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EnigmA Amiga Run 1996 February
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EnigmA AMIGA RUN 04 (1996)(G.R. Edizioni)(IT)[!][issue 1996-02][Skylink CD III].iso
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apm3303.lha
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AddPicassoMem.doc
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1994-11-06
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VERSION 33.03
This is the second public release of AddPicassoMem (APM for short) a program
to use the memory of the VillageTronic Picasso-II graphics card as public fast
memory.
WHY I DID IT
I know it's a shame to waste the graphics capabilities of this great card and
use just its memory, but my A3000 has still V36 ROM's and sometimes I fallback
to kickstart 1.3 to play some game... Under 1.3 The Picasso-II can't be used
as graphics card, and its memory stays there doing nothing!
I have 2 Mb chip and 8 Mb fast, and the Zorro2 bus performance is not so
exciting: Zorro2 memory cards are much slower than chip ram on A3000's, but
one night I was thinking to all the A2000ers who maybe may like a utility like
this: how about a 1Mb or 2Mb fast ram expansion for free?
I strongly recommend you to use your Picasso-II to e.g. show Hajime Sorayama's
or Boris Valejo's JPEGs rather than to contain some million numbers, anyway if
you really need more memory this may be a cheap solution.
CONFIGURING A CARD
"Configure a card" means tell AmigaDOS what the card is made for.
Once a card is configured via the BindDrivers command it can't be configured
again (until you reset, naturally), so the first step to make APM work is NOT
to run the BindDrivers command.
If you configure the card using APM, BindDrivers will not try to reconfigure
it until you don't remove the Picasso-II memory chunk from public list.
This means that when Picasso-II memory is available for public use, the
village.library will not be loaded and the AmigaDOS thinks that the card is
just an expensive fast memory expansion.
Configuring the Picasso-II using APM gives you one advantage: if you need to
use the card for its graphics capabilities, you can still backup a move and
dismount the memory (if nobody is using it).
Naturally to reconfigure the card as graphics engine you will need to run
BindDrivers and then you will not be able to use APM again, but you can mount
and dismount Picasso-II memory as many times as you like, until you don't
run the BindDrivers command.
USAGE
APM is a stand alone CLI/Shell-only program that can run under kickstart 1.2
and later releases.
If you give it no arguments it will try to mount the memory chunk, if you give
it the "remove" switch argument it will try to remove the memory chunk, any
other argument will show you a help line. All the rest is automagic:
starting address and size of the card are fetched directly from the card,
priority will be the lowest fast ram priority less one, or zero if no fast ram
is installed.
Return codes on program exit may give a rough idea of what happened:
OK (0) = All right, memory has been added/removed to/from the public list
WARN (10) = Error in the command line arguments
FAIL (20) = APM is not able to add/remove memory to/from the public list
Every return code is followed by a standard output message. Warn status is
followed by "REMOVE/S: TRY TO REMOVE PICASSO-II PUBLIC MEMORY", okay status
can be followed by one of this two messages:
ADDING MEMORY $aaaaaaaa-$bbbbbbbb, PRI: (-)ccc
memory chunk has successfully been added to the public list.
card is now in ram only mode and can't be used as graphics engine.
aaaaaaaa is the chunk's starting address
bbbbbbbb is the chunk's ending address
ccc is the chunk's priority
PICASSO-II MEMORY REMOVED
memory chunk has successfully been removed from the public list.
card is now ready for a new configuration as graphics engine or again as a ram
only card.
Finally, the following are the fail status messages:
CAN'T OPEN EXPANSION.LIBRARY
expansion is a resident library and must always be available to any program,
so this error message should never appear. If it does appear, maybe you are
trying to run APM on a 5000 MegaMips Amiga. Just load the last (I know, it is
20 years old) 680x0 version of the operating system and try again! ;-)
PICASSO-II DRIVER ALREADY IN USE
cannot add memory when village.library is loaded.
village.library is the video driver of the card, if it is found in memory, the
card is already configured as graphics board. this is due to the BindDrivers
mambo-jambo (see "configuring a card").
PICASSO-II CARD IS IN SEGMENTED MODE
cannot add memory if the card has been installed in segmented mode.
this will happen only on 68000 or 68010 Amiga's with 8Mb of fast ram other
than the one on the Picasso-II. The largest segment is 1/16th of the memory
on the card, I think adding 64Kb to the public list makes no sense.
PICASSO-II CARD NOT CORRECTLY INSTALLED
cannot add memory if the card is not correctly installed or not installed at
all. for my own information: does the card work in graphics engine mode?
PICASSO-II CARD ALREADY IN USE
cannot add memory if the card is currently configured either in ram only or
graphics engine mode. if the card is working in ram only mode you can
dismount the memory and re-mount it (why?). if the card is working in
graphics engine mode there is nothing to do other than resetting the Amiga if
you want to use the card as memory expansion (BindDrivers mambo-jambo).
CAN'T WRITE TO PICASSO-II MEMORY
cannot add memory if the card is write protected.
when you boot, the memory on Picasso-II can't be written, but after a bit of
initialization it can be write enabled.
since I don't have any technical doc on waking up this card, I wrote my own
initialization routine which can have some wrong timing. I think it will
always work thanks to Buster, if it does not, it's a programmer's fault :(
CAN'T FIND PICASSO-II MEMORY ADDRESS
cannot add memory if the software coordinates of the card are unknown.
when you boot, each card can be put anywhere in memory. If there's not enough
addressing space for all the cards, some card may be left off.
this error should appear if you didn't set correctly the segmented mode jumper
on the card, in other words the card is in normal mode when it should be in
segmented mode.
PICASSO-II MEMORY ALREADY IN PUBLIC LIST
cannot add memory twice.
you already added the memory to the public list (now the only thing you can
do, if you wish, is to remove it).
PICASSO-II MEMORY NOT IN PUBLIC LIST
cannot remove the memory chunk if it hasn't been added.
this message is shown when you didn't add the memory to the public list but
it also appears if you renamed the memory chunk. actually the case dependent
chunk name is "picasso2 memory", you can restore this name and try again.
MANGLED PICASSO-II MEMORY HEADER
cannot remove the memory chunk if it was modified by someone else.
maybe someone moved the address of the memory header node. then APM can do
nothing legal to rescue the original structure.
PICASSO-II MEMORY IN USE
cannot remove the memory chunk while it is in use.
someone allocated part of the Picasso-II memory for its purposes, so the whole
chunk cannot be freed until all the memory has been released. if Picasso-II
memory is not free, APM tries to flush all the resident modules before giving
up. I flagged Picasso-II memory in a way that system friendly reset resistant
modules can't be allocated in its space (fast, public, 24bitdma).
DISTRIBUTION
This package is released under the concept of freeware, the package must be
distributed as one whole. The distributor may charge a fee up to the cost of
the medium for the entire package.
This package, or part of it, cannot be included with commercial distributions
without written permission from the author, however this document is a written
permission to include this package in the Picasso-II firmware disks and in any
CD-ROM collection.
NO WARRANTY
This package is provided as is, without warranty of any kind, either expressed
or implied.
Should the package prove defective, you assume the entire cost of all
necessary servicing, repair or correction even if I have been advised of the
possibility of such damages.
I'm not responsible of the results of the use of the package.
HISTORY
33.01 (02-May-94) First public release
33.02 (24-Oct-94) Testers only release
33.03 (06-Nov-94) BUGFIX: APM 33.01 returns "already in public list" if there
are other Zorro2 expansion boards AND if the Picasso-II is
not in the first slot (I accidentally swapped the board
address and the board size variables in a subroutine).
Thanks to:
Gabriele Bonora for the bugreport,
Gabriele Greco for the bugreport and the hint for bugfix
(Thanks again: That bug would be very hard to find
without your source-code level help).
SUPPORT
If you have any suggestions, bug reports, or wish to let me know something
about the package feel free to contact me at nsoggia@telnetwork.it
Have fun,
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