Re: [MiNT] /dev/

[joska@nuts.edu (Jo Even Skarstein)]

On Fri, 7 May 1999 12:58:39 +0300 (EEST), Martin-Eric Racine wrote:

> > HS-Modem does implement u:\dev\ for serial ports. The problem is that 
> > it is not fully compatible with MiNT's implementation which is official 
> > if I remember correctly.
> 
> Was it?  The story of HS-Modem and MiNT implementing the RSVF cookie
> sounds like the story of the Chicken and the Egg.  Which came first?

MiNT does not "implement" the RSVF-cookie, it utilize the RSVF-drivers
in it's own device-drivers if RSVF is present. RSVF implements (mostly)
the same features as you'd expect from a device-driver, but as Mikko
said, they're not entirely identical. MiNT handles these incompatibilities
in it's device-drivers.

There's also a *huge* difference in how the API is implemented: With MiNT
you simply use GEMDOS-calls, while HS-Modem functions are called through
pointers in a structure pointed to by a cookie. Mikko says it implements
u:\dev\ for serial-ports, I'm not sure what he means by that but it definitely
does *not* mean that you can Fopen("u:\\dev\\modem2"..) under SingleTOS...

> Anyways, MiNT obviously _is_ the officialy-adopted Atari spec, so it
> should have presedence over anything else, but if it turns out that
> both MagiC and HS-Modem use the same method, we might have to consider
> upgrading _our_ methods.
> 
> Perhaps someone familiar with all 3 systems could answer?

I don't know how MagiC handles the RSVF-cookie, but I do know that it has
device-drivers very similar to those in MiNT, and that it utilize HS-Modem
in pretty much the same way.

I would definitely vote against introducing the RSVF-interface in the kernel,
it's simply a very bad design. I suspect the reason it was introduced in the
first place was because it was the only way to do it in TOS.

As I said in another post here, the best solution would probably be to implement
u:\dev\ in TOS as well, preferably through MetaDOS. This would make it a lot easier
to write portable code, not to mention porting code from other platforms. Both
MiNT and MagiC has real devices, not using them is a very bad move.


/*
** Jo Even Skarstein    http://www.stud.ntnu.no/~josk/
**
**    beer - maria mckee - atari falcon - babylon 5
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