Has anyone played much with OS/2 vs DOS... I'm becoming inclined to trying a new VM with multiple nodes running under OS/2 multitasking rather than 4 individual DOS sessions. Wondering if it might make better use of the available horsepower.. roughly equivalent to a swayback mare and a half a donkey..

Spose the bottom line, how well does OS/2 under load compare to multiple DOS sessions?

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: The future's uncertain, the end is always near. (21:3/101)

On 07 Nov 21 09:28:00, Spectre said the following to Anyone:

Spose the bottom line, how well does OS/2 under load compare to multiple DOS sessions?

Oh mannnnn.... OS/2 powered my 3-line dialup board for an entire decade... I seriously was the type that had to have it pulled from my cold dead hands. I was on Warp 3 with who-knows how many fixpacks. OS/2 "just worked". I ran that OS while everyone else went through their obligatory 95/98/ME/2000 phase.

The big takeaway was that the SIO Fossil DOS driver has/had a problem with script kids on Telnet. Anytime it got slammed with that crap it just caused
all sorts of problems. The virtual modem thing was buggy. Wasn't crap but
buggy or no real effort put into it. It was this and a few other stupid reasons that was my migration to Windows 2000 Server in around '01 I think.

Atreyu

--- Renegade vY2Ka2
* Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (21:1/176)

Hello Spectre.

07 Nov 21 09:28, you wrote to Anyone:

Has anyone played much with OS/2 vs DOS... I'm becoming inclined to
trying a new VM with multiple nodes running under OS/2 multitasking
rather than 4 individual DOS sessions. Wondering if it might make
better use of the available horsepower.. roughly equivalent to a
swayback mare and a half a donkey..

Spose the bottom line, how well does OS/2 under load compare to
multiple DOS sessions?

it's much better i suppose. os/2 is great for multitasking os2-dos-win3 sessions..

--
Daniel

... 11:31am up 29 days, 22:06:15, load: 71 processes, 280 threads.
--- GoldED+/EMX 1.1.4.7
* Origin: Roon's BBS - Budapest, HUNGARY (21:4/148)

Oh mannnnn.... OS/2 powered my 3-line dialup board for an entire decade... I seriously was the type that had to have it pulled from my cold dead hands. I was on Warp 3 with who-knows how many fixpacks. OS/2 "just

While I don't have any doubt it can run the BBS in itself... I'm wondering
how the swaybacked mare and half a donkey will cope with a VM running OS/2
with 3 tasks as much as anything.

If the serial I/O is not solid, I could persist with RLfossil. Biggest
concern there will become how it handles the ip addressing... at present each VM has its own IP... might have to use the same IP and different ports? Ponder...

I'm kind of wedded to SuperBBS.. not really interested in anything else much
so I'm not moving forward to Windoze..

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: The future's uncertain, the end is always near. (21:3/101)

Hello Spectre.

07 Nov 21 16:43, you wrote to Atreyu:

Oh mannnnn.... OS/2 powered my 3-line dialup board for an entire
decade... I seriously was the type that had to have it pulled
from my cold dead hands. I was on Warp 3 with who-knows how many
fixpacks. OS/2 "just

While I don't have any doubt it can run the BBS in itself... I'm
wondering how the swaybacked mare and half a donkey will cope with a
VM running OS/2 with 3 tasks as much as anything.

If the serial I/O is not solid, I could persist with RLfossil.
Biggest concern there will become how it handles the ip addressing...
at present each VM has its own IP... might have to use the same IP and different ports? Ponder...

one IP is enough and it uses the 'same port' (with sio/vmodem). if a node is 'busy', then it automatically redirects the 'call' to the next node.

--
Daniel

... 11:31am up 29 days, 22:06:15, load: 71 processes, 280 threads.
--- GoldED+/EMX 1.1.4.7
* Origin: Roon's BBS - Budapest, HUNGARY (21:4/148)

On 07 Nov 21 16:43:00, Spectre said the following to Atreyu:

While I don't have any doubt it can run the BBS in itself... I'm wondering how the swaybacked mare and half a donkey will cope with a VM running OS/2 with 3 tasks as much as anything.

On what hypervisor will the VM be on?

Atreyu

--- Renegade vY2Ka2
* Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (21:1/176)

The big takeaway was that the SIO Fossil DOS driver has/had a
problem with script kids on Telnet. Anytime it got slammed with
that crap it just caused all sorts of problems. The virtual modem
thing was buggy. Wasn't crap but buggy or no real effort put into
it. It was this and a few other stupid reasons that was my
migration to Windows 2000 Server in around '01 I think.

SIO, which is the driver you need in order to allow DOS BBSes to
answer the telnet "phone" under OS2, was pretty easy to get set up
and worked well... until the script kids and other DoS attacks would
hit it. Your memory is not faulty there. It didn't take many
repetitive hits, either, before it would stop answering. It would
not reset itself so your board could be down a few days if you were
not careful.

I quit using OS2 shortly after COVID hit. I switched to dosemu
sessions under a couple of versions old devuan running in a
VirtualBox. tcpser and tty0tty (I think that is what it is called)
handle the telnet<>serial fakery. I have not noticed a difference in performance. Script kids can take that down, too, I have
unfortunately found. Seems to happen a lot less once I set up
iptables to map incoming traffic from one outward facing port to one
that tty0tty/tcpser are looking to answer.


--- MagickaBBS v0.15alpha (Linux/armv7l)
* Origin: Possum Lodge South * possumso.fsxnet.nz:7636/SSH:2122 (21:4/134)

On 07 Nov 21 10:18:36, Blue White said the following to Atreyu:

SIO, which is the driver you need in order to allow DOS BBSes to
answer the telnet "phone" under OS2, was pretty easy to get set up
and worked well... until the script kids and other DoS attacks would
hit it. Your memory is not faulty there. It didn't take many

Yup. When it was running, it really worked good. And OS/2 multi-tasked everything perfectly. But the two final "thats it" moments for me were beginning an IT career managing Windows workstations in a corporate office and OS/2 started having problems as it aged or I tried to upgrade hardware.

Nothing for USB despite what was it, 32 fixpacks, and it just would NOT work properly with this ATI card I had... then adding larger hard drives became a problem. And no remote-access capability or tape drive program that didn't
seem halfassed or cost a small fortune while Windows had both built-in.

To be fair it was running here fine for almost a decade, 24/7 and had great uptime, survived many vacations AFK but that OS just became neglected. Anyhow my board is all DOS stuff so porting everything over that fateful day in '01 was a no brainer, whatever Rexx scripting I used became irrelevant or trivial.

I quit using OS2 shortly after COVID hit. I switched to dosemu
sessions under a couple of versions old devuan running in a

Shortly after Covid? You're much more stubborn than I am! 8-)

Atreyu

--- Renegade vY2Ka2
* Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (21:1/176)

On what hypervisor will the VM be on?

At this point probably virtualbox, and ubuntu 18 maybe 20...

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: The future's uncertain, the end is always near. (21:3/101)

Atreyu wrote to Blue White <=-

I quit using OS2 shortly after COVID hit. I switched to dosemu
sessions under a couple of versions old devuan running in a

Shortly after Covid? You're much more stubborn than I am! 8-)

Yes. :) I ran Desqview as long as I could, until it became obvious I was
not going to draw any local dial-up callers in the smaller town I had moved
to. My switch to OS/2 probably came not long before you moved away from
it. :)

The script kiddies were only half of why I moved away from it. The bigger reason was the lack of built-in support for NFS. As you pointed out, the packages to add that cost money or didn't work. My desire to have a
machine that could be backed up over my linux network did OS/2 in as much as anything.


... DalekDOS v(overflow): (I)Obey (V)ision impaired (E)xterminate
--- MultiMail
* Origin: Possum Lodge South * possumso.fsxnet.nz:7636/SSH:2122 (21:4/134)

On 08 Nov 21 16:09:18, Blue White said the following to Atreyu:

Yes. :) I ran Desqview as long as I could, until it became obvious I was not going to draw any local dial-up callers in the smaller town I had moved to. My switch to OS/2 probably came not long before you moved away from it. :)

I had a torrid love-affair with Desqview for a short time...

The script kiddies were only half of why I moved away from it. The bigger reason was the lack of built-in support for NFS. As you pointed out, the packages to add that cost money or didn't work. My desire to have a machine that could be backed up over my linux network did OS/2 in as much a anything.

This. Networking on OS/2 to me just seemed halfassed, clumsy or sometimes outright bizarre to try to make it talk to a share. All that time messing around while my friends would boast how easy it was on Windows NT, 2000.

Its really too bad, as much as I hated all the problems I do miss the Beverian castle wallpaper, the "sleepy moon" shutdown icon, the many DOS sessions open at once (without lag) and this non-stop looping Rexx script handling mail or possible outbound calls to the ISP.

Atreyu

--- Renegade vY2Ka2
* Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (21:1/176)

Re: Re: OS Who?
By: Atreyu to Blue White on Mon Nov 08 2021 07:36 pm

This. Networking on OS/2 to me just seemed halfassed, clumsy or sometimes outright bizarre to try to make it talk to a share. All that time messing around while my friends would boast how easy it was on Windows NT, 2000.

I had heard that just before Microsoft left the OS/2 project, Microsoft tried to make some things difficult to do in OS/2 so that users would switch to Windows. I'm not sure if that's true though.

Nightfox
--- SBBSecho 3.14-Win32
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On 09 Nov 21 08:38:29, Nightfox said the following to Atreyu:

I had heard that just before Microsoft left the OS/2 project, Microsoft trie to make some things difficult to do in OS/2 so that users would switch to Windows. I'm not sure if that's true though.

Its really a strange relationship. The OS/2 API's apparently carried over to Windows 2000.

Atreyu

--- Renegade vY2Ka2
* Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (21:1/176)

Re: Re: OS Who?
By: Atreyu to Nightfox on Tue Nov 09 2021 11:41 am

I had heard that just before Microsoft left the OS/2 project,
Microsoft trie to make some things difficult to do in OS/2 so that
users would switch to Windows. I'm not sure if that's true though.

Its really a strange relationship. The OS/2 API's apparently carried over to Windows 2000.

I've heard that as well. And I heard the first version or 2 of Windows NT (3.5 and maybe 3.51) kept NTFS, but they dropped NTFS with later versions of Windows NT.

Nightfox
--- SBBSecho 3.14-Win32
* Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)

Atreyu wrote to Blue White <=-

This. Networking on OS/2 to me just seemed halfassed, clumsy or
sometimes outright bizarre to try to make it talk to a share. All that time messing around while my friends would boast how easy it was on Windows NT, 2000.

Yes, even the built in samba sharing was a pain in the rear. Linux closed
up some security holes and I could never get the samba sharing with OS2 to
work between the two after that.

Its really too bad, as much as I hated all the problems I do miss the Beverian castle wallpaper, the "sleepy moon" shutdown icon, the many
DOS sessions open at once (without lag) and this non-stop looping Rexx script handling mail or possible outbound calls to the ISP.

Indeed. You might have been able to copy the wallpaper over. :)



... Computer Hacker wanted. Must have own axe.
--- MultiMail
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Atreyu wrote to Blue White <=-

This. Networking on OS/2 to me just seemed halfassed, clumsy or
sometimes outright bizarre to try to make it talk to a share. All that time messing around while my friends would boast how easy it was on Windows NT, 2000.

I'm no tech.slouch, and in 1994 I was running Warp at work, connecting to a Netware network and adding TCP/IP to it. We'd gotten our first internet connection.

Thanksfully, loading the HPFS namespace allowed me to share files with the Macs using long file names, and shares worked OK.

For the life of me, I couldn't get the DOS and OS/2 network requesters to
play nice with the OS/2 IP stack, and ended up putting in a second network card for TCP/IP (I also happened to be the network guy)

As the netware admin, I loved having multiple DOS sessions open. We had an dial-in solution that also provided Int14 dial-out services, and I could
dial out to BBSes using it. Never had a glitch running heavy loads on a 486.

NT was just easier, I ended up OS/2 with NT 3.51.
... Are there sections? Consider transitions
--- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
* Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)

Atreyu wrote to Nightfox <=-

Its really a strange relationship. The OS/2 API's apparently carried
over to Windows 2000.

OS/2 console apps ran in Windows 2000. I kept my Bluewave/Qedit environment for OS/2 running in 2000 for some time, as DOS support hadn't quite kept up. Qedit for DOS was a little pokey.


... Are there sections? Consider transitions
--- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
* Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)

Nightfox wrote to Atreyu <=-

I've heard that as well. And I heard the first version or 2 of Windows
NT (3.5 and maybe 3.51) kept NTFS, but they dropped NTFS with later versions of Windows NT.

I think you mean HPFS, the OS/2 file system. If memory serves, 3.51 had support, 4 didn't. You didn't really need native support for the filesystem unless you were dual-booting, as you could share files on different filesystems.


... Listen in total darkness, very quietly
--- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
* Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)

Re: Re: OS Who?
By: poindexter FORTRAN to Nightfox on Wed Nov 10 2021 06:52 am

I've heard that as well. And I heard the first version or 2 of
Windows NT (3.5 and maybe 3.51) kept NTFS, but they dropped NTFS
with later versions of Windows NT.

I think you mean HPFS, the OS/2 file system. If memory serves, 3.51 had support, 4 didn't. You didn't really need native support for the filesystem unless you were dual-booting, as you could share files on different filesystems.

Yeah, I meant HPFS. I guess I'm more used to typing NTFS. :)

Nightfox
--- SBBSecho 3.14-Win32
* Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)

Has anyone played much with OS/2 vs DOS... I'm becoming inclined to
trying a new VM with multiple nodes running under OS/2 multitasking

I ran DV back in the late 80's and switched to OS/2 Warp 3. I ran 2 ISDN
nodes, a 14.4k node and a satellite feed from Planet Connect that ran at 19200k. OS/2 ran all this with no problem while I never could get DesqView to handle all the DOS sessions.I ran FrontDoor and RA back then. Now I run OS/2 Warp 4.52 in a VM. I run D'Bridge mailer and Maximus2 BBSwusing Ray
Gwinns SIO comm package.Sometimes I will also open up a DOS window and load RA as well. OS/2 handles this very well although as it is in a VM sometimes programs like PKZip won't run correctly. I allocate 1 CPU and 2 Gigs of ram
for the VM.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
* Origin: The Lab BBS (21:3/105.7)

SIO, which is the driver you need in order to allow DOS BBSes to
answer the telnet "phone" under OS2, was pretty easy to get set up
and worked well... until the script kids and other DoS attacks would
hit it. Your memory is not faulty there. It didn't take many
repetitive hits, either, before it would stop answering. It would
not reset itself so your board could be down a few days if you were
not careful.

I can confirm that is the case, too. I still use OS/2 (eCS) for my BBS nodes over here.

The way I prevent the script kiddies from hanging the SIO nodes is a combination of having Mystic in front of it, and my firewall set to only allow a single telnet session per IP address.

That stopped the hammering of the SIO nodes and keeps them functioning properly.

- Mark
ÿÿÿ
--- WWIVToss v.1.52
* Origin: http://www.weather-station.org * Bel Air, MD -USA (21:1/132.0)

This. Networking on OS/2 to me just seemed halfassed, clumsy or sometimes outright bizarre to try to make it talk to a share. All that time messing around while my friends would boast how easy it was on Windows NT, 2000.

Yes, I agree. OS/2 networking has always been the sore spot. It got a bit better when Samba was ported and included in eCS. It could still use some work.

Case in point - if you have a mapped drive on eCS or any OS/2 version to another system, and reboot the host system it will hang OS/2. It seems to happen more often if you use the JFS file system.

I switched over to HPFS and the issues are less, but still happen now and then. OS/2 is rock solid but with network shares, it can hang/crash. I have no better option for my classic setup, so I have learned to live with it.

- Mark
ÿÿÿ
--- WWIVToss v.1.52
* Origin: http://www.weather-station.org * Bel Air, MD -USA (21:1/132.0)