🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3784@cup.portal.com> Jinfu@cup.portal.com writes:
>wes@obie.UUCP writes:
>>
>>Have you tried turning off the blitter from the desktop?  Most ST
>>wordprocessors crash when the blitter is turned on, run OK with it
>>turned off.
>>
>Do you have experience with this or you just heard from somewhere? I
>haven't encountered any crashes with BliTTER on with all kind of programs
>(not just word processor) except few games (not crash but just too fast
>to play). 
>
>Don't spread rumors unless you know what you talk about.
>
>/* flame off */
>
>
>Jinfu Chen (has BLiTTER since last Nov.)

There is a problem with a bunch of programs that did
not provide the entire required global arrays for the
VDI.  With the old line-A VDI stuff, much of these
arrays were left unused.  With the blitter, much more
of these array space is used.

Also, there are several differences in UNDOCUMENTED
AES calls.  Several applications used a function to
return information about the menu/alert buffer
(size and address) which stopped working in the
blitter ROMs.  When my application broke on the
new ROMs, I called Atari, and they told me that this
particular call was from an early version of GEM, and
was never documented or supported on the ST.  In this
case, they were right.  The Sybex GEM programming book
lists this function, but the DRI and Abucus docs do not.

Some word processors and games used undocumented locations
in low memory which were used by the old ROMs to hold pointers
to routines and buffers, and many of these have moved in the
new ROMs.

A few programs (mostly games) put buffers at the top of
RAM, above the screen memory, and would occassionally fetch
a word or byte from the location one past the top of memory.
On a machine with < 4 meg. of RAM, this is not a problem.
The MMU (or is it the GLUE) generates a buss error when a
user-mode program accesses in the range above 4meg and below
the ROM.  Not the fault of the Blitter or the new ROMs at all.

Lots and lots of programs do not follow the rules, and do
not work on the Mega.

The above is from direct experience.  I develop products that
are sold for the ST, and sell well.  I don't just fiddle around.
I do this full time!


					Daniel A. Glasser
Disclaimer:				Mark Williams Co.
    I speak for myself, nobody		1430 W. Wrightwood Ave.
    at MWC has approved what I 		Chicago, IL 60614
    post, including myself.
-- 
		Daniel A. Glasser	dag@chinet.UUCP
    One of those things that goes "BUMP!!! (ouch!)" in the night.
 ...!att-ih!chinet!dag | ...!ihnp4!mwc!dag | ...!ihnp4!mwc!gorgon!dag