Re: RESET vector in MiNT

[Konrad Kokoszkiewicz <draco@mi.com.pl>]

Hi Petr,

We cannot rely on a conditions like that below, because its not only the
TT030 what has proper FastRAM I believe. For example, Hades and Milan
would have proper FastRAM as well (I think).

> if ( (MiNT is in FastRAM) && (this machine is not Atari TT030) )
> {
> 	/* this is not proper TT-RAM, it might not be available after reset */
> 	do_not_install_reset_vector();
> }
> else {
> 	/* do what you did for ages */
> }

The part I quite don't understand is why it seems to crash on TT030 (well,
I didn't check on mine, 14-day uptime is hard to sacrifice...). The patch
is as follows:

	if (core_malloc(-1L, 1) == 0)
		*(long *)0x000005a8L = 0L;

where the 0x000005a8L is the address of the GEMDOS variable _ramvalid. If
the computer has no Fast RAM at this time (it should do, even on AB040, as
the proper driver is loaded before MiNT I believe?), the core_malloc()
should return a zero, so the _ramvalid is about to be cleared. If the
computer _has_ some Fast RAM (TT030, AB040, Mega + PAK/68 etc), the
core_malloc() should return a nonzero value, thus the _ramvalid shouldn't
be touched.

Also, I quite don't understand how the MiNT would be able to execute its
reset routine anyways on AB040, regardless of whether the patch is
reliable or not. It just always should crash this time, even on previous
versions of MiNT. That is: if on AB040 the reset makes the FastRAM to
disappear, any MiNT version should crash on Ctrl/Alt/Del.

The most easy solution of this problem is to remove the patch above with
all the VM manager altogether, because it is not stable anyways. Then
release an "official" and "stable" 1.14.7 ;) What do you think?

--
Konrad M.Kokoszkiewicz
|mail: draco@mi.com.pl                  | Atari Falcon030/TT030/65XE |
|http://www.orient.uw.edu.pl/~conradus/ |  *** FreeMiNT 1.14.7. ***  |

** Ea natura multitudinis est,
** aut servit humiliter, aut superbe dominatur (Liv. XXIV,25)
*************************************************************
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