Now I have been completely stumped.

I was surprised to learn that SMSQ/e for the Gold Card/Super Gold Card is still available with or without the colour drivers, plus the standard SMSQ/e is now at v3.08 and the colour driver version is at v3.03.

There is no easy way whatsoever to know which version is being used by a user. Both have the same configuration option about the colour depth to use (QL or 256 colour mode), even though on the standard SMSQ/e this has no effect (since the colour drivers are not available), and in fact appears to crash the Aurora !! The only suggestion is to look at the file size for SMSQ_GOLD

What is worse, my amended machine code routine to detect whether the GD2 drivers are available or not, although it works on the new PTR_GEN and WMAN, still manages to return 1 on the standard smsq/e (it also crashes the system at the this point for some reason - the colour driver smsq/e doesn't). Just to recap, what it attempts to do is:

*GD2 is present - however are the colour drivers present?
moveq #-1,d3
moveq #12,d1 System Palette Colour 12
moveq #-1,d2 No combination colour
moveq #$52,d0 IOW.INKP - try to set ink using system palette
trap #3
tst.l d0
bne no_GD2 System Trap does not exist - therefore no colour drivers


          lea.l     Hardware_Flag,a4
          moveq     #1,d1
          move.w    #0,(a4)              Store GD2 drivers present flag
          bra       float_ret

I guess that trap #3, with D0=#$52 does not return an error on the latest smsq/e for Gold Card (even though it should be not implemented as the colour drivers are not present). I guess that this trap also leads to the crash somehow... It also seems odd that it returns not implemented on the new PTR_GEN and WMAN (where they are used on a QDOS system), but does not return not implemented (or any other error) on a standard SMSQ/e without colour drivers..

Maybe there is some reason for this discrepancy I do not know....

Personally I do not think that both versions of SMSQ/e should still be available for the Gold Card - surely just the colour driver version should now be available (although I wonder what happens if you try and run this on a Gold Card QL or one without the Aurora motherboard??). Certainly the two versions should have a different configuration block and standard smsq/e should act the same way as the new PE acts on a QL without high colour drivers...

--
Rich Mellor
RWAP Services
26 Oak Road, Shelfield, Walsall, West Midlands WS4 1RQ

http://www.rwapservices.co.uk/

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