[Coco] Nitros9 users: How big are your OS9BOOTS ?

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 09 September 2013 15:02:11 Brett Gordon did opine:

> Hey Nitros users:  I wanted to do a quick suvey to find out how big your
> OS9BOOT files are.   I see the stock Nitros9 builds are max 27k.   My
> new-new cocoboot will be loading Nitros9 modules one-at-a-time but will
> only allow bootfiles that are 32k-ish in size.
> 
> https://sites.google.com/site/cocoboot2/home/nitros9booting
> 
> for more info
> 
> thanks in advance,

Boot size seems to be more related to how much memory the list of drivers 
in the boot needs.  When the sysram has been allocated, and no more exists, 
then the boot fails.  

Before the Great rewrite that split up the drivers into subparts, I once 
had a working boot, using a wp-rs as a 2nd monitor driver that totalled a 
hair short of 37k.

Now, with the drivers broken up, each needing its own buffer, I am out of 
sysram at around 33-34k.

Level 3 was designed to help that situation by segregating the rbf buffers 
from the scf buffers, giving each its own separate from the sysram working 
area, similar to what grfdrv does now I believe, but I suspect the dw stuff 
will need to be split out such that the scf functions are in one module, 
and the rbf functions in a separate module such that each can live happily 
in its own memory.  So a working level 3 drivewire boot probably isn't 
going to happen until such time as those conditions are satisfied.  
Properly 'segregated', I can see a level 3 boot that might push past the 
40k marker.

Done right, we'd need another $10 to $18 bytes of DP memory to keep track 
of all the gime maps we'd need to update at a context switch.  Unforch, 
that will not be easy, and will likely break lots of stuff we use now that 
were built with the old DP defs.  There be dragons...

Cheers, Gene
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