Re: MCL 2.01 and the Radius Rocket 25 (IIcx)

[reti@cambridge.apple.com (Kalman Reti)]

At 12:21 PM 8/5/94 +0000, Bao Chau Ha wrote:
>I have just gotten the Radius Rocket 25 for my Mac IIcx.  MCL 2.01 has
>been running fine with the IIcx for a year now.  However, with the
>Radius Rocket 25, I keep getting an unimplemented trap error when I
>try to start it.  I patched the MCL 2.01 with the MMU4-for-IIci using
>ResEdit and still get the same problem.
>
>The System software is 7.1.  And the Radius Rocketware is 1.5.
>
>I would appreciate any suggestions and comments to resolve this
>problem.  The reason I got the Rocket Radius is to run MCL, and it
>has been a very frustrated experience.  Everything else seems to run
>fine.
>
>Thanks.
>Bao

The problem is that the Rocket's configuration and the ROM in the
Rocket don't quite match; when dispatching on the floating point
set halt vector trap, the ROM code tries to decide what to translate
that into.  On a real quadra, it goes to one set of code, on the Rocket
it decides to issue an FPPRIV trap, which doesn't exist any  more.

Another customer and I have both tried to explain this problem to
Radius on more than one occasion, and have never succeeded in talking
to anyone who gave any signs of understanding it.

You can get around THIS particular problem by applying a patch (which I'll
send under separate cover) which causes MCL to not even attempt to set the
floating point halt vector.

I had another customer with a rocket that he wanted to run MCL on; he was
trying to use Rocketshare.  I diagnosed a Rocketshare problem that clobbered
low memory occasionally, specifically part of the CHK trap dispatch.  This
killed MCL (which heavily uses the CHK trap) but every other application I
tried worked fine.  Again, multiple attempts to explain the problem (and the
fix) to Radius got nowhere.  The customer finally gave up the attempt.

Anyway, even though you aren't running Rocketshare, I wouldn't be surprised if
there were more such subtle problems lurking in the wings.

Anyway, the patch should let you get somewhat farther....