[Coco] My latest project

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 22 December 2013 22:15:32 Bill Pierce did opine:

> Gene, the dw4 limit comment was meaning that running my new MShell on a
> non-dw4 system (like vanilla MW OS9) would run, but would be limited to
> non-dw4 operations only.

I see.

> MShell on a dw4 system will have fully
> functional dw4 communications. In fact, I may be getting up with you
> later and finding out how to set up a terminal similar to yours to test
> some new functions for MShell.

Glad to help there if I can.
 
> And yes, those graphics functions are from scratch. MShell uses the same
> methods as Ultimuse3 in that the main program pipes all STDOUT to a
> graphics handler running in another 64k workspace. This gives room for
> more code. I'm also using a virtual memory system giving me about 256k
> of data buffer space and up 1.5 meg on a 2 meg system. If the memory is
> not mapped, the program will use it. I'm also using Ultimuse3's method
> of mapping in 8k submodules into the main's 64k workspace treating them
> as part of the main, therefore allowing me an "unlimited" number of
> modules I can run. Also, since any module forked" from the main will
> inherit the main's pipes, if I fork a module, it automatically sends
> it's output to the graphics handler. It's taken me about 3 years to
> understand how all this works within OS9. The cool thing is it's all
> transparent to the user. You gotta love OS9 :-)

Absolutely.  Your are describing fairly well how I wrote myram, which I 
tested at up to 1.5 megs worth of ramdisk on my 2 meg system.  Its all in 
OS9 system calls.  Its memory allocations are not dynamic, but when 
deinized, you can dmode the size, call for a directory listing and it will 
reinitialize itself at the new size in perhaps 200 milliseconds and show 
you an empty directory.

Cheers, Gene
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