved an inch for ages, and Voyager has stopped being an operating system project.

Issues are being worked on, though. For instance, Mensys has employed a new developer to work on Uniaud, and apparently this shows in the latest releases.

BigWarpGuy

http://www.osfree.org/wiki/doku.php
In September 2008, a new developer had joined OSFree. Perhaps there will be more activity there? It does say they are looking for help.

At one time there was some one working on a port of K42 but that seems to have gone away. :( Even the OS/2-eCS.org site which had it is gone. :(
http://www.os2ecs.org  http://www.osfree.org/wiki/doku.php

RobertM

Regarding the kernel (from http://www.os2voice.org/VNL/past_issues/VNL0708H/feature_3.html)...

"The kernel itself could address 64 terabytes of virtual memory. For instance to keep track of the virtual memory usage of the other protected mode processes that were not active. But this is not visible to the protected mode programs' virtual memory world. They experience their 4 GiB world as all there is. Unless they use some special kernel APIs like Theseus."

So, apparently, not just can the existing kernel see 64 terabytes, but programs calling those kernel APIs can as well.

Hmmm..... this article seems to confirm what I read on EDM/2 a while back.

Robert



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

#10
I strongly agree with Saijin_Naib in that a trickle down to Linux which may in the longrun woo consumers away from more junk code being spread out into the numbness of the gamer world, why most game boxes made nowadays are more sophisticated than the average home user/SOHO boxes with most any OS loaded so it seems that Xbox connectivity is now more important to MS since most money is being made there and with their smart devices, leaving losers like their flagship OSes, Vista et al to twist in the wind, unless, you are so lucky to use server editions...almost any Linux as open platform always makes me wonder however; albeit they[Devs]finally have their distros down, fancy GUIs  fancy backgrounds, lots of free goodies and the windoze dsktop look_a_like...they are still similar to UNIX in so many ways, such that system calls, and threads inside of processes can be scripted to allow open threats via rootkit running so I think OS2 could be the work around for all of this trojan stuff, the scenario being that=?>  " why use an object code in an OS that nobody robustly uses/or cares about...ie if its not a threat to MS so it virtually would not be a threat to any enterprise using HPFS or a kernel with little support of which now there are none basically being advance...it took awhile for the Linux crowd to make the desktop "look like" windows and still have all the Konsole tools and hacker tools in tact for serious users, but for the avg guy like me, MZ, who just doodles, there is no time to do continual threat analysis day in and day out, closing all the right ports and remove all of those things aforementioned that are so deeeeeeeep into the kernel and registry, that the OS is not even aware of its running all of this malicious code, and if modern trojans remain so obscure that a reformat must occur daily to safegaurd the data integrity on a real time basis, then why continue to use any of these OSes at all? Do you Linux? I understand now that MAC OS has become so successful, it too is the target online, ip addresses for these threats now change
at a rate of five times every 11 mins so it is impossible to ID the source of these trojans for now..

oh what fun it is...to be online with broadband delivering content we can all use, I mean this as
a joke, at the last glance,  75% of all trojans spread in five major broadband markets bringin MC Colo down completely in 07, the class of these known threats materialized in such a way that
millions $USD$ have been lost by thousands of companys, by said threats most of which morph and have become the permanent nightmare to SysAdmins and IT Secuirty guys who waste most of their time chasing rainbow products that have had no effect in curbing this tide...as far as I know the kernel will have to become a thing of the past, apps will be run while online through secured browsers initiated by your thumb drive which will be activated to/from cloud computing factories, not only will the OS be dead as we know it but super delegates will chose the candidate for you elections which will all be held using blackberrys

MZ
someday os2 will be ruled by the young and famous-at least in the open-source world!

scottegos2

#11
Quote from: RobertM on 2008.11.08, 01:05:24
The kernel itself could address 64 terabytes of virtual memory...

Not in this universe. OS/2's kernel is limited to 4gb total address space.There are assumptions everywhere that sizeof(int)==sizeof(long)==sizeof(void *).  Also, 3gb or so  is as much as EVER gets mapped to userspace, too (2gb being the default for most kernel versions). Anyone who thinks that OS/2 will now or ever have 64 bit addressing has clearly got access to some quality dope.   

As far as the more sensible question about what happens on systems with 4gb or more of real RAM and also devices, that has more to do with how the BIOS ends up mapping those address spaces into the 32 bit world. Again, OS/2 can't handle any PAE.  If you need more than 4gb of address space (or more modern hardware support), get a more modern OS like Linux. Sad, but true.

RobertM

#12
Hi Scott...

Quote from: scottegos2 on 2008.12.15, 05:34:19
Quote from: RobertM on 2008.11.08, 01:05:24
The kernel itself could address 64 terabytes of virtual memory...

Not in this universe. OS/2's kernel is limited to 4gb total address space.There are assumptions everywhere that sizeof(int)==sizeof(long)==sizeof(void *).  Also, 3gb or so  is as much as EVER gets mapped to userspace, too (2gb being the default for most kernel versions).

Not my assumption... as I think I mentioned, I was referring to information people on EDM/2 and Voice gleaned. And, as I pointed out someplace in this thread, the problem is that there is so much conflicting info out there (that being one of them), hence my hopes you would enlighten us (as you did).

Quote from: scottegos2 on 2008.12.15, 05:34:19
Anyone who thinks that OS/2 will now or ever have 64 bit addressing has clearly got access to some quality dope.   

Drug free here... but one can still hope ;) What about PAE (in the future)? (j/k)

Quote from: scottegos2 on 2008.12.15, 05:34:19
As far as the more sensible question about what happens on systems with 4gb or more of real RAM and also devices, that has more to do with how the BIOS ends up mapping those address spaces into the 32 bit world. Again, OS/2 can't handle any PAE.  If you need more than 4gb of address space (or more modern hardware support), get a more modern OS like Linux. Sad, but true.

The only thing that baffles me about that is what the heck my Netfinity BIOS (Netfinity 7000 M10) is doing with that hardware. I've got 4GB installed, and 4GB supposedly available. There is where I am baffled.

Now, perhaps another question, if you dont mind. Is the thread limit artificial, intentional, unchangeable or some combination thereof?

And the final question (two parter), (a) I am presuming the memory limit is per machine - and not per CPU.  (b) I am presuming the thread limit is per machine - and not per CPU.  Would those be correct assumptions? Again, on those, I have read and been told contradicting answers, and dont presume to know which is actually accurate.

Thanks,
Robert


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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
Star Trek New Voyages
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scottegos2

Quote from: RobertM on 2008.12.15, 07:56:02
What about PAE (in the future)? (j/k)[....]
There is no OS/2 development going on in IBM AFAIK (except maybe minor tweaks to USB drivers or something). That is unlikely ever to change. Even less likely is the unbelievably huge effort it would take to make OS/2 work with more than 4gb of address space.  That address space limit is per system (i.e. no matter how many processors are running). I have no idea why your Netfiinity reporting seems to be off. Probably an OS/2 bug.

rudi

Hi Scott !

Quote from: scottegos2 on 2008.12.21, 23:13:21
except maybe minor tweaks to USB drivers

Really ?  If you know someone looking at that stuff: Here's a  nice one from the
10.162 build of USBEHDC.SYS. I was forced to apply a binary patch (additional
NULL pointer check in AddTDToQH()) in order to get these DVB-T adapters to
work reliable...

##0168:fff1e2ab - 000e:c2ab    , 06860662
9084

Exception in module: USBEHCD
TRAP 000d       ERRCD=0000  ERACC=****  ERLIM=********
EAX=00000002  EBX=ffff01e0  ECX=06480060  EDX=03240000
ESI=fdbd01e0  EDI=f9d10000  EBP=0000527e  FLG=00012046
CS:EIP=0648:00003fee  CSACC=009b  CSLIM=000089a1
SS:ESP=0030:00005266  SSACC=1097  SSLIM=0000463f
DS=0640  DSACC=0093  DSLIM=0000c513  CR0=8001001b
ES=0000  ESACC=****  ESLIM=********  CR2=1ae5e000
FS=0000  FSACC=****  FSLIM=********
GS=0000  GSACC=****  GSLIM=********

Internal revision 14.103a_UNI