Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!rutgers!sri-spam!ames!amdahl!drivax!holloway
From: holloway@drivax.UUCP (Bruce Holloway)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Many questions
Message-ID: <2812@drivax.UUCP>
Date: 9 Dec 87 17:51:51 GMT
References: <19871207191413.3.JRD@GRACKLE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
Reply-To: holloway@drivax.UUCP (Bruce Holloway)
Organization: Digital Research, Inc.
Lines: 47

In article <19871207191413.3.JRD@GRACKLE.SCRC.Symbolics.COM> jrd@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.SYMBOLICS.COM (John R. Dunning) writes:
>Hi all.  Here's my weekly batch of wierd questions.

>What if anything has happened w/r/t fixing the dreaded '40 directory'
>bug?  I saw a lot of discussion of the problem and symptoms, but no
>mention of a fix.  I've recently gotten a hard disk, and so am now in a
>position to get screwed by this bug.

As far as I know, Atari hasn't fixed the problem, but they sort of distribute
FOLDRXXX.PRG which delays the problem, perhaps indefinitely.


>Is there a recent copy of Spacewar available?  The one in the archives
>appears to be mono only (I use color) and the one on UMIX.CC.UMICH.EDU
>is corrupted; at least neither ARC on my ST nor ARC on a Un*x can read
>it.

A color version came over the net awhile back, and is probably available on
any timesharing service you can think of (People/Link, for example...)

>I'm trying to understand the difference between .O files (as produced by
>C backends, I guess) and executables, ie .TTPs etc.  It looks to me like
>they're the same format (both relocatable) and that the only net
>difference is that in the executable, all the TEXT psects from the .Os
>are concatenated together, all the DATA psects ditto, etc, and that
>references are resolved.  If that's true, it seems like the linker's
>pretty trivial.  If not, what am I missing?  Also, if my supposition
>about the linker's true, what's RELMOD for?

The linker also can search through libraries for unresolved routines, and
only pull out the modules you need. For almost two years now, the Atari
developer's kit's linker has been LINK68, which doesn't require RELMOD.

RELMOD just translated the fixup information to a more compact format. The
format used with CP/M-68K added a LONG WORD (4 bytes) to a file for each
code or data reference. The smaller format just saves the type of reference
it is. I think. It's been a while. But you get the idea.

>Are there any PD debuggers around?

No good ones.


-- 
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* Bruce Holloway - Terminal Netnews Addict       uunet!amdahl!drivax!holloway *
* ALBATROSS, ATARI*TROS @ Plink                            ALBATROSS @ Delphi *
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