Re: MacMiNT/VTOS: system variables

[steve@mctavish.demon.co.uk (Steve Woodford)]

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.

Cheers, Steve