RE: [MiNT] New HSMINST.XDD

[Jo-Even.Skarstein@gjensidige.no]

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Ingo Schmidt [SMTP:ingo.schmidt@stud-mail.uni-wuerzburg.de]
> Sent:	Monday, July 26, 1999 12:47 PM
> To:	MiNT
> Subject:	Re: [MiNT] New HSMINST.XDD
> 
> And I have observed another strange effect:
> With my own RSVX.PRG - which only differs from the original one in that
> way that it doesn´t *copy* the RSVF-Cookie, it just *renames* it - I
> 
If you only renames the cookie then you might as well just run HS-Modem
after MiNT anyway. If the RSVF-cookie doesn't exist MiNT doesn't know it's
there, and will never use RSVF.

> hardly get any debug messages apart from the usual ones. So the message
> above never shows up. But the price for this is that, for example, the
> pppd doesn´t hang up the modem any more.
> 
That's because you're using the TOS xbios-devices which are very buggy, DTR
doesn't work. Btw. this applies to the LAN-driver on Falcons too, even with
HS-Modem :-(

> How can the simple RSVX.PRG have such a strong effect on the whole
> HSModem thing?
> 
If MiNT finds the RSVF-cookie when it boots, it saves it's value for
"personal use" (i.e. for it's own serial-devices), and deletes it by simply
not moving it to the new cookie-jar. This prevents other programs to find
this cookie and use the drivers directly (could confuse the hell out of
MiNT's own drivers and/or programs that use them).

RSVx.PRG is a hack that works around this:

First it must be run after HS-Modem, but before MiNT. If it finds the
RSVF-cookie, it creates a cookie called "RSVX" and copies the value of RSVF
to the new cookie. Then you have to run RSVx.PRG again, but this time
*after* MiNT. It now finds the RSVX-cookie, which it renames to RSVF.
RSVF-aware applications can now find and use the drivers again, but at the
expence of MiNT's own devices. Use it with care. I suspect the XDD prevents
many of these (possible) problems, but I have never used it so I don't know.

> Well, I hope one day I´ll get MiNT-Net running on my Milan...
> 
You don't need RSVx or the XDD at all to run MiNT-Net. Just run HS-Modem
before MiNT and everything should work just fine. If you have
GEM-applications that can't use MiNT's devices but needs RSVF, you can
easily fool MiNT to copy the RSVF-cookie too during boot. It's a hack, but
it works...:

Load mint.prg into a binary editor, like qed. Search for "RSVF". Replace the
second occurance of this with something else (of equally length!), like
"RxVF". I haven't had a look at the recent sources, but this used to work
with 1.14.*-kernels atleast.

Jo Even Skarstein