#HELP! – OS/2 again!!
11 messages in this thread
Hello again,
So I'm still having trouble rendering in the bg. I have reset 3DS to run VGA in
MAIN-DISPLAY. I'm rendering to disk, so theoretically OS/2 shouldn't think it's
any different from any other program.
I'm at my wits end? What's the point of multi-tasking if the system won't do
it?! <g>
I've talked with Diamond (running a VIPER) and they were no help. They said
talk to Autodesk. Same with IBM…
Please, any help would be wonderful. I think Tim is having the same problems
and I'm sure Yann will be there soon, so you're helping at least three folks.
And I know this will work, just from all the people vowing by 3DS and OS/2!
Thanks James
James,
>> And I know this will work….
I know it will work with an S3 video card using the S3 drivers written by IBM.
Alot of vendors think it is not worth the trouble to implement their drivers
such that dos graphics programs can run in the background.
Do you have a Targa+? If so, try running 3DS in slave mode with
MAIN-DISPLAY=RCPADI and RCPADI="rcptargp.exp" and have the output go to disk.
Then you can run a copy of 3DS in the foreground and submit net render jobs to
the slave session.
If I were you, I'd sell the Viper and get an S3 801/805/928 board and still
have plenty of change left over.
Bailey
Hey Bailey,
Well, after much fiddling and screwing around, I finally got it to work. As it
turns out, it was rendering in the BG, just taking forever. When I flipped just
to the desktop, things were faster. When I loaded MS WORD, things ground to a
virtual stop. The trick: run WORD in a window. Made all the difference in the
world… Still slower than usual but that's to be expected.
Now if only I could know when it was going to run out of memory, so I wouldn't
get the PHARLAP "out of memory" message. Also, I still get a strange TRAP
error, that kills everything, but I can't repeat it – just happens.
One day, it'll all work (and that same day, I'll come into a million dollars
and buy an SGI!)
Thanks for the help! James
James,
To avoid the out of memory error, set DPMI_MEMORY_LIMIT to 64MB or some number
you know will be more than enough for your scene. 3DS is smart enough to not
allocate memory before it needs it. For AniPro, you have to keep the DPMI
limit as low as possible as AniPro causes all of it to be paged in on startup.
I don't know why you are seeing such a huge slowdown. I have noticed that some
programs (most noticably Tapcis) can hog the cpu even while doing nothing.
Running win-os2 seems to eat about 10% of the CPU, but windows programs
themselves seem to have no additional impact when doing nothing.
The good thing is that 3DS does not seem to hog the cpu unless it is actually
doing something, so a foreground session doesn't impact a background session
much, at least in my setup.
I started having the weird trap problem too just less than a month ago. It was
wierd. At first the machien would trap during booting, then it would boot if I
booted it first form the OS/2 floppies and then from the HD. Then the trap
would happen at odd intervals while I was working. Then it went for days at a
time with no trap. It happened this morning about five minutes after I turned
on the machine and hasn't happened again so far today.
IBM said it was a bad memory module. I have two 16MB simms, and I switched
them (swapped slots). The problem still happened at the same memory location.
I'm starting to think it may be the SCSI controller (Ultra34F) because my
machine went through a phase in which it wouldn't power up properly unless I
re-seated the SCSI controller.
Anyway, I just hope the problem stays away for a while. I will probably get
mad and do something when I loose data or have an all-night render interrupted
by it.
Bailey
Hey Bailey,
Yeah, I have actually set my DPMI memory limit to 100MB, way about my 32meg
limit, but yet it still runs out. Also, I'm noticing major swapping when doing
somthing really big in 3DS, upto 25megs – this is OS/2 swapping, not 3DS. I
think it's all just a matter of fiddling to find the right mixture.
IBM ALWAYS blames the hardware. Sometimes they act with me that OS/2 has no
bugs, that it's a perfectly fine tuned machine. It's great, but still has a way
to go, IMHO. It makes sense that TAPCIS will slow things down a lot because
OS/2 dedicates a large part of it's resources to communications programs –
because of their intollerence of interruptions. This is the same with my
PROCOMM PLUS and OZCIS.
I don't know what that trap problem is but I'm gonna have to write it all down
and find out. Bad memory module? Hmmm… As far as OS/2 is concerned, my whole
is just one sick puppy <g>.
James
If you have the DPMI limit set to 100MB, then the only way I can think
of that you are running out of memory is if you are running out of
space on the partition containing the swap file. I can understand
why IBM finds it easy to blame the hardware. If anything is going to
cause a hardware compapitibility problem to rear its ugly head, it's
going to be OS/2. Even Windows and extended dos apps like 3DS do alot
of their interaction with hardware through the bios, which OS/2 does
not use.
Other than the trap (which seems to go away once the machine is warm, so it is
probably hardware), I haven't had any problems with OS/2 since I installed it
the second time. I had problems with the second installation because I did not
completely remove it before I re-installed it.
Bailey
Hey Bailey
Well, I've had a different experience with OS/2 and that's weird, because our
setups don't sound too different.
The traps actuallt appear after a days work, whereas with you you get
them shortly after starting. Weird.
Also, I've been fighting to get my ADAPTEC 6360 SCSI board to work now
for a month. This is a hardware problem, but only shows up under
OS/2. My system plays the message "BIOS detected incompatible driver.
System halted." if I ever unrem the BASEDEV=AHA152x.ADD line in my
config, the SCSI intiallizer. I've tried setting the jumpers on the
board to differnt IRQs, but then I get the message in DOS. The only
one DOS will accept is IRQ 11. OS/2 hates them all. I've got a
message on OS2SUPPORT, but needless to say the system is severly
comprimised if I can't run my CD-ROM and FLOPTICAL drives under OS/2.
I really like the IDEA od multitasking, but the idea of buying a cheap
second machine to write on is looking better and better…
James,
I am not familiar with the Adaptec 6360. Are you sure it is compatible with
the 152x?
Bailey
<<I am not familiar with the Adaptec 6360. Are you sure it is compatible with
the 152x?>>
Oh yeah, it's the same chip (supposedly) as the 1522. Adaptec seems to think it
should work fine, whereas IBM was a little doubtful. At one point they actually
said they wouldn't support it, but then Adaptec came back and said that they
had OS/2 working on their machines using that chip… So I don't know…
James
James, just a note to let you know I've been an avid follower of your
serialized "Adventures in OS/}"!
Congrats on your success in BG-land! One of these days I hope to give it a try
myself.
Thanks for the congats, Carl, but I'm not out of the woods yet <g>. OS/2
_could_ be a great thing, but it also creates great problems. I'm sure they're
solvable, but since OS/2 is so flexable, there's a million areas to search and
play with until you hit on the right combination…
James