Sponsored by the OS/2 Supersite
 

The Win32-OS/2 Project Web page by Timur Tabi  Last Updated: March 16, 1998  Mirror sites:  http://www.maschek.com/win32-os2 (Germany)  http://win32os2.home.pages.de (Germany)  http://www.sdg.ml.org/win32os2/ (Sweden)  .

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Save yourself time and trouble!  Avoid having to ask dumb questions!  Keep up-to-date on the latest beta version!  Click on this button, and you'll get email whenever this web page changes.

Note to current URL-Minder users: YOU ARE NOT GETTING FALSE UPDATE NOTICES.  I occasionally make very minor updates to this page without changing the date on the top.

Introduction

If you don't know what OS/2 is, or if you would just like more information on OS/2, please check out my New OS/2 User Web Page.

This software is available for free to all users.

There is also a transcript from a V.O.I.C.E. IRC question-and-answer chat session with Peter Fitzsimmons and Timur Tabi.  A lot of frequently asked questions were posted and answered during this session, so you may find answers to your questions there.  The transcript was edited by Chris Wenham of OS/2 e-Zine.

The was another V.O.I.C.E. IRC question-and-answer session with Peter, Sander, and Timur on Monday, March 9th.

We need your help!  UPDATED!

1. Please download the current release before doing anything else.  Try the converter yourself first.  If it doesn't work, then we can talk. Do not email us your results.  Read the section titled "How to report bugs" to learn what to do next.

2. Don't tell us about software we can download ourselves.  We're only interested in commercial software that has to be purchased.

3. Don't ask us what software we want - that's completely missing the point.  The idea is for YOU to send US software that YOU want to have converted.  Look at the Win95/NT software that YOU NEED TO USE under OS/2, and pick from that list.  We don't want suggestions.  We don't want advice.

4. 99% of all Windows 95/NT software WILL NOT WORK.  In fact, the majority of the small apps that come with Windows 95/NT will not work either.  And not only that, but of all the apps that do work, 99% of them already have native OS/2 equivalents that work better.  So why are you wasting your time converting Notepad or Calc?

5. Because the converter is so immature, we ask that you wait until the public releases can convert your app so that it runs at least part-way.  It is way to early for us to consider the average Win32 application.  We will be releasing updates about once a month - eventually your application will work, to some extent.  Until then, please do not make any offers.

6. DO NOT EMAIL US ANY SOFTWARE.

We are accepting donations of Windows 95/NT software. Our intention is that you purchase an application and have it shipped to us. We need to have a full blown legal copy of the application, because we will need all manuals and we may also need to contact the vendor's technical support. Without a full legal copy of the application, we will not have all the resources we need to convert it.

IMPORTANT NOTE: We make no guarantees whatsoever that we will be able to convert your application. All we are offering is to include your application in our test suite. We will be aware of the problems, but we make no promises that we will be able to fix them. Our goal is to be able to convert every Windows 95/NT application, but there are limits, and we know that there are some Windows 95/NT applications that we will never be able to convert.

The team member who will accept your donation will depend on what kind of application and where you live. First determine if any of the team members is working on the appropriate area. If no one qualifies, then send it to the nearest team member.
 

Team Member	Category of Application or Location
Joel Troster	All MIDI applications.
Sander van Leeuwen	Any general apps from those in Europe, and any Glide-based games (no D3D!) from anywhere
Kevin Laughbaum	All OpenGL applications
Chris McKillop	Any general apps from those in Canada, and the US if Timur gets overloaded.
Timur Tabi	Any general apps from those in the United States
Felix Maschek	Any communications (serial I/O) apps from those in Europe

For email addresses, please see the bottom of this web page, and contact the team member directly. Please note that we will NOT be able to return your software back to you.
 

Submitted Software	Team Member	Status
Finale 97 (Coda Music Technology)	Joel Troster	being tested
Cakewalk 5 (Cakewalk)	Joel Troster	offered, not yet submitted
Mathcad 7 (Mathsoft)	Timur Tabi	offered, not yet submitted
Grapher for Windows (Golden Software)	Timur Tabi	offered, not yet submitted
Surfer for Windows (Golden Software)	Timur Tabi	offered, not yet submitted

Download the current release!  UPDATED!

• The hobbes NMSU OS/2 file repository, in the /pub/os2/util/convert directory.  You can download it directly either via http or via ftp.

How do I use this thing?  UPDATED!

Once you have converted all of your .EXE's and DLL's with pe2lx, all you need to do is run them under OS/2.  Since you need Open32 for this to work, you must have OS/2 Warp 4, or Warp 3 with at least FixPack 26 applied.  Also, if you have applied Warp 4 FixPack 3, you must either apply the os2krnl fix on top of that, or apply FixPack 4 or later.  Also, there seems to be some debate as to whether Warp Server Advanced SMP can be used, as some have reported that the Warp Server/Warp 3 FixPacks do not add Open32 support to Warp Server, yet others say that the support can be manually added.

You will need to install the application under a real copy of Windows 95 or NT, and you can only run the converter under OS/2.  This means that you will need to have Windows 95/NT and OS/2 installed on the same machine, and that you will need to be able to access your Windows 95/NT partition from your OS/2 partition.  In order to do this, you will need an OS/2 IFS driver that will allow OS/2 to properly read from the Windows 95/NT partition.  You can look in the /pub/os2/system/drivers/filesys directory on hobbes to find IFS drivers for VFAT and NTFS.

How to report bugs  UPDATED!

But before you post .... scan the newsgroup to see if your bug or question has already been posted.  Even better, use Deja News to search the comp.os.os2.bugs newsgroup.  Click here to start a search on DejaNews of the comp.os.os2.bugs newsgroup.  Not only is this proper etiquette, but it keeps you from looking like an idiot.

Current list of known bugs  UPDATED!

You can also check out Win32-OS/2 Application Compatibility Resource web page. This page is NOT maintained by any of us - it is completely independent so we do not claim any responsibility for its content. However, it is usually a better bug list than this page.

On a side note, the fact that pe2lx.exe works is usually not of any value. All the conversion process does is to create an OS/2 EXE.  The real trick is in loading the EXE into memory and getting it work.  There are only three cases when pe2lx.exe will not work:

• You're trying it on a 16-bit Windows EXE, i.e. an EXE in the "NE" format. These EXE's are not supported, so they're not supposed to work. PE2LX.EXE will issue an error message along the lines of "Not a PE file".
• The EXE file is using one of the resources that we don't yet support, like the VERSION resource. However, I don't think anyone's actually seen one of these
• There is something wrong with the EXE file. Typically it means that it was created with a linker from Borland, but it could mean that it's just corrupt in some way.

List of Converted Apps  UPDATED!

Status  UPDATED!

There are three prime areas of current development:

Resources.  Resources are GUI items like icons, menus, translatable strings, etc.  They are stored inside the .EXE or .DLL.  Open32 requires that all resources be in OS/2 format, so pe2lx must also translate the resources from Windows format to OS/2 format.
 

Resource Type	Status
bit maps	working
accelerators	working
cursors	working
menus	working
dialog boxes	working
icons	working
strings	Win32 supports numeric and text string ID's, whereas OS/2 supports only numeric ID's, so a stub function in kernel32.dll does the translation.
version	version.dll is needed to read these resources, but it's not implemented yet.  Fortunately, very few apps use this resource

 
Updating the Supplemental DLL's.  Currently, there is support for over 1,750 Win32 API's (including OLE), of which 750 are fully implemented via Open32, and the remaining 1000 are provided in supplemental DLL's, of which 500 are currently stubs that do nothing.
 

DLL Name	Purpose/Function	Status
advapi32	Registry and security apis (among others)	Approx. 20% (most of the registry API's).  The other 80% is for the NT security API's, which will not be supported.
gdi32	All the GDI (graphics) API's	77%
kernel32	Kernel apis (file system, memory, threads, events, etc.) and console API's	60% complete. Console API's are now available. UPDATED!
ole32	OLE and OLE2	All stubs - just enough functionality to get an app thinking that OLE is available (needed for some apps).
user32	Window apis (create/manipulate windows, dialogs, menus, etc.)	72%
shell32	GUI extensions, drag 'n drop, shell extensions in Win95/NT, all sorts of weird things like loading resources from other exes/dlls.	Less than 5%
version	Versioning API. (used to extract info from the version resource most win32 exe's contain)	All stubs
winmm	Multimedia API's	50%. Wave-out is working. Wave-In, Mixer, and MIDI Mapper are all stubs. MIDI In/Out is partially available only on Warp 4 with RTMIDI. midiStream is not done. Aux is 90% complete.  UPDATED!
ddraw	DirectDraw	25%. Partially implemented - enough to run a DirectX SDK animated donut sample.
comctl32	Common GUI controls, like buttons, toolbar, image lists, notebooks, etc.	This DLL must be converted by you.  The version that comes with Win95 does not work, but the updated version from Microsoft does.  Please use this version instead.
comdlg	Common dialog boxes (file open/save, print, palette, find, etc.)	Completely implemented using Open32.
dsound	DirectSound	All stubs
winspool	Called winspool.drv in real Windows.	Only one function is implemented
winsock	TCP/IP sockets support	90%. 6 more functions until 1.1 compatitble, 2.0 support is next  UPDATED!
capi2032	CAPI 2.0 ISDN API	100%.
tapi32	Telephony API	All stubs.
mpr	Network stuff	All stubs.
netapi	Network stuff	All stubs.
opengl32	OpenGL API	80% stubs, 15% fully implemented, 5% not yet implemented

A bunch of text files that show each of the DLL's, the functions in them, which ones have been implemented, and other goodies can be found in this directory.

In particular:

• done.lst contains a list of functions that we had coded by hand (as of late June)
• w95.lst contains a list of functions exported by the real Win95 DLL's.
• open32.list -- functions supplied by PMWINX.DLL (the Open32 DLL)

Implementation Notes

• Open32 uses the _System calling convention (as do all OS/2 API's) whereas Win32 uses __stdcall.  The solution, in the words of Sander:
• I've used some C++ for most of it. Create a class for, say, a window procedure. Set the procedure address of the api to the static one in the class. After it's called for the first time, the window handle is stored in class object which is used for later for lookup and the original win32 procedure is called. For window hooks/enumeration handlers, you can add the pointer to the class object in the user parameter which is used for lookup.
• Software exceptions (like XCPT_SIGNAL_BREAK caused by pressing Ctrl-Break) are supported, but hardware exceptions (like "drive not ready") are not supported.  The Win32 hardware exception model is almost, but not quite, like the OS/2 model, so a little work is still needed.
• 16-bit <-> 32-bit thunks will not be supported.  Unfortunately, all Win95 MIDI apps need a 16-bit DLL in order to do accurate timing.
• There is a 512 MB limitation problem.  OS/2 (except for OS/2 Warp Server Advanced SMP) has a 512 MB limitation per process.  Unfortunately, some Win32 apps (notably MS Word) force themselves to be loaded above 512 MB, and therefore they cannot be converted.  The limit for Win32 is 2 GB.  The limit for OS/2 Warp Server Advanced SMP is 3 GB.  Hopefully, IBM will correct the situation in a fixpack.

---

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the difference between Win32, Win95, and WinNT?

Win32 is the name of an API (Application Programming Interface) that both Win95 and WinNT support.  API's are used by programmers.  An API is a collection of services that an operating system provides for applications to use.  Most applications are written to a specific API for a specific operating system.  Since both Win95 and WinNT support the Win32 API (with minor differences), it's very easy to write an application that works on both Win95 and WinNT at the same time.  An application which runs on Win95 and WinNT is called a Win32 application.

What is Open32?

The name given for the Win32 API as implemented under OS/2 is Open32.  Open32 is not the complete Win32 API - many functions are missing. The biggest software vendor who uses Open32 is Lotus - all of their new OS/2 applications use the Open32 API extensively.

What's Win32s?

There are several versions of Win32s.  The most recent is version 1.30.  Unfortunately, Win-OS/2 only supports Win32s 1.25.  This means that there are a number of Windows 3.1 applications which will not work under OS/2 simply because they need a higher level of Win32s.

Can I convert 16-bit Windows 3.1 applications?

What about the legal issues?

Screen Shots

Solitaire and GDI demo (1024 x 768 x 256)

Quake II (1024 x 768 x 256)

PE2LX - The EXE/DLL file translator

Some key differences are:

• EXE file layout:
• PE consists of sections for code, data, resources, imports, exports, debug, TLS.
• LX is basically the same, but called objects.  Structure is very different though.
• Fixups (imported functions)
• PE: One or more pages with imported apis (IMPORT section). Win32 apps call imported apis by referencing a specific offset into these pages
•           LX: Every call to an imported function has a fixup (so the fixup points to the offset portion of the opcode for a call)
• Resources
• LX: Plain array of resources (each resource starts after a src32 structure:
• struct rsrc32                /* Resource Table Entry */
• {
•    unsigned short  type;     /* Resource type */
•    unsigned short  name;     /* Resource name */
•    unsigned long   cb;       /* Resource size */
•    unsigned short  obj;      /* Object number */
•    unsigned long   offset;   /* Offset within object */
• };
• PE: Resources stored into a tree, which consists of 4 levels:
1. resource type
2. name ids (numeric or strings)
3. language
4. (leafs) actual resources
• Platform supprt
• LX has support for 16 bit EXE's
• PE only 32 bit, but also for other platforms (PPC, Alpha, MIPS)

• Read in and store all the data sections (read-only & read/write) without modifications in the OS/2 EXE.
• Read the code section(s) and put a single page in front of it in the OS/2 exe.  This code handles some differences between OS/2 and win32.
• Ignore the Win32 debug sections.  Read import section (contains imported API's) and convert it to the OS/2 import format.
• Read export section (DLL's only) and convert to OS/2 export format.
• Read internal fixup section (if present) and also convert it.
• Read all the resources (if present) and convert them to OS/2 format (Open32 requirement).
• Save OS/2 EXE/DLL.

Supplemental DLL's - Filling the holes in Open32

To do this, supplemental DLL's are provided.  These DLL's contain not only those API functions that are not in Open32, but they can also contain replacements for those functions that are in Open32 but do not work correctly.

In addition, these DLL's can also contain pre-processing for some Open32 API's.  For instance, a particular Open32 API could perhaps implement only a portion of the functionality of its Win32 counterpart. The stub function in the supplemental DLL could perform the missing task and then call upon the Open32 DLL to handle the rest.

The stub functions in the supplemental DLL's all have a prefix of "OS2" (although they are not exported as such).  The reason for this is that the converted EXE must link not only to all of the supplemental DLL's, but also to the Open32 DLL (PMWINX.DLL), because PMWINX.DLL does most of the real work (after all, it is an implementation of the Win32 API).  All functions must have unique names, so if PMWINX.DLL has a function called "ReadFile", there cannot be a function with that same name in the any of the supplemental DLL's, because then OS/2 wouldn't know which version to use when the application calls "ReadFile".  So when pe2lx converts the EXE to OS/2 format, it also changes all of the API names.  "ReadFile" becomes "OS2ReadFile".

There are three different categories of Open32 API's:

• A Win32 API that is not in Open32.  Besides whole categories of API's (like all DirectX API's), there are partiticular functions that for some odd reason, are just not part of Open32.  An example is VirtualAlloc(LPVOID lpvAddress, DWORD cbSize, DWORD fdwAllocationType, DWORD fdwProtect).  The stub function implements this API by calling DosAllocMem.
• An Open32 function that is so buggy that it's useless and needs to be completely replaced by a stub function in one of the supplemental DLL's.  So far, none have been found.
• An Open32 function that's missing something small, something that can be made-up with a little extra code in a supplemental DLL.  Sometimes it's just a missing or broken sub-feature, sometimes the parameters need to be converted on the fly.
• Lots of apis that have procedure addresses as parameters need extra code due to the difference in calling convention.
• All the indirect dialog creation API's (those that have a parameter to a dialog template structure instead of a resource id; i.e. CreateDialogIndirect) contain extra code to convert Win32 dialogs to OS/2 format on-the-fly. This is a requirement of Open32
• There's also one that's a bit buggy: HHOOK SetWindowsHookA(int idHook, HOOKPROC hkprc).  This one doesn't work for hooktype WH_CBT.

Who's on the Project  UPDATED!

LinkExchange Member