Re: GEMDOS re-entrancy

[Ulrich Kuehn <kuehn@GOEDEL.UNI-MUENSTER.DE>]

Hello,

|>I was under the impression that parts of MiNT were not re-entrant.  If you
|>can open files and such on a Minix drive (without calling the ROM GEMDOS)
|>and all the functions to do so are re-entrant, then why block GEMDOS when
|>you could just make a real TOSFS that doesn't call the ROM.
|>
Yes, that is it, indeed. But everybody sees the necessity to have such a
TOSFS, but nobody develops it :(
But maybe it is good, that there is still no code around, so we could wait
for the chicago fs and implement it then all-in-one... 

|>Otherwise, what parts of MiNT aren't re-entrant?  Time functions could be
|>allowed to block, as most other things, as long as disk IO doesn't lock the
|>whole system.  As for DMA hard disk IO having problems with the BLiTTER,
|>isn't there a semaphore for this?  Yeah, here it is, flock @ 0x0000043E.W
|>
That is what I suggested a long time ago, but as far as I know AHDI does
not use it. It just sets it for every access, but never checks it before
doing so :(

|>sound DMA channels separate from others?  What about floppy access?  IS
|>that doomed to lock up the system?
|>
Well, yes and no. The floppy data transfer is done via DMA, the same DMA
channel as the ACSI HD interface uses. So it will lock out that hard disk
access. But on a TT, there should be a chance that there can be floppy
transfer at the same time as SCSI transfer... provided that there is the
software to support it.

Regards,
Ulrich