4K sectored disks? and, national keyboard support?

Discussion about Visopsys Partition Logic
Czerno
Posts: 7
Joined: Sun Mar 04, 2012 9:30 am

4K sectored disks? and, national keyboard support?

Post by Czerno »

Hi! New to visopsys/partition logic, I tried the latest (floppy disk) version.
Very much impressed at the quality of this single-man IIUW piece of work !

And here are 2 questions :

1. Couldn't change keyboard layout, was the option omitted (again, floppy version) ?
If there's room enough left on the diskette image, I suggest such support be included in a future revision.

2. Disks with 4K sectors (no 512 byte emulation) : are they supported in Visopsys and specifically by the partitionner ? I'm asking about external, USB attached disks, as well as (possibly non existing yet in the mainstream market) internal ones.


Thanks !
User avatar
andymc
Posts: 589
Joined: Tue Nov 16, 2010 7:20 pm

Re: 4K sectored disks? and, national keyboard support?

Post by andymc »

Czerno wrote:Hi! New to visopsys/partition logic, I tried the latest (floppy disk) version.
Very much impressed at the quality of this single-man IIUW piece of work !
Thank you very much :dance:
Czerno wrote:1. Couldn't change keyboard layout, was the option omitted (again, floppy version) ?
If there's room enough left on the diskette image, I suggest such support be included in a future revision.
You're right, the floppy disk version doesn't have the 'keymap' program (or the alternate keymap files). Unfortunately it's a matter of space on the disk!
Czerno wrote:2. Disks with 4K sectors (no 512 byte emulation) : are they supported in Visopsys and specifically by the partitionner ? I'm asking about external, USB attached disks, as well as (possibly non existing yet in the mainstream market) internal ones.
512-byte sectors are not hard-coded into the system, in general, but I've never had access to a non-512 internal disk for testing. The ATA driver uses the value received from querying the disk. USB sticks and CDs/DVDs with other sector sizes work, though.
Czerno
Posts: 7
Joined: Sun Mar 04, 2012 9:30 am

Re: 4K sectored disks? and, national keyboard support?

Post by Czerno »

andymc wrote: You're right, the floppy disk version doesn't have the 'keymap' program (or the alternate keymap files). Unfortunately it's a matter of space on the disk!
Oh, too bad...
512-byte sectors are not hard-coded into the system, in general, but I've never had access to a non-512 internal disk for testing. The ATA driver uses the value received from querying the disk. USB sticks and CDs/DVDs with other sector sizes work, though.
I don't have a non-512 internal either, but I am going to test my external USB-attached drive.
Shall come back to report, hopefully, success :=)
Czerno
Posts: 7
Joined: Sun Mar 04, 2012 9:30 am

Re: 4K sectored disks? and, national keyboard support?

Post by Czerno »

Czerno wrote: I am going to test my external USB-attached drive. :=)
Follow-up : Visopsys failed to identify and mount the device, unfortunately. Neither
when it was attached before booting the system up, nor on hot-plugging it.
No error reported, no attempt to access the unit physically (AFAICT), no nothing :=(

FYI this computer has OHCI/EHCI (SiS), the device "bridge" is USB3 and USB2 capable and
works as designed in Windoze 2k+ and relatively recent Linux kernels. If it matters, disk is partitionned as 2 primaries (FAT32 and NTFS), though I don't think visopsys went as far as accessing the MBR, even less individual partitions...

Regards

--
Cz.
User avatar
andymc
Posts: 589
Joined: Tue Nov 16, 2010 7:20 pm

Re: 4K sectored disks? and, national keyboard support?

Post by andymc »

USB itself might be a different matter :whistle:

It's a big set of standards (and tricky to get right) and my USB support is incomplete, so whether your disk is recognized at all might be a hit-or-miss affair - though if it's recognized, everything should work perfectly. I hope!
User avatar
andymc
Posts: 589
Joined: Tue Nov 16, 2010 7:20 pm

Re: 4K sectored disks? and, national keyboard support?

Post by andymc »

Czerno wrote:Visopsys failed to identify and mount the device, unfortunately. Neither
when it was attached before booting the system up, nor on hot-plugging it.
No error reported, no attempt to access the unit physically (AFAICT), no nothing :=(

FYI this computer has OHCI/EHCI (SiS)
Ahh, sorry. Only UHCI support is basically complete, and I've started to add EHCI support, but it's really only a stub in the released version. :oops:
Czerno
Posts: 7
Joined: Sun Mar 04, 2012 9:30 am

Re: 4K sectored disks? and, national keyboard support?

Post by Czerno »

andymc wrote: Ahh, sorry. Only UHCI support is basically complete, and I've started to add EHCI support, but it's really only a stub in the released version. :oops:
Makes sense then ! No problem, keep the good work going...

For completeness I'll try eventually on an old DELL 'puter having UHCI/EHCI (Via brand add-on adapter) - but from earlier tests using other software my current understanding of this @!@(expletive) device is that it does not communicate properly at USB 1.1 "full" speed.


--
Czerno
Czerno
Posts: 7
Joined: Sun Mar 04, 2012 9:30 am

Visopsys/Part logic on DELL Dimension : no go :(

Post by Czerno »

Andy, I have tried the OS on that old Dell (Intel chipset, P!!!), unfortunately it did not quite work as designed (or at least, expected...)

But, first remark, by Jove, how does one pause the minuscule screen display during hardware enumeration ? Neither scroll-lock nor pause had any effect, and the display goes away too fast for reading problem reports (if any) !

I booted with a USB key inserted (regular 512 sectors).
All the same I seemed to notice it complained about an "SCSI" disk (probably the USB; internal disks are IDE on that machine). and maybe did the display mention 0 sectorsize (too fast to be sure).

Probably related, the part logic editor did not show the USB disk.

This being so with a standard USB key, I didn't even bother to connect the 4k disk appliance...

Other problem : although apparently recognised during the initial enumeration, neither keyboard nor mouse worked for me : mouse not at all, keyboard : TAB, CR , Ctrl Alt Del and probably other non alphanumerics worked, but letters/numbers had no visible action.

OK, or rather KO... here you are, I'm not whining but reporting in case it helps in some way.
If I were forced to make a guess, timing problems ?

Regards
User avatar
andymc
Posts: 589
Joined: Tue Nov 16, 2010 7:20 pm

Re: 4K sectored disks? and, national keyboard support?

Post by andymc »

Thanks very much for testing it, though I'm sorry things haven't worked out so well :doh:

The boot-time messages, if any, tend to be about issues during hardware enumeration, as you correctly guessed.

The following is only useful if you've got a keyboard/mouse that work (at least ALT, TAB, cursor keys, ENTER are necessary for keyboard navigation), but under the 'Administration' menu item (ALT-TAB should raise the top menu bar) there's a 'Console' application, that should show all of the boot messages inside.

Very strange that the keyboard only partially works! I would expect it to work properly, or not at all.

I have had reports of troubles running the software on older, slower processors. I have some less-powerful testing laptops, but they all work, generally speaking, before I do a release.

It might be worth hot-plugging your other USB HDD to see if it gets detected. You'd have to close the PL window, and cancel the shutdown dialog, to have any new disks show up in a new PL window (I should find a way to get PL to detect a hot-plug in the partitioning software)

Andy
Czerno
Posts: 7
Joined: Sun Mar 04, 2012 9:30 am

Re: 4K sectored disks? and, national keyboard support?

Post by Czerno »

I'm back... with good news (so-so) and bad news.

Re: keyboard/mouse. Last night it occurred to me that the problems we had could be caused by the KVM switch to which the test machine is attached. Indeed attaching the peripherals directly to the computer fixed mouse and keyboard. I guess this is the good news - though it might be a sign that your I/O routines for the "8042" (in)compatible controller lack to desire in robustness.

Now for assorted bad news. 1. kernel panic during boot -
divide by zero @c0050ce7 in
kernelMultitasker.c:exceptionHandler (937)

2. Partition logic is unhappy with the FAT32 partitions on my *fixed* disks, reports surreal starting and ending cylinders & even offers to 'fix' them for me. No thanks !

hmm... I guess this kind of features is what the digit before the decimal point in visopsys version # is about...

I understand you cannot debug remotely on my systems, and I'm sorry I can't help and of bringing bad news at that. I'm unfortunately not going to do much more experimenting, as curiosity and the prospect of 4k disks + USB support was what brought me to Visopsys in the first place but my time is (surprise) extremely limited.

Regards & have fun

--
Czerno
Post Reply