QL Flightdeck - help needed

[RWAP]

This seems a really odd problem.

QL Flightdeck works fine on QPC2 and Q-emulator.
See the demo version: http://www.rwapadventures.com/downloads/flight.zip

However, when I try running it on a real QL, it shows the instrumentation panel, beeps and then freezes the system !!

I just can't think of a reason why it might do this - I have tried both Minerva and JS ROMs on the QL and q-emulator, and also tried it with a 512K expanderam + disk interface, and a Trump Card on different QLs.

I wonder if I only tested this on a QL with Gold Card before - alas I don't have a Gold Card any longer to try.

Can someone else please try it on their real hardware and let me know if it works?

[vanpeebles]

I think I had a similar with the Pawn. It ran fine on emulators but I could never get it run on a proper QL

[Derek_Stewart]

Hi Rich,

Works great under Ubuntu/Wine QPC2 v3.33 on a Dell D610 Laptop.

Not got a real QL running at present.

Any chance of 3D graphics programming...

Derek

[RWAP]

It seems as though the software works on emulators and on a Gold Card / Super Gold Card.

It doesn't run on a Trump Card for some reason.

Daniele Terdina has had a quick look and tried throwing all sorts of things at it in q-emulator - it still runs without issues.

He has however, noticed a couple of exception errors are thrown every now and then.

I wonder if it is writing to somewhere it shouldn't...

Luckily (for me) George Gwilt has offered to have a look at the source code for all of the extensions, so we shall see if he can spot anything!

[tofro]

Rich,
this sounds a bit like the code is hitting an exception (address error or other). Emulators typically ignore those and continue, the Gold card+ has specific exception handlers while the QL's original routine just enters an endless loop.

It might be worth a try to run alongside a QL monitor like QMon or C1Mon, or Minerva (also has a bit more sophisticated exception handling)

Did you check whether dataspace size of your copy (executable job) is even? Once had a program that lost its dataspace after copying along and somehow managed to get an odd length data space. Gives funny crashes as well....

Tobias

[RWAP]

Thanks to George Gwilt, this has now been fixed - the issue was that the code had two lines in it:

Code: Select all

	MOVE.L RUNDAT,A5
	TST.L	8(A5)

It should have read:

Code: Select all

	LEA RUNDAT,A5
	TST.L	8(A5)

Whilst the fact that it was returning the value did not matter too much - on the 68008, the TST.L 8(A%) was causing an error if A5 happened to be an odd number - the 68000, and 68020 do not worry about this - oddly neither do the emulators.

[tofro]

.....the 68000, and 68020 do not worry about this - oddly neither do the emulators.

Rich,

I'm quite sure the 68k would throw an exception on that as well (Because I remember having programmed a similar problem on the Atari ST) - The 020 definitely doesn't.

Regards,
Tobias

[RWAP]

Sorry - you are right - the 68000 should also have the same problem - I need to try out the original Flightdeck on a Gold Card QL...