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Dumb questions by an absolute beginner

Started by BookWorm, 2009.04.23, 02:15:13

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BookWorm

I'm used to using MS Windows (Mostly 9x/2k but I'm very familiar with 3.1) and NitrOS-9 (a Unix, formerly OS-9) but I have absolutely no experience with OS/2. I didn't want to get a "pee sea" in the first place, but there's no web browser for my Tandy Color Computer 3, so I'm using an IBM ThinkPad 770Z >:(

If I must use a PC, I might as well have some fun with it. I'm installing a bunch of operating systems, using the OS/2 boot manager. The partitions will be DOS/Windows, Xenix, OS/2, and AIX. Will any of these cause each other problems if they are kept in there own partitions?

AIX is supposed to install itself to the end of OS/2's partition, but OS/2's partition is 75 gig. Will AIX get lost in all that space? Is there an AIX web site?

It has a 366Mhz PII, but I'm planning on upgrading to at least a 650 Mhz PIII, maybe a 850 or 1000 Mhz. Does OS/2 Warp 4 have any problems at very high speed?

I have 192Mb RAM, but I will be upgrading to at least 512Mb, 768 if I can get the TP to use that much. How much RAM can OS/2 handle? If I go over it's limit, can I get a patch?

What is OS/2 for Windows? I thought it was supposed to be the other way around!

BookWorm

One more: Where can I get OS/2 Warp 4.52? :'(

warpcafe

Hi BookWorm,

well most of the questions aren't actually that dumb. ;)

Quote
Will any of these cause each other problems if they are kept in there own partitions?
Hm... no. As long as each OS doesn't try to "interpret" what the other partitons are, e.g. windows trying to access/use (or delete since not supported) the HPFS partition of OS/2. I can't tell whether the combination of partitions works from the OS/2 bootmanager, but if not, there's still other (free) bootmanagers who supposedly can handle this.

Quote
Will AIX get lost in all that space? Is there an AIX web site?
Ehh... I think IBM should have some information on AIX? :)
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/software/aix/about.html
But I can't tell whether Aix is an OS that can be installed on any 386 Intel machine...? If not, there is no sense in thinking about whether it gets lost since you can't even get it installed on the laptop.

Quote
Does OS/2 Warp 4 have any problems at very high speed?
For Warp 4 and above: No. For older ones: Dunno, but not to my knowledge.

Quote
How much RAM can OS/2 handle? If I go over it's limit, can I get a patch?
I think for the standard Warp4 the limit that you can exepct it to work with out of the box without any tweaks required is 2 GiB. (Anyone else here can confirm this?)
If you go beyond, the only patch would be to get eComStation 2.0 latest RC. I think it is able to handle the problems that come when using more than 3GiB, not sure though. Anyway I doubt you will be able to squeeze more than 1 GiB into the laptop...

Quote
What is OS/2 for Windows? I thought it was supposed to be the other way around!
"The other way around " seems to be what we know as the built-in Windows 16bit support.
"OS/2 for windows" as I recall it, is a special edition of Warp3 known as the "red spine" (since the retail box had a red side in contrast to the usual light-blue). That was a thing they came up with to enable people having a running version of Windows 3.x to migrate seemlessly to Warp3, saving on the internal licensing cost for the 16Bit built-in windows by MS by cutting it out from the included stuff.
Meaning: The "blue spine" Warp3 had the full 16Bit Windows included, the "red spine" not because it was flavored to use an already installed 16Bit Windows.

Quote
One more: Where can I get OS/2 Warp 4.52?
Nowhere. Not even on eBay. At least not by using this name:
Warp 4.52 is actually a Warp 4 using the "Warp Server for e-Business"'s latest kernel.
The best option would be to get eComStation, e.g. any 1.2 version would do.

Hope this helps, Cheers,
Thomas
"It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority.
By definition, there are already enough people to do that"
- G.H. Hardy

Saijin_Naib

Windows does not delete volumes it can not read, so no worries there. Hell, you can even mount volumes you don't have an IFS for. My JFS volume always stayed mounted even though it was useless to me.

Radek

(1) Winblows do cause problems! At any rate, do not make "hard disk management" from one operating system on another one's partitions. And forget winblows "hard disk manager" forever, you are asking for troubles when you use it. The problems (known to me) with winblows:
- If you install winblows and command it "install here", winblows can foul other partitions as well - without any notification. Result: already installed OSes stop working after installing winblows.
- Incomplete and inconsistent info in MBR. Winblows do not use the info stored there so that it does not bother to put there something at least meaningful. Result: FDISKs of other OSes can refuse cooperating and they can tell you that they won't have anything common with that foul disk. This can be fixed by DFSee.

(4) Memory limit: 4 GB in theory but ... the current hardware often uses "high memory areas", which are mapped to physical addresses above 2 GB. For example, my sound card keeps something at physical address B8000000 (that's even below 3 GB!) Also, USB can allocate something above 3 GB. And so on. I am not sure whether these areas can be remapped elsewhere but even if they can, you either cannot use the hardware or you cannot use the memory. Therefore, the limit seems to be 2 GB. I have 2 GB RAM so that I can state that 2 GB do work :)

Andi

eCS can work with max. 4GB (kernel limit). It sees on modern hardware about 3.5GB when 4GB are installed. Actual value depends on BIOS. Maybe on faulty BIOS it do not work at all. But it works here this way and there are others with 4GB installed too.

ivan

BookWorm,

If you want Warp 4.52, look for Warp 4 CP2.  Make sure you get the two CDs, the first is bootable and the second is the install.  It is possible to just use the second CD and floppy disks to install but the first on its own is useless.

RobertM

Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2009.04.23, 10:07:31
Windows does not delete volumes it can not read, so no worries there. Hell, you can even mount volumes you don't have an IFS for. My JFS volume always stayed mounted even though it was useless to me.

Actually, that depends on the version of Windows. Certain versions of XP were notorious for telling users that an HPFS partition was incorrectly partitioned space and that the partition needed to be deleted (regardless of plenty of other free space on the disk to install Windows). That behavior was changed to "somewhat nicer" to other messages that suggested the same thing (removing the OS/2 partition) to (seen this once - just last month) Windows simply not showing the drive at all.

And it all depends on what *games* Microsoft decided to play in whichever release of XP (XP, SP1, SP1A, SP2, SP3 and the interim rollup versions). I emphasize games because they after all, are the company that wrote HPFS - so pretending they don't know what it is and either suggesting or demanding the partition to be deleted is thus a game.

And yes, various of those versions I listed dont seem to exhibit the above "odd" behavior. How many people run into these issues? I dunno. But since I have restore sets that span 8 years, I've got far more versions of XP than I'd guess most people have ever seen or know exist.

Rob


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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
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Saijin_Naib

It may be a game, it may not. HPFS, lets be honest here, was superseded by the mostly vastly superior NTFS. Both filesystem types share the same IDs, do they not? Support was removed sometime in NT4 when NTFS made it mainstream. However, you can still get the pinball.sys IFS to regain HPFS support which I have also played with. It's pretty cool to manage my eCS stuff from XP especially when I am experimenting with fickle apps like eSchemes and I need to make some config changes or move some files around to install new ACPI builds.

Blonde Guy

Quote from: BookWorm on 2009.04.23, 02:15:13

I'm using an IBM ThinkPad 770Z >:(

OS/2's partition is 75 gig.

It has a 366Mhz PII, but I'm planning on upgrading to at least a 650 Mhz PIII, maybe a 850 or 1000 Mhz.

I have 192Mb RAM, but I will be upgrading to at least 512Mb, 768 if I can get the TP to use that much.


You won't have problems with OS/2 or eComStation, but with the 770Z. First, the disk you mentioned is probably MB, not GB, so the only problem will be finding enough space for your programs. Second, neither the CPU, nor the RAM is upgradeable very much, so plan on living with what you've got or maybe a little bit better. 320 MB is the maximum RAM.

OS/2 Warp 4 may be the perfect match for the 770Z. With all the fixes applied, it would be about as nice as you can have for that machine. You should be able to run the latest web-browser, which makes the machine a lot more useful than it would appear for such an old computer.
Expert Consulting for OS/2 and eComStation

RobertM

Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2009.04.23, 21:06:11
It may be a game, it may not.

Wrong. It *WAS* a game. The court documents and decisions in the various anti-trust proceedings (current and past) decided such - and Microsoft's own internal emails on the topic admitted as much (attached to the court proceedings in the US and EU).

Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2009.04.23, 21:06:11
HPFS, lets be honest here, was superseded by the mostly vastly superior NTFS.

Wrong - HPFS was superseded by the vastly superior HPFS386, which was superseded by the (at that time, and for quite some time since) inferior NTFS. The only advantages NTFS gained were due to lack of continued development of HPFS386 was compression and larger file/partition support. HPFS386 still beats it in almost all other categories. And it was also designed in a way where large file and partition support was already thought out for it. It's (in OS/2's case) the disk drivers and kernel changes that weren't there - in combination with the high license cost for HPFS386 (and tiny caches, worse performance of HPFS) that made it more worthwhile for IBM to write JFS and do the kernel and driver mods geared towards JFS.

Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2009.04.23, 21:06:11
Both filesystem types share the same IDs, do they not?

Yes. Ooops, looks like Microsoft messed up big time there huh?

Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2009.04.23, 21:06:11
Support was removed sometime in NT4 when NTFS made it mainstream. However, you can still get the pinball.sys IFS to regain HPFS support which I have also played with. It's pretty cool to manage my eCS stuff from XP especially when I am experimenting with fickle apps like eSchemes and I need to make some config changes or move some files around to install new ACPI builds.

True - but keep this in mind, one does not need an HPFS file system driver installed to differentiate between HPFS and NTFS. The file systems are more than sufficiently different that a very quick check for their disk structures would indicate which is which.



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Kirk's 5 Year Mission Continues at:
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RobertM

BG: Not necessarily. My TP600 has a 40GB drive - which I plan on upgrading to a 60 or 80 soon. It had a 12GB way back when - and I think a 4GB or 8GB originally.

BookWorm: Check for BIOS updates, and see what the BIOS notes say about hard drive capacity. You may also need to do the same for CPU upgrading and memory. My TP600E is limited to 320MB RAM - my TP600 was limited to 288MB RAM (using the same amount of memory... the TP600 series motherboards - for which the 600E was a direct size replacement - reserved the other 32MB for the video (which had it's own memory - but the system could not address more than 320MB total so it made a "memory hole" for the 32MB video RAM - meaning; install 256MB, get 256MB. Install anything over 288MB, get 288MB.) - that was fixed on the 600E series - but not addressed on the 600 Series).


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

> You won't have problems with OS/2 or eComStation, but with the 770Z.

It's a perfect match for OS/2 Warp 4.52, Windows ME, and Windows 2000 Pro. All I expect to have problems with are Windows ME, the demolition derby of operating systems, and the antique unixes.

> First, the disk you mentioned is probably MB, not GB

No, it's 80 gig, not meg. The BIOS limit is probably 137 gig without an upgrade.

> so the only problem will be finding enough space for your programs.

If I stick with turn of the century stuff, I should have unlimited space.

> Second, neither the CPU...is upgradeable very much

MMC-2 CPU boards are available up to at least 1Ghz, maybe 1.1Ghz. 850Mhz is pretty easy to get.

> 320 MB is the maximum RAM.

Apparently a BIOS error limits it to 512Mb, but the 440BX chipset supports up to 1 gig if you have 4 slots, but most computers that use it only have 3. I could install 768Mb in the 770Z, but it will only use 512Mb. This may be fixable with a bios upgrade.

> You should be able to run the latest web-browser

There is one for OS/2? What is it?

Saijin_Naib

#13
NTFS also has a journal as well as on-line defrag and per-file permissions. I'd call those pretty significantly better than what HPFS has to offer. And I don't consider HPFS386 because I can't afford a license of it. Also resize of volumes on the fly. Sure, HPFS technically does not fragment but I'd still take NTFS over it. Now, as for JFS vs NTFS, it's a toss up. I do rather like JFS.

Fahrvenugen

Quote from: BookWorm on 2009.04.24, 03:35:05


> You should be able to run the latest web-browser

There is one for OS/2? What is it?

Firefox 3.0.9 is available.  There is also a beta of Firefox 3.5.

Check:

http://www.os2bbs.com/os2news/Warpzilla.html

and

http://www.mozilla.org/ports/os2/