Re: MacMiNT/VTOS: system variables

[Julian Reschke <reschke@ESCHER.UNI-MUENSTER.DE>]

> 
> Eddy Morfan wrote:
> 
> > As I didn't read all the messages about this VTOS system variables problem, I
> > don't know if VTOS is aimed to run on motorola chips older than the 030, but
> > on 68030 or newer chips there is a simple way to solve this problem : the PMMU.
> > If it's unused or if it's possible to change its configuration then you simply
> > have to map the system variables area to a different place. So the applications
> > which don't need any access to the debbugger code located at the 0x400 place on
> > the target computers will find there the sysvars.
> 
> One thing to bear in mind about VTOS is that it really shouldn't have to
> mess with the PMMU, that's MiNT's job. I concentrated my efforts on just
> getting VTOS/VMiNT to work. Anything else would hopefully follow on as
> time allows.
> 
> To be honest, appart from some system software (Mintnet being a good
> example), only Mintlibs really needs to know about system variables.
> Since my VTOS/VMiNT setup can't run GEM applications and to all intents
> and purposes looks/feels like Unix, the system variables are not all
> that important. All the Gnu applications (with the exception of the ST
> version of 'df' which looks for _drvbits) compile and run straight
> out the box. As a result, it's unlikely I'll be making the effort to
> change MiNT (and it *is* up to MiNT) to re-map the system variable
> area.

Understood. However, there are some more: hz_200 to calculate things for
sleep () and so on. That's why it would be nice to have an absolutely easy
way to support the fact that those things are in a different place. I'm
not asking everybody to change their code to use that feature, but *if*
someone is willing to do the change, it shouldn't depend for *which*
MiNT the change is being done.

By the way: why does 'df' look into _drvbits? That's a bug. It should
use Dsetdrv (Dgetdrv ()). I'll try to remove all sysvar accesses from
my tools (ftp.uni-muenster.de/pub/atari/Gemini). How is VTOS handling
p_cookies?

-- 
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Julian F. Reschke, Hensenstr. 142, D-48161 Muenster
 eMail: reschke@math.uni-muenster.de jr@ms.maus.de
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