From: canty@vlsi.polymtl.ca (Yves Canty (Hiv91))
Subject: Various OS/2 2.0 problems
Organization: Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 16:08:09 GMT

I'm having a few problems with OS/2 2.0.  Maybe someone here can help me...

My system is a 486DX 33 Mhz, 128K cache, Connor IDE 100 Megs HD, AMI BIOS
dated 07/07/91, Zymos Poach SVGA card, SoundBlaster set to IRQ 5.

Something weird about my extended CMOS setup.  I have an option called
"Shadow RAM option".  It has 4 possible settings:  Disabled, Main, Video,
Both.  When I set it to Disabled or Video, the computer doesn't want to
boot anymore.  It says something like "Non system disk or disk error" in
DOS, and !SYS0025, !SYS0027 when I try the OS/2 boot disk.  If I set
the Shadow RAM CMOS setting to "Main" or "Both", everything works fine, so
I selected "Both" to install OS/2.  But even then, I had problems...

First, I had a lot of difficulty installing OS/2.  It would always make
an error right after the graphic screen with the logo, when the screen goes
blank, the words "Loading, please wait" are written near the top of the
screen, and about 30 sec later, the error appeared.  When I set my clock
speed at 8 MHz, the error is a file that couldn't be found, but I know
it's on the install disk!  When I set the clock at 33 MHz, a trap occurs
instead.  Sometimes 0006, sometimes 000d, 000e.  It seems almost random.

I've tried a ton of combinations in my extended CMOS setup, but it didn't
help.  I've tried changing my RAM, unplugging my SoundBlaster card, trying
my friend's VGA card (he has no problem with OS/2), but all that didn't
help either.  The only thing I didn't try is changing my multi-IO card
which has my 2 serial ports, parallel port, IDE connector, and Disk drives
connectors on it.

I finally managed to install it.  I was simply lucky it didn't make an
error that time.  The rest of the installation went flawlessly.

Now I've had some random problems.  Fractint version 17.1 always causes
OS/2 to generate a trap and halt when I use the program in an OS/2 window
and try using a non-standard video mode with 256 colors (I run OS/2 in
standard VGA, 16 colors). (I think it's trap 000d, maybe 000e).

I also had difficulty copying a big file from A: to B:.  OS/2 would say the
file is bad (bad sectors?).  But when I tried to copy it from DOS, everything
went fine.

Sometimes, without warning, when I use the OS/2 command line (CMD) or some
DOS programs, OS/2 would halt with a trap (usually 000d I think).

My SoundBlaster DMA channel is very slow in OS/2.  When I set the HW_TIMER
DOS setting to ON, the whole OS/2 system becomes extremely slow.  My
SoundBlaster is set to IRQ 5.

I applied quite a few of the patches available.  I will reinstall the
original files.  Maybe the patches don't really patch things up...

By the way, when will the next version of OS/2 2.0 be available?
You know, the one with the 10? 20? patches already applied?

If any of you have suggestions, any help would be appreciated.


--
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------
|            Yves Canty             |         Internet address            |
|   Computer Engineering student    |                                     |
|  Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal  |       canty@info.polymtl.ca         |
Xref: sparky comp.os.os2.misc:28773 comp.os.os2.apps:5736