[comp.sys.amiga.tech] Amiga object file format and Blink

4225_5257@uwovax.uwo.ca (04/24/89)

   I'm fairly new (okay, completely new) to programming on the Amiga in 
anything other than AmigaBASIC.
   Lately, I've been poking around in all the PD source code and magazines that
I have, and I've managed to write a few simple programs with Charlie Gibbs'
A68k assembler (using Blink and small.lib).
   Anyway, here's the problem:

   I had a program which opened a custom screen, opened a backdrop window on 
said screen and attached a menu to it.  This worked fine.  I also opened up
a regular window on the screen and played with it a bit (learning about
IDCMP stuff), and generally had fun learning about Intuition stuff without
having the proper documentation (i.e. no RKMs yet).
   I made the front window in my program have its own bitmap by setting the
CUSTOM_BITMAP flag and pointing to a bitmap that I set up.  That worked 
only sometimes, and I soon discovered it was because the bitmap data had to
reside in CHIP memory.  So...
   I had trouble getting the SECTION directives to work right in A68k if I
had a source file with multiple sections, so I split off the bitmap data
into a separate file, with a first line like: SECTION mydat,DATA,CHIP
and left the main program with no section header.
   Now when I try to use Blink to link it all together with:
       Blink prog.o bitmap.o small.lib to prog
   the resulting file isn't loadable by AmigaDOS!  I get a "not an object file
" error.

   I don't know anything about the object file format that Amy DOS uses, so
I can't be sure of exactly what is going wrong.  I am using the version of 
A68k and Blink that came together on Fish #110.

   Am I doing something really stupid?

   Help!!!

...Steve van der Burg

gilham@polya.Stanford.EDU (Fred Gilham) (04/26/89)

In article <2115@uwovax.uwo.ca> 4225_5257@uwovax.uwo.ca writes:
|   I had trouble getting the SECTION directives to work right in A68k if I
|had a source file with multiple sections, so I split off the bitmap data
|into a separate file, with a first line like: SECTION mydat,DATA,CHIP
|and left the main program with no section header.

There is a known bug with the CHIP and FAST arguments to the section
directive, causing the error you get.
-Fred Gilham

ewhac@well.UUCP (Leo 'Bols Ewhac' Schwab) (04/26/89)

In article <2115@uwovax.uwo.ca> 4225_5257@uwovax.uwo.ca writes:
>   Now when I try to use Blink to link it all together with:
>       Blink prog.o bitmap.o small.lib to prog
>   the resulting file isn't loadable by AmigaDOS!  I get a "not an object file
>" error.
>
	I've never used BLINK, and haven't used ALINK for ages, but
shouldn't you have said:

	Blink prog.o bitmap.o LIBRARY small.lib to prog

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