OS/2 Warp 4.52 - Boot problem with a fun project

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andybrunner

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Nov 12, 2024
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For a fun project, I tried to install OS/2 Warp 4.52 in a VM. I have reduced as much as possible of the machine configuration but I still get an exception in the OS/2 Logical Volume Manager. The first graphical logo screen shows up but after a few seconds, the error shows up.

Are there any old OS/2 admins who did the same and found a way to install it?
 

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No idea, but... I would shrink down the RAM drastically. On my "Warp Version 3" box I can read "requires 4MB".

Remember: the software must be able to handle that large address range; I would start far below 100MiB...

Good luck!
 
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OS/2 is kind of weird. For one thing it uses 286 protected mode for some things. Hardly anything else uses that. Don't know how well supported that is by KVM/QEMU.

That being said, OS/2 Warp is really old. The first battle is to make sure the emulated hardware is also old. I don't think the e1000 existed at the time Warp came out. Not sure about that LSI SCSI either. Maybe try IDE and the Realtek network card.
 
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BobhWasatch said:
OS/2 is kind of weird. For one thing it uses 286 protected mode for some things. Hardly anything else uses that. Don't know how well supported that is by KVM/QEMU.

That being said, OS/2 Warp is really old. The first battle is to make sure the emulated hardware is also old. I don't think the e1000 existed at the time Warp came out. Not sure about that LSI SCSI either. Maybe try IDE and the Realtek network card.
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  • I also think that the problem is in the area of KVM & QEMU
  • I tried the Realtek network instead of the E1000 - no success
  • The SCSI controller cannot be deleted from the VM settings (at least not in the GUI)
 
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This might be helpful. It is about using an out-of-the-box Qemu, but some of it will apply to a managed Qemu like PVE.

https://www.os2world.com/wiki/index.php?title=OS/2_Warp_4_Install_under_QEMU_Notes

Because it uses 1980's and early 1990's technology, the original OS/2Warp 4 will not boot from a partition greater than 504M. Seehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cylinder-head-sector for the technical details. That limit will not apply to users with updated drivers.Given the trend to bloat in modern software, 504 M will fill up rapidly.It is strongly recommended to have 2 (virtual) hard drives from thestart. While original Warp 4 will not boot from a partition over 504 M,it will quite happily read/write/format larger D:/E:/F: etc partitions.The 504 M limit applies to just the boot C: partition. Other partitions can be up to 2 G (FAT) or 64 G (HPFS). In the linux host, create the 2 virtual drives, which will become C: and D:. In this document, they are called "os2c.img" and "os2d.img", respectively.
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