OS/2 + 3DSR3
16 messages in this thread
Gary,
Ok, now I feel like a donkey. Someone on comp.os.os2.misc mentioned that he
could run Fractint in 640x480x256 vesa mode in a Window in the background. I
tried 3DS with MAIN-DISPLAY=VESA in a window and it ran in the background. I
tried it in a full-screen and it ran in the background. I could have sworn I
tried VESA before and it didn't work. I may have chosen the Vibrant VESA
option instead of setting MAIN-DISPLAY = VESA before. Anyway, it works now.
Now I can do test renders in the background and do vp and vtr recording in the
background.
Anyway, sorry to grate on your nerves. It still would be nice to be able to
use the vibrant s3 accelerator driver and render in the background (which would
work if the fuel gauge could be turned off), but I can live with using the VESA
driver instead some of the time. I've got a batch file that switches 3ds.set
for me.
OS/2 + 3DSR3: "Operate on a Higher Level(TM)"
Bailey
>>batch file that switches 3ds.set…
I don't know OS/2, but if you can pass parameters, you may want to use
the SET=<filename> option instead of a batch file to specify an
alternate .SET file. I use this in my PIF file when I want to fire
up 3DS3 under MS Windows.
JKJ
John,
Thanks for that tip.
Bailey
Another message saved for posterity. I'm going to point people your
way in the future when they ask me how to do this! <g>
Gary,
Please do direct any OS/2-related questions my way.
Bailey
OK, you asked for os/2 questions…
I've been trying to get 3dsr3 running as a session in os/2. I'm starting it
out as a full screen session, and have tried both VGA and VESA as the 3ds
drivers. Under os/2 settings, I have background execute on, and have tried
both "XGA trap" and "switch full screen notification" on and off. So far I
haven't been able to get 3ds to run as a windowed session nor will it run in
the background if I switch from the full screen session using alt-esc. For the
latter, it justs sits back there using no cpu cycles.
Questions for you: what's type of video card are you using? Other than
setting DPMI to "enabled", did you have to change any setting? Why does it
work for you and not for me? <g>
My setup – os/2.1, Diamond speedstar VGA card, I ran dspinstl to install the
os/2 Tseng driver.
As an aside, it seems like you might be able to set up the background 3ds
session to run in slave mode via netbios or some such link. Then you could
just submit jos to it via the foreground session. Would be snazzy if it
worked…
LAM
Lary,
What is the color depth of your OS/2 driver? Try the 1024x768x256 They have to
be the same color depth. Also, I think it helps of the dos session is using a
smaller screen mode than the OS/2 driver.
Be sure you have MAIN-DISPLAY set to VESA and not VIBRANT with the VIBRANT VESA
driver. Also, are you using IBM's Tseng driver or someone else's (your
Speedstar is Tseng ET4000-based, right?).
Finally, make sure to put the /BGEXEC switch on the line with device=vsvga.sys
in config.sys.
Bailey
I'm running 1024x768x256. The Speedstar is a Tseng ET4000. I didn't have the
/bgexec switch on the vsvga.sys line. I'll give it a try and see how it flies.
Thanx. LAM.
Larry,
3DS network rendering does not use net bios. It communicates through the
shared file system.
I have three 3DS icons now: foreground, which uses the vibrant s3 driver,
background, which uses the vesa driver but starts in workstation mode, and
slave, which uses the vesa driver but starts in slave mode.
I can leave "slave" running and submit jobs to him from "foreground" or
"background".
I could concievably be rendering in slave, doing vp and recording to vtr from
background, and editing in foreground.
Slave would be cpu intensive, background would be some cpu but mostly disk and
waiting for the vtr, and foreround would be low cpu, low disk, and interactive,
but use the s3 chip for drawing.
Now that's 100% machine usage.
Just think about it: a multi-cpu Pentium system running NT or a possible
symmetric multiprocessing OS/2 3.0 with lots of memory. If you had, say, four
cpus, you could have one foreground edit session and three slaves, each with
their own cpu running at the same time on the same system!
If you can't get it to work with your Speedstar, I'd highly recommend
one of the s3 801/805/928 boards. The IBM-written s3 driver for OS/2
is great, and the 801/805 cards are cheap, around $200-$250.
Your setup under os/2 sound marvelous. I don't think that there would be any
point in running more than one slave. If you have 2 slaves running, and if you
submit 2 renders, it would probably take as long to render (or more) as when 1
slave is rendering. Both would be compute bound, and be fighting each other
for memory.
Can you tell if 3ds in slave mode is freeing memory after a render? I have
visions of a humungous (sp?) swap file getting created and never going away.
Saw in PC Week, or someplace similar, that IBM is suppose to be coming out with
a kernal that supports multiple processors soon. Be interesting to see how
that would work with multiple slaves.
I started out with an ATI Graphics Ultra on my os/2 machine, ended up pulling
that and putting it in my 3ds machine. Too many problems with os/2 2.0 and the
ATI card. I'm in line for the next new machine which comes in. Pentium, here I
come!
Larry,
I typically run only two 3DS process at once. But right now, I'm running
three. One is a multi-day rendering job that has been chugging along all day.
The other is a test-flic render that should take only 10 min. Finally, my
interacive session with the vibrant s3 driver is running too. Only two
sessions are doing anything while I'm typing this, and if OS/2 would let the
3DS Session that's using the s3 driver run in the background, I'd have only two
going now.
The only reason I ever run two cpu-bound things at once is if I need one of
them done now and don't want to take the time to interrupt the other one. I
wish I new how to suspend taks in OS/2 and how to set priorities, if that's
possible.
I haven't varified that slave processes free their memory. 3DS doesn't in
interactive mode, so I guess they probably don't.
I do know that Aniplay immediately tries to allocate DPMI_MAXMEM bytes of
memory when you start it up. This is a real drag when I forget and run it in a
session where DPMI_MAXMEM is 64MB (I have a 32MB system).
The current issue of Byte has an article about OS/2 SMP. They say it is in
testing now and will be released in 1Q 94. IBM (Ambra) is selling a nice cheap
Pentium EISA tower system that you can add a second CPU too. This would make a
killer 3DS station with a slave process for each CPU and an interactive process
in the forground.
I scratched OS/2 2.0 because it didn't support my SVGA card (Speedstar 24X). I
think IBM really shot themselves in the foot with the poor device support in
2.0.
Bailey
I've been contemplating OS2 for some time now. Would you recommend it. Do most
windows apps work under it? Performance loss for 3ds3? Video support for ATI
Ultra Pro od Matrox MGA?
I would highly recommend OS/2 to anyone who has only one (useful) PC.
I haven't run any benchmarks, but my old scenes render faster under
OS/2 with R3 than they did in DOS under R2. The interactive response
is as good as dos, as long as you turn the OS/2 dos setting called
TRAP_8514_XGA_IO or something like that OFF. I have an S3 805 card
but I think that means that if you have this setting ON, then it
traps to the OS/2 kernel whenever 3DS's driver tries to poke any
extended register on the graphics card. Somebody said they were
getting screen corruption if they turned if off, but I've had no
problems.
The only Windows programs that won't run under OS/2 are Win32s
programs like the new version of MathCad. I've also heard that
Photostyler won't run because it uses it's own memory manager that
OS/2 doesn't like. My guess is that it wouldn't run under NT
either. The new version of PS may fix this. I use WinRix and have
PhotoShop on the way.
The only lockups I've had have been when running CorelDraw. About 80%
of the time hitting ctrl+esc will bring up the task list and I can
kill it. The other 20% of the time I have to reboot. This lockup
happens about 1 out of ten times I try to use Corel.
OS/2 supports the ATI Ultra Pro. You would have to run 3DS in VGA
mode to have it run in the background with that card. I have to run
it in VESA 256 color mode to get it to execute in the background with
my S3 card. Using the ATI Pro drivers should not be a problem for a
foreground-only session. I use the S3 drivers. OS/2 lets you switch
back and forth between 3DS using the accel. drivers and OS/2 but it
suspends a 3DS session using the accel. drives when you switch away
from it. I don't know about the MGA.
If you've got only one useful machine, you've GOT to try OS/2. Even
if you have several machines, it is nice to be able to run Windows
apps, dos apps, and 3DS all at the same time on the same machine.
Response is good for scene editing even when rendering the background
from another copy of 3DS, and some things like recording to VTR take
about 0% of the cpu so you don't even notice them going in the
background.
Thanks.
I'll need to read up on how 3ds controls the slaves. My first
impression was that it was through RPCs, but you said that it uses
the shared file system. That's good news in this case, as the TPCIP
package I'm using will only talk to other os/2 machines. Most of our
machines are on Pathworks, so they don't talk to one another very
well.
I'm going to try to get into the office tomorrow and see if I can get
3ds running under os/2, and then try it out across the net.
3DS3 uses the file system exclusively, no RPCs or anything funky like
that; this allows it to run on the largest number of networks!