Memory Bank Structures

As well as this superb new memory pointer, the header contains special flags which tell AMOS Professional the type of current bank under surveillance. For mere mortals, a name is supplied in simple Ascii format as well!

Here is a list of currently allowable bank names:

Sprites
Icon
Music
Amal
Menu
Samples
Pic.Pac
Resource
Code
Tracker
Data
Work
Chip
Fast

You are more than welcome to add your own bank definitions to this list.

Memory bank headers
The header is stored in the following format:

Header        dc.l        Address_Of_Next_Bank           * Start-24
              dc.l        Length_Of_Bank + 16            * Start-20
              dc.l        Number_Of_The_Bank             * Start-16
              dc.w        Flags                          * Start-12
              dc.w        Free_For_Future
              dc.b        "Namebank"                     * Start-8
Start                                                    *
*             Data goes here                             * Returned by START function

There now follows an explanation of each of the above Header components.

Address_Of_Next_Bank
This is the address of the next bank in the memory chain. The list is terminated with a value of zero. Note that each new bank is added to the top of the list so the last bank that has been reserved will be the first bank in the chain.

These pointers are swapped around whenever the BANK SWAP command is called from AMOS Professional Basic.