| Subject | : | OS/2 Wrapper for Windows Driver |
| Author | : | Toby |
| Date | : | 29 Oct, 2004 on 11:25 |
| Hi ! I don't know much about programming in OS/2, but I know that there is a Driverwrapper, called ndiswrapper for Linux which allows to use Windows Driver (not all,but some) under Linux. I already tried it and it does work well with my TrueMobile 1300 WLAN mini-pci card for which aren't any driver for Linux out yet (for OS/2 as well). Therefore my question is would it be possible to write some kind of Driverwrapper for OS/2 and eComStation ? I think this would be a great step to more compatiblity, because you wouldn't need to wait for special OS/2 Driver any longer, you could just use the windows ones. Toby PS: Would it not even be a kind of vision to cooperate ? I mean if the Linux Community as well as the OS/2 Community would work together. Would it not be easier to get over problems ? I mean there are already features which eCS and Linux share, for example the use of the JFS Filesystem. Which was an advention by IBM, but which is mainly used on Linux Server, because of it's advantage to handle Storage up to 2 Perabytes (1 PB = 1,000,000 GB !!). |
| Subject | : | Re:OS/2 Wrapper for Windows Driver |
| Author | : | RadarCat |
| Date | : | 14 Mar, 2005 on 11:11 |
![]() Hi, Toby, It sounds like a great basis for a Warp developers web site to me. I just finished updating my Software http://www.os2warplinks.com/main/software_programming.htm Great Idea !! Good Luck !!
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| Subject | : | Re:OS/2 Wrapper for Windows Driver |
| Author | : | warpcafe warpcafe@yahoo.de |
| Date | : | 14 Mar, 2005 on 12:38 |
| Hi Toby, in general as an OS/2-eCS user, I really appreciate your idea (of course). As a programmer, I don't have much experience on os/2 and nothing at all when talking about drivers, but I think that it could be possible to do this. BUT: I would really like to see your idea come true. But I guess it would be easier to re-write a new OS/2 kernel based on linux! Greetings |
| Subject | : | Re:OS/2 Wrapper for Windows Driver |
| Author | : | BigWarpGuy |
| Date | : | 14 Mar, 2005 on 14:22 |
| If we can not get IBM to open source OS/2, porting Linux kernel (or something similar to that idea) would be a good idea. Like the project at Netlabs; http://elfldr.netlabs.org/ . Or one could port or compile the ReactOS souce code to or using a compile for OS/2.
--- BigWarpGuy - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - OS/2 Warp-ed/eComStation-ed to the very end. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
| Subject | : | Re:OS/2 Wrapper for Windows Driver |
| Author | : | Pete losepete@ntlworld.com |
| Date | : | 14 Mar, 2005 on 19:15 |
There used to be a useful RAD tool called Sibyl - basically a Borland Delphi clone - available for OS/2 from a company called SpeedSoft. Sadly Speedsoft seem to have disappeared but I read somewhere that they had released the Sibyl source, or large chunks of it, as freeware. I recently bumped into a project that is reworking Sibyl. The homepage for WDSibyl is http://members.chello.at/webstar/wdsibyl.html - this page is in German so you may want to use something like http://babelfish.altavista.com/translate.dyn to get an English translation. There is also a WDSibyl forum available http://news.gmane.org/gmane.org.netlabs.sibyl.devel Just thought that you may want to add it to your website Pete |
| Subject | : | Re:OS/2 Wrapper for Windows Driver |
| Author | : | ChrisR roossien@gmail.com |
| Date | : | 15 Mar, 2005 on 00:59 |
| This WDSibyl doesn't work on my eCS system.. it just freezes without any notification, doesn't react to anything and I have to kill it the cruel way.. I wonder if it actually does work in eCS? and.. yep.. running M$ drivers in eCS? hmm would not be easy I think... |
| Subject | : | Re:OS/2 Wrapper for Windows Driver |
| Author | : | RadarCat |
| Date | : | 15 Mar, 2005 on 13:28 |
Hi, Pete, I just posted the Chello and Gname links on my web site. Thank you very much. It is amazing to me how much the search engines miss. I'm am going to take a look at BabelFish and other language translators and see if I can justify adding some language Thanks again !!
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| Subject | : | Re:OS/2 Wrapper for Windows Driver |
| Author | : | Pete losepete@ntlworld.com |
| Date | : | 15 Mar, 2005 on 18:58 |
I can confirm that WDSibyl works in eCS1.2 and would expect it to work with earlier releases. Sorry to say that I do not have any idea of what could be causing WDSibyl to lockup - unless, maybe, you have some Sibyl path entries in your config.sys file that are causing confusion. You could always report the problem in the WDSibyl forum http://news.gmane.org/gmane.org.netlabs.sibyl.devel Regards Pete |
| Subject | : | Re:OS/2 Wrapper for Windows Driver |
| Author | : | ChrisR roossien@gmail.com |
| Date | : | 17 Mar, 2005 on 23:50 |
| Pete, I did post it on this forum allready.. Chris |
| Subject | : | Re:OS/2 Wrapper for Windows Driver |
| Author | : | phaelonimaire |
| Date | : | 22 Mar, 2005 on 02:11 |
| I've had to repair some very old OS/2 drivers (written with MASM 5.1) and have had marginal success. The biggest problem I forsee using windows drivers through a wrapper is that you would almost certianly have to use something to the effect of ODIN that translates the kernel calls. These calls for OS/2 are documented to some degree in older OS/2 programming books (for versions 1.3 and 2.0) but are for 16-bit code. I think the biggest problem would be translating the driver to the appropriate OS/2 service. Last month I had to do some driver access in Windows for a co-worker. From what I read, the drivers do work in a similar fashion (OS-specific standard IOcontrols) although the access class crap worried me a bit. One would imagine that the base kernel call subset would be much smaller than the windows API. Thinking about how windows handles all of its driver information through the registry, I get that sick, sinking feeling.. It all depends on exactly how different the memory segments and various things are put together. If I remember corretly, OS/2 has the flat memory model on top of the drivers. (Again, info from old books) Linux. I think the only help you'd get from the linux 'community' is in migrating to linux. I work with a 'linux' person. He tells me daily how terrible it is for me to use OS/2. "Yes, the WPS is great. You should make one in linux.." |
| Subject | : | Re:OS/2 Wrapper for Windows Driver |
| Author | : | ChrisR roossien@gmail.com |
| Date | : | 22 Mar, 2005 on 16:05 |
| Using ODIN to load windows drivers in OS/2... well the thing is that these drivers most likely only work in windows programs running in ODIN which is not that bad when it works.. The way windows nowadays is using drivers could make OS/2 getting unstable, after all it doesn't really work that great in windows itself.. Porting linux to OS2 is more succesfull... and some linux drivers were ported allready.. The best thing is; to disassemble a win driver you really need and recreate a OS2 driver from it, till now I only succeeded in this with older windows drivers... The problem is that a windows driver is often not a driver but more a kind of place holder or whatever.. and the real IO is done in several DLL's often.. Windows does not support 16 bit (DOS) anymore.. they say.. they want us to believe... ![]() Anyway.. more and more windows programs and drivers won't work (install) in win 95-98 anymore.. Yes.. linux people are not that social to other systems... unlike many OS2 users they don't have windows partition. But thats not our problem.. OS2 problem is drivers to modern hardware.. we do have a SBlive driver but still no midi support.. Chris. |
| Subject | : | Re:OS/2 Wrapper for Windows Driver |
| Author | : | cytan |
| Date | : | 22 Mar, 2005 on 16:16 |
| Hi all, I would really like to be able to write drivers. In fact, I have another computer set up just to try to do this. However, the problem is that the start up curve is very steep. If some one would write a step by step guide of how to set up OS/2 with the DDK and follow that with a transparent simple driver example that would be a big help. cytan |
| Subject | : | Re:OS/2 Wrapper for Windows Driver |
| Author | : | phaelonimaire |
| Date | : | 22 Mar, 2005 on 18:47 |
| ChrisR, you're right. Trying to make someone elses mess work with a new and completely different mess is not worth the trouble. I do happen to have the IBM DDK that was available for download a number of years ago. (Perhaps it is still available, as well) It includes (a cut-up version of) MASM and MSC 6.0. From my experience, it seems that the most important part is the crazy linker that is included with this package. Other linkers seem to have trouble making drivers. My problem is finding a place to start. I have specific interests of my own and few of them require making a driver. I have had experience with some of this and have been itching to lend a hand in some form or another. |
| Subject | : | Wrinting Device Drivers |
| Author | : | davidfor |
| Date | : | 23 Mar, 2005 on 00:38 |
| Firstly, my Device Driver writing experience is limited to hacking the SBLive and later the UNIAUD sources to try and get sound working for my laptop. I wasn't completely successful in doing this (the drivers loaded, detected the sound chipset, seemed to play sounds, but no sound came out) but, I did get it setup. If you want to start writing drivers, the first thing is to have a specific bit of hardware in mind. It's useless trying to start with the idea of learning to write them, without a practical reason. Setting up the DDK is not that hard. From memory, it is all in the DDK documentation, but, at least one step wasn't spelt out well. As well as the DDK, you should also get a copy of the OpenWatcom C++. This is what a lot of the current drivers are being built with. There is a reasonable amount of information about the driver writing on the web. There is an active Device Drivers group on Yahoo Groups. It's archives are available, and has a lot of very good information. Also: DON'T go there if you are not doing device driver development. Questions about other things do not get answered. There is also plenty of code available to use as examples. Netlabs has the source for several. And UNIAUD and SBLive source is available.
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| Subject | : | Re:OS/2 Wrapper for Windows Driver |
| Author | : | ChrisR roossien@gmail.com |
| Date | : | 23 Mar, 2005 on 00:40 |
| I bought Borland C++ some time ago when it was still for sale.. still using this a lot actually.. even I have VACPP now what also wich comes with IBMCPP. It is posible to write drivers with these programs, but its a bit trickey, the linker does like to mess up things, in fact most drivers are actually simple as soon as one figured out how the IO works and what the ports are doing.. The easiest way is not to use a linker at all but directly compile it into bytes.. and use DB where info is needed.. Today there is open watcom.. though I installed it, haven't used it yet.. There are a few sources and examples for drivers on hobbes.. and there also are a few webpages I think about drivers in OS2.. at least I could always find most of the info I needed.. but to have it all on one page or in one pdf file.. .. hmmm Well.. talking is not making things happen.... Chris. |
| Subject | : | Electronic Developers Magazine for OS/2? |
| Author | : | BigWarpGuy |
| Date | : | 23 Mar, 2005 on 14:32 |
| If you go to http://www.edm2.com , I think there was a section for developing drivers. The site has been totally revamped so I am not sure if it is still there. Could be worth checking out anyway. It has been greatly improved.
--- BigWarpGuy - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - OS/2 Warp-ed/eComStation-ed to the very end. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
| Subject | : | Re:OS/2 Wrapper for Windows Driver |
| Author | : | Fudeba daniel@caetano.eng.br |
| Date | : | 23 Mar, 2005 on 15:51 |
| My experience on programming drivers (ie.: device services that can be used by higher level applications) is not an impossible task. Write a File System is much more complex than create base functions to play a sound. Although I have no experience on OS/2 device driver programming, I know that the most important resource for drivers programming is something very difficult to obtain nowadays: detailed hardware specifications. I think everyone *should* be able to get those, since people pay A LOT of money for the hardware, but the hardware makers do not think so. They think you do not buy a hardware, but the "a license to use it only where the developer let you". The problem is without this documentation the driver development becomes a trial-and-error process that produces the same bugs we find on Linux drivers (many of them developed almost with no information). I really think nowadays hardware developers make our life a lot harder providing only a compiled driver to the "everyone knows system". Disassembling the driver from another operating system requires one to understand that operating system so he can understand the hardware specifications and *then* start a new driver targeted to another operating system. Is a boring and error-prone process. Unfortunately, I just cannot see how can we change this scenario. With all the documentation in hands, write a driver is a feasible thing. Without it, it's a hardcore activity and not always will produce good results. |
| Subject | : | Re:OS/2 Wrapper for Windows Driver |
| Author | : | RadarCat |
| Date | : | 25 Mar, 2005 on 22:36 |
![]() Hi, All, While at the Hobbes web site I came across the following: "wd440os2.zip Also: "WinDriver for OS/2 is a PCI / ISA device driver development tool for the OS/2 operating system. WinDriver for OS/2 (based on our successful WinDriver toolkit), dramatically simplifies PCI and ISA (including parallel and serial ports) driver writing in OS/2. WinDriver saves the developer the need to learn the OS/2 Core OS API and enables fast access to ANY PCI/cPCI, ISA/EISA and ISA PnP cards directly user mode application. Runs on: OS/2 Warp" This file may be accessed through: http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/dev/wd440os2.zip I hope this is of use to someone.
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| Subject | : | Re:OS/2 Wrapper for Windows Driver |
| Author | : | Toby |
| Date | : | 26 Mar, 2005 on 21:33 |
| Hi! It´s really nice to see, that there are so much replies regarding my Idea! I would of course like to see that my idea comes true and would also like to support the programmers, but my problem is that I don´t know much about programming at all. I´m much more a power user, because I can get around problems very easyly and I´m really good in installing different OS on a computer. Therefore the only languages I´m able to use are true basic, batch and a little bit of Qbasic. And this is nowadays not enough in order to programm a driver or even a driverwrapper!! But regarding the possibility of writing a devicewrapper I asked a computer admin and programmer today who wrote a msdos driverwrapper for amiga video drivers in the early 90s and he told me that it wouldn´t be the problem to write a a driverwrapper. The only problem is to get as Big Warp Guy already wrote it, OS/2 to open source. Because you will need lots of information about the architecture as well as knowledge of how the windows driver work. Therefore more manufactors will have to publicate how there products work. But I can´t agree to the idea of Big Warp Guy to use a linux kernel, because OS/2 wouldn´t then be OS/2 anymore. It would be more a kind of hybrid system!! And of couse the driverwrapper will have to be intigrated inside the kernel in order to get the system more stable and faster. Therefore some kind of addon for ODIN can´t be the right solution, because ODIN can only access as far as I know the hardware which can already be accessed in OS/2. Toby PS: |