[Coco] 64k memory limit (was) CP/M emulator for OS9/6809

[Bill Pierce]

Wayne,
The 1.5.2b version of Mess with Becker Port is still being worked on. The version Richard linked has some serious problems and has to be reworked.
The beta testing of MShell is no hurry because I broke it today and now I've got to fix it LOL
I was adding some new cool features and all of a sudden it quit working on the real Coco, but worked in Vcc... then in trying to isolate that problem, it no longer works in Vcc either. I should have it back up and running within the week, even if I have to backtrace and remove the new features and get it back to what I had it. My last backup was right before I got working again after 2 mpnths, so I definately don't want to go back that far, though I may have to. It's usually the same problem, some rogue pointer sending data into never-never land and crashing the system.

The virtual memory concept is pretty easy (in theory) and should work in Basic09 fine as Basic09 has all the needed calls built in.
The whole theory is to use the "get/put" buffers. You can assign as many g/p buffers as you have free memory. The default size is 8k, regardless of what you assign, 8k is allocated.
What MShell does is maps a full 8k buffer into the 64k, writes to it using pointers until it's full, unmaps it and maps in the next. All buffers remain in protected memory until you kill them. All buffers have a unique ID and can be mapped back in at any time to be read/modified/or written to. What get's complicated is the pointer structure to keep up with what buffer and where in that buffer the data is located.
MShell actually use 3 such buffer structures, each independant of the other. Each can also expand to the limits of memory. The buffers are allocated in "Group" & "buffer#". Each Group can have up to 255 buffer#s, each 8k in size. The mapping routines I use, basically consist of 3 or 4 cmds that keep my "current" pointer always pointing to the right buffer. When I move to the next data block, the pointers automaticall up and call/create new/old buffers as needed. All of which is invesible to the programmer as well as the user (once it's all set up :-)
It's all in the tech ref manual and the basic09 manual as well as the windows manual. They just never told anyone that those graphics buffers would actually hold any kind of data you want to put in them. It was assumed they would only work with graphics data.

I'll let you know when I get MShell back up again :-)
 

Bill Pierce
"Today is a good day... I woke up" - Ritchie Havens
 

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