MemPatch (FinalWriter users read this!)

Here is a patch:

MemPatch

Its a quick and dirty hack I just knocked together in 5 mins. It basically patches the 68k AllocMem(), and AllocVec() functions and causes them to allocate an extra 8 bytes at the start and end of the buffer. It also places the requested allocation size just before the returned buffer in AllocVec() which some badly written software use.

I don't recommend installing this patch as a matter of course, only install it if you find it makes a particular piece of software you need start working.

Its a very ugly hack, and I would hope that someone could take this patch and make a per-application patch instead of a global patch like this one. (in other words, I hope this becomes obsolete very soon :)

Someone told me that it got Final Writer running under OS4 Final, although your mileage may vary.

(Oh, and in case someone was wondering, it wasn't the missing size field from AllocVec that prevents FW from working; it just happily overwrites the ends of its buffers).

Oh yes! If you're putting it in your startup-sequence, DO NOT forget the "Run NIL:" since you can't quit the patch and it'll halt the bootsequence forever.

Some clever buggers about aint there !!

I had a feeling it wouldn't be too long before a workaround could be found.


Hope this works for Jeremy Reimer as well as we need some good articles writing !!

Cool

The problem that FW overwrites the end of its buffers. Does that also apply to AOS3.x, perhaps?

@xeron

Why not allocate 4 bytes more (12bytes in all) and place memsize in -4 to increse compatilible even more for 68k programmes?

Anyway good work!

RWO

It already allocates 16 bytes (8 each side of the allocation), and it already puts the memsize into the longword preceding the returned buffer address for AllocVec().