Hyperion Entertainment Message Boards

Hi,

When I was fiddling around with my X5000's KickStart drawer, a couple of weeks ago, I came to wonder what does a piece of software, as located in KickStart and suffixed by '.KMOD' have what it would not have when NOT located in said drawer.
In other words: What makes a KMOD a KMOD?

Just curious.

OldFart

It's not the fact that the filename is ending in .kmod which does anything (that wouldn't have been very Amiga-like, would it?).

But if you put a module in the "Kickstart" dir and list it in your Kicklayout file (located in the same dir), then it will be loaded during the first part of the boot as part of the Kickstart.

I suppose the .kmod ending would stand for "kickstart module" or similar and has just become a practical convention to use, so even if you encounter the file out of context, you know it's one of the modules meant as part of the Kickstart.

There are probably also some requirements for an executable which makes it able to be used as a part of the Kickstart; I'm not sure about those. But there are several different types of modules in Kickstart, like drivers, handlers, filesystems, libraries etc., so it probably depends on the type.

There can even be plain text files in there (they wouldn't normally have the .kmod ending, though).

Best regards,

Niels

The ".kmod" files are usually drivers and libraries, as Niels said. They are all loaded by the Loader, when it finds their name in the Kicklayout configuration. They don't *have* to be in the Kickstart/ drawer (since they are listed in the Kicklayout file with their path), but it is convenient to keep them all together.

Kickstart modules can be run when loaded, or after DOS starts, or when called: it's all spelled out in the "struct Resident" that is present in every such program and scanned by the Loader.