-------------------------------------------------- From: "Peter Persson" <pep.fishmoose@gmail.com> Sent: Monday, May 31, 2010 2:38 PM To: "Jo Even Skarstein" <joska@online.no> Cc: <mint@lists.fishpool.fi> Subject: Re: [MiNT] Allocation of video RAM
In theory, the memory could be used for other stuff as well. This is an FPGA design. And there could very well be a good reason to have low level access to a block of VRAM in the future.
So basically you need something like the xbios-call ct60_vmalloc() on the CT60/63, except that it needs to be handled by MiNT to allow memory protection to work also for this bit of RAM?
A good example of this is the Hades. It doesn't have any low level APIs for allocation of video ram, no low level APIs for screen resolutions etc. In the end, if I want to make a 320x200x8bpp game, I have to resort to hardware banging. All because there is no API to do what I want. In the end that is such a mess that I'd rather just avoid using fullscreen graphics on that platform. And that's a pity,because it's a great machine.
Well, is memory protection important to these people? Aren't these the same people that wrote directly to the shifter registers on the ST? ;-)
Anyway, perhaps this xbios-call does what you need. I don't know how it fits with memory protection though.
Jo Even