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From: ONM07@DMSWWU1A.BITNET (Julian F. Reschke)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
Subject: Re: How does one write a GDOS driver?
Message-ID: <91133.111332ONM07@DMSWWU1A.BITNET>
Date: 13 May 91 09:54:15 GMT
References: <91127.132420ONM07@DMSWWU1A.BITNET> <1334.05.91@janhh.hanse.de>
Lines: 32
Organisation: Westfaelische Wilhelms-Universitaet, Muenster, Germany

In article <1334.05.91@janhh.hanse.de>, jan@janhh.hanse.de (Jan Willamowius)
says:
>
>> Basically, you have to rewrite a whole new vdi. If you are familiar with
>> assembler, you should take a look at the trap dispatcher at the beginning
>> of META.SYS
>
>I don't quite agree. What you need is a trap dispatcher. True.
>Meta.Sys is a good example for that.
>
>Secondly, you need the code for all the functions to set and inquire
>parameters. That code is basically the same for all devide drivers.
>(From what I understand Atari supplies it with the GDOS Drivers Kit,
>which costs about $300.) If you're not rich take a look into some device
>driver. It's all in there.
>(BTW: The *old* versions have a symbol table!)
>
>What you have to write yourself is the code for the actual output.
>A dot matrix printer has to buffer te output for a whole page.
>It draws on a bitmap and then prints it. A plotter probalby is able to
>do the drawing right when it gets the command.
>
>Good luck,
>           Jan

All true, BUT: if you have written all this stuff, you HAVE written a
new VDI.

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