Kickstart 1.3 ROM

[earok]

I seem to have some issues getting certain projects to run on KickStart 1.3 (The same projects seem to run alright on KickStart 2.0 even accounting for RAM, Chipset and CPU)

What sort of things could cause a Blitz game to not even start on KickStart 1.3 specifically?

[Daedalus]

Hmmm, to not even start it has to be something pretty fundamental, like trying to open a library that doesn't exist. Does it crash or just return with no output? It's sometimes hard to tell what's happening inside particular Blitz commands, but the documentation usually says when they're 2.0-dependent.

I would suggest running it on Kickstart 2.0 with SnoopDOS to see what it's opening, and check if any of them are missing on 1.3.

[idrougge]

Sounds like a certain module player library.

[Anakirob]

From memory the CIA ProTracker library isn't 1.3 compatible. And the DisplayLibrary can also possibly utilise functions of the ECS display chipset which are unsupported under OCS.

[earok]

Cheers guys, all good points I'll do some investigation.

[Cylon]

WBStartup maybe, Commodities.lib, exec:AllocVec(). And all stuff you've incorporated from NDK 37.x+. Stubs of gfx.lib for instance.

[Shatterhand]

Earok, I am having the same problem with my game... I get a "Recoverable Error" when trying to load the game.. it doesn't crash the machine but then the game doesn't run either....

I didn't use any external lib, I am using only internal Blitz stuff.

[earok]

I never solved it for my one, but since my game recommends 1mb of chipram and a 68020 I figured there wouldn't be many on KS1.3 that would be able to play it anyway.

This may be painful but it might be worthwhile doing a bunch of NPRINTs throughout the code, run it and see which lines it prints before it crashes - which should narrow it down a lot.

[Anakirob]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

I didn't use any external lib, I am using only internal Blitz stuff.

A number of "internal Blitz" commands do actually require system libraries, diskfont.library and mathtrans.library were two files I almost always needed in my Libs: directory whenever I was putting my Blitz coded projects on to a floppy.

If the program can't find the libraries it requires then that will obviously cause it to fail.

[idrougge]

That mode of failure is downright awful.

[earok]

I don't know what I did exactly but my game now works on KickStart 1.3.

It could maybe be because of ditching BlitzFonts and implementing my own text system (possibly I forgot to include DiskFont etc), though also I plugged a 68000 specific bug which could be related (I was doing Peek.w on an odd numbered address!)

[Daedalus]

Yep, I remember coming across a list of libraries that are used by Blitz's internal commands (and so would need to be included with any self-booting projects using those commands), but I can't find it now. A good start would be the Libs drawer on the Blitz 2.1 floppy - that should contain all the libs used by the standard Deflibs commands.

[earok]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Yep, I remember coming across a list of libraries that are used by Blitz's internal commands (and so would need to be included with any self-booting projects using those commands), but I can't find it now. A good start would be the Libs drawer on the Blitz 2.1 floppy - that should contain all the libs used by the standard Deflibs commands.

Handy to know! Thanks for that.

[Pat the Cat]

Originally Posted by earok

What sort of things could cause a Blitz game to not even start on KickStart 1.3 specifically?

Not really Bltiz related, but the 1.3 Setpatch command is often very necessary to get certain programs running with 1.3.

It was an issue for self-booting floppies back when that was the only means of distributing software, and I mention it now ONLY because it might be related to this issue. Self booting floppies for 2.0+ will sometimes fail to work properly on earlier systems because they don't execute a 1.3 Setpatch before doing anything else.

For programmers doing new code, testing for this and including a "how to fix" guide or readme for 1.3 users is one way to address this issue.