Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!gatech!cwjcc!mailrus!ames!pasteur!agate!labrea!decwrl!pyramid!leadsv!laic!nova!darin From: darin@nova.laic.uucp (Darin Johnson) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech Subject: Re: Unix device drivers Keywords: Unix device drivers Message-ID: <379@laic.UUCP> Date: 2 Dec 88 01:07:35 GMT References: <5438@louie.udel.EDU> <5253@cbmvax.UUCP> <77@sns.UUCP> <5290@cbmvax.UUCP> <9025@gryphon.COM> <5358@cbmvax.UUCP> Sender: news@laic.UUCP Reply-To: darin@nova.UUCP (Darin Johnson) Organization: Lockheed AI Center, Menlo Park Lines: 30 This brings up an apropos point. I have been trying to think of a way (but haven't actually gotten much coding done) of booting a non-AmigaDos OS. What I would like to do, is be able to use the trackdisk driver, rather than talk directly to the drive (ick). However, since I don't want to use Exec, I am unsure if trackdisk will work (is it multitasking, or just a routine?). Another alternative would be to keep everything running under Exec until I get enough stuff loaded into memory, and then take over. It might even be possible to do an OpenLibrary and use that to load the new OS, but would this work before DOS is initialized? Does anyone have any interesting ideas about how Amiga UNIX does/will do this (since they have to bootstrap also...)? Other wierd problems... The RKM manual is vague about what state the machine is in during/after the bootstrap code. When I return from the bootblock code, is the Amiga non-multitasking, or do I have to disable Exec? Also, since I would like to create executables from Manx (or Asm68K) object files, should I just be compatable with the standard executable format and use 'ln' or 'blink'? If not, how does one actually link something (this isn't discussed in any of my compiler design books)? Of course, now I plan on getting mail from people wondering why I'm not satisfied with AmigaDOS, why kick out Exec, etc. Just because I want to, thats why! And when that gets boring, I'll write a compiler, so there... Darin Johnson (leadsv!laic!darin@pyramid.pyramid.com) "It's true, the world's not perfect... But we've submitted an SPR"