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From: gclark@utcsri.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Caution about OpenDevice() and tasks
Message-ID: <4546@utcsri.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 9-Apr-87 13:30:08 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsri.4546
Posted: Thu Apr  9 13:30:08 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 11-Apr-87 10:49:22 EST
Reply-To: gclark@utcsri.UUCP (Graeme Clark)
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
Lines: 14
Keywords: Exec AmigaDOS DOS OpenDevice tasks
Summary: You can't open disk-resident devices unless you are a process

Sender:

I just learned the hard way that OpenDevice() can be used safely to 
open a disk-resident device (the serial.device, for example) only from
AmigaDOS processes, not from plain exec tasks.  This is the case because
the "Open" code (at least for some devices) assumes it can just call
DOS routines such as LoadSeg() to read in the driver code if it is not
present, and DOS routines expect to be called by DOS processes.  This 
restriction was quite surprising to me, and not documented anywhere as
far as I could tell.

Graeme Clark -- Dept. of Computer Science, Univ. of Toronto, Canada M5S 1A4
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