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eComStation 2.0 Silver Release available

Started by djcaetano, 2009.09.29, 22:34:20

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djcaetano

http://www.os2world.com/content/view/19256/1/
QuotePosted by Martin Iturbide - Sunday, 30 August 2009



Seren. .. .

  I am very pleased the development is reaching "gold" stage, but I still had no success on booting eCS 2.0 Silver
on my desktop machine (legacy, Athlon XP 2600+ running on an ASUS A7N8E-DeLuxe). Even setting
eCS to install in "legacy" mode, it hangs just after loading the boot logo. ALT-F2 told me the last thing
loaded was PCIBUS.SNP.
  I have been using OS/2 Warp 4.52 with the latest fixes and everything on this machine, never had
a problem...

  Any clues?

  Anyway, I was able to have eCS (RC6) running it on my Positivo Modo Netbook (similar to MSI Wind).
Had not tried RC7 yet.

nathanpc

I'm using RC7 and i can say to you that it's very nice! ;)
Eee PC 904HD User

Saijin_Naib

DJ, did you try any of the other profiles? I got mine to install on my positively ancient eMachines 633ids by selecting ACPI (not safe, not legacy). Any other option would fail.

djcaetano

Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2009.09.29, 22:58:50
DJ, did you try any of the other profiles? I got mine to install on my positively ancient eMachines 633ids by selecting ACPI (not safe, not legacy). Any other option would fail.

  I tried legacy and normal (not safe) ACPI. On the first it hangs on PCIBUS.SNP. On the second it gave me the terrible "Operating system cannot operate your hard disk". I'll try the "safe" version. Just as a remark, the driver used was DANIS506 (tried both modes), since my machine is using a SATA harddisk, which is not recognized by IBM1S506.
  OS/2 Warp 4.52 is running fine with DANIS506.

  I'll do some more tests. Thanks for this suggestion.

djcaetano

Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2009.09.29, 22:58:50
DJ, did you try any of the other profiles? I got mine to install on my positively ancient eMachines 633ids by selecting ACPI (not safe, not legacy). Any other option would fail.

   Ok.... tried again. Legacy mode hangs on PCIBUS.SNP and both Modern modes gave me "OS/2 cannot operate your hard disk". Messages are all gone when this message is displayed, but turning on "extra messages" on boot menu I could see DANIS506.ADD seems to be loading ok (at least it has identified everything).
   Now it seems the last thing the system tried to load was the OS2LVM thing. Did Serenity modified anything there?

PS: My system has an IDE HD side by side with a SATA HD. IDE is primary and SATA is secondary (althought my operating systems are installed on the secondary disk... my motherboard BIOS always place SATA disks after IDE disks.

   Regards!

CDRWSel

Is it a nvidia shipset ?
If yes, add nvidia specific flags on the APIC like /MTR ...
Remy   

Saijin_Naib

What switches do you have on the DANIS driver? The /!BIOS one?
Try running DANIS with NO switches what so ever. Also, remove one of the two drives. See if you can narrow down the issue.

djcaetano

Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2009.10.02, 00:50:30
What switches do you have on the DANIS driver? The /!BIOS one?
Try running DANIS with NO switches what so ever. Also, remove one of the two drives. See if you can narrow down the issue.

  I tested the system only with SATA HD and had some success (more on that later). Then
I tested it only with IDE HD and... it seems the problem is really with OS2LVM.DMD, it refuses
to work with my IDE harddisk (!?!), the "OS/2 Cannot operate your harddisk" error shows
up using IBMS506 or DANIS506, whatever switches are used on the adapter/device
initialization. This is bizarre, some kind of ugly regression. The problem happens with and
without ACPI.

  About the "success" using SATA HD, it was limited. First, SNAP gave a weird result:
as soon as the graphical shell is started, my monitor (22" LCD that supports up to
1400x1050) goes out of sync ("No Signal"). This is weird, since I use SNAP for years
on my OS/2 4.52 without any glitches. My video board is a Matrox MGA-550.
This problem happens with and without ACPI.

  I tried Panorama and then the system booted (with the inherent performance
problems) but then I noticed something: the partition where I would like to install
eCS 2.0 silver is located at my IDE HD (my test partition). Since I cannot boot to
that harddisk, no donuts for me.

  As a remark, no matter the harddisk configuration, the "Legacy" mode of
eCS never complete the boot. It always locks on the first thing loaded:
PCIBUS.SNP.

   I really think it is very cool and I really expect eCS to boot and work fine with
modern hardware, but I find it very odd this regression, since it is not working
in a machine built to run OS/2 (every piece of hardware was selected and
bought due to its compatibility with OS/2). Even if newer eCS features do not
work on this old piece of hardware, I would expect at least to be able to install
it and run it in the same way I did using OS/2 4.52.

(I remember having some problems with OS/2 4.52 on SATA+IDE configuration,
but there was no problem when installing OS/2 on the IDE HD after disconnecting
the SATA HD).

  I am not a noob OS/2 user, I am using it for almost 17 years now... but this
problem is really puzzling me.

   I thank you for the help and I hope someone come up with some new
ideas so I can try to solve this problem.

   Regards!

Saijin_Naib

Can you give me a run-down of your BIOS Settings?

For me, I needed PnP Aware OS set to off (could have just needed to be toggled to do a PnP refresh), and I needed Legacy USB set to ON even though I only use PS/2 keyboard/mouse.

Please post all the settings you have.

djcaetano

Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2009.10.02, 22:39:54
Can you give me a run-down of your BIOS Settings?

For me, I needed PnP Aware OS set to off (could have just needed to be toggled to do a PnP refresh), and I needed Legacy USB set to ON even though I only use PS/2 keyboard/mouse.

Please post all the settings you have.

  I did some more tests yesterday.
  My BIOS do not have "PnP OS" option, but does have APIC option and
Manual/Automatic hardware detection. The latter does nothing to OS/2.
I also messed with USB config, but nothing...

   Disabling APIC, though, allowed be to pass PCIBUS.SNP on Legacy
mode, after some delay (it seems PCIBUS.SNP doesn't like APIC)...
but then, the same "Operating system cannot operate your harddisk"
message puzzled me.

   I tried to disable SATA drive but it seems there is no way eComStation
understands my old IDE PATA harddrive, *even* running IBM1S506.ADD.
(The error message is displayed just after DANIS506.ADD is loaded).

   The only thing I can suspect is OS2LVM.DMD doesn't like my PATA
IDE controller (the problem still happens even disabling SATA controller
on hardware!).

   It seems the solution will be buy another SATA harddisk. :/
   Weird.

Saijin_Naib

Hrm. I had an issue on this computer once that was related to the drive needing to be formatted using DFSEE. It would pause during the boot process on the SDDHELP.SYS.

I ended up doing all types of deleting volumes, zeroing the drive, LVM refresh, Boot-area operations, etc to the drive. After I did everything possible and had the drive ready with LVM and CHS values eCS could understand, it loaded just fine.

StefanZ

This is a very wild guess, but concerning the PATA/SATA drives:
BIOS on my notebook has a AHCI support Enabled/Disabled.
Do you have the similar thing in you BIOS? If yes then please Disable AHCI - eCS does not support it.

buca

#12
Quote from: StefanZ on 2009.10.16, 18:28:15
This is a very wild guess, but concerning the PATA/SATA drives:
BIOS on my notebook has a AHCI support Enabled/Disabled.
Do you have the similar thing in you BIOS? If yes then please Disable AHCI - eCS does not support it.

I have eCS instaled with AHCI support and working. At least it is enabled in bios.

Update: ---------
IBM Lenovo x60 tablet. eCS silver release, installed with new hardware support.

StefanZ

Quote from: buca on 2009.10.17, 00:10:28
Quote from: StefanZ on 2009.10.16, 18:28:15
This is a very wild guess, but concerning the PATA/SATA drives:
BIOS on my notebook has a AHCI support Enabled/Disabled.
Do you have the similar thing in you BIOS? If yes then please Disable AHCI - eCS does not support it.

I have eCS instaled with AHCI support and working. At least it is enabled in bios.

Ah, that is interesting :)

On my notebook (MSI) the eCS will not install with AHCI enabled.

djcaetano

   Well,

   This week I bought a new SATA 250GB harddrive and was able to install eCS2.0 RC7
after removing the IDE harddrive. But the install process was not without some sort of pain.
   The reason for the pain was the fact eCS is set up to boot at 800x600 and since SNAP
seems to not recognize my monitor on the first time it runs, 800x600 with some sort of
unsupported refresh rate is selected... causing an annoying "No Signal" message ("No
Sync").
   It took me some time to discover what was happening, because everything worked
just fine when boot with Panorama. I had to revert back to VGA (after "out-of-sync,
GenGradd support didn't work also) and start over.
   I did it several times until I discovered that: reverting to VGA, installing Panorama,
setting 640x480x4 bits (sixty colors) and THEN installing SNAP will boot correctly
in 640x480 mode. THEN I go to Screen object, set the monitor (now correctly
detected as "LG TV" and THEN configure the full screen resolution (1680x1050)...
Not SNAP works. Cool. But I believe these steps should be hidden from user, and
not done by him.
   As a suggestion, it would be nice one could set the next boot resolution using
some command line application. So, when desktop boot out-of-sync, CAD
Handler (which works ok, presenting the text-mode screen without problems)
could show a menu option to "Change Desktop Resolution" and allow one
to select resolution, color depth and refresh rate (it could even do it changing
directly on desktop Screen object), so this problem could be solved without
the need of many reboots. Even a "Reset to 640x480x4bit" option (without driver
replacement) would be nice.

  Well, I installed the system with ACPI,  which forced SMP (even if my computer
is not SMP) with /APIC switch. Everything was working somewhat ok, but when I
booted without turning my scsi scanner on, the network failed. Turning the scanner
on, the network was detected ok.
  Messing around with PCI I noticed they were sharing IRQs and I had this
idea: "since my mouse and keyboard are PS/2, I'll disable USB mouse and
keyboard, just as saib by Saijin Naib, and see what happens".
   Well, this simple change reordered IRQ allocation and now network runs
fine with or without scanner enabled.
   This is just weird, since I expected these IRQ problems would be
extinct with APIC. Whatever.. the system seems to be working now.

   The only weird thing is the system sometime "hangs" on boot.
Sometimes pressing a key allow the loading to continue, sometimes not.
I created ALTF2ON.$$$ on /OS2/BOOT directory to see where the problem
happens and noticed it is not always the same time: sometimes when
loading IBM1FLPY, sometimes when loading OS2LVM, sometimes
when loading DANIATAPI, sometimes when loading OS2KBD... always
when loading base device drivers (and, AFAIK, *before* loading ACPI).
   My first gess is SMP kernel not being very happy about my nForce2
chipset (running an Athlon XP 2600+). First solution: exchange SMP
kernel using ACPI configuration utility on "Post-Installation Tasks".
Bad news: it only allows me to exchange between SMP and W4...
and warns me if I exchange SMP by W4, ACPI will not be used.

   Cool. I am almost doing that... but there is not another way?
   UNI kernel would not be enough for ACPI?

   Added options /CD and /ALS on ACPI, since it is an nVidia chipset, but
it seems this have not helped at all. Anyone knows anything I can do about this?

   I am experiencing some minor problems also: WinOS2 seamless session
simply hangs (not tested full screen one, but DOS session works, even
when using ACPI!)... and ACPI nor APM is able to shutdown my system.
Original IBM APM turned it off just as expected.

   Yesterday I installed Windows XP on another partition. Before that, I disabled
the second SATA HD (160GB). After Windows was working, I re-enabled the
old HD, made some backups and everything was working fine. 
   When I tried to boot from eCS CD again to re-enable BootManager
(which is always disabled by WinXP install), I received the old "Operating
System cannot operate your harddisk" message. I had no doubt: disabled
the second harddisk, boot eCS CD and re-enabled the Boot Manager.
After the shutdown, plugged my secondary HD SATA HD again and
eCS from harddisk did not complained about my harddisks again.
I am almost sure eCS boot CD does something nasty thing which
is preventing it from operating the secondary harddisk, be it IDE
or SATA.

   I think I will fill some tickets to Serenity. I hope these problems can
be addressed before GA (although I probably will not try to install
GA over RC7 for a long time... hehehe).