• TI will only ever put the swap sector starting at page $08 or $0C, but technically third-party code could put it somewhere else and the OS should theoretically still function fine. If you need to locate it, I'd recommend using B_CALL(_FindSwapSector). Despite what that documentation says, I wouldn't worry about the swap sector not existing, and the call is not pointless.
  
• Sounds like you got a little mixed up about the variable data flag: "The flag byte will be 0FCh (valid) or 0F0h (deleted, ignore it)." To clarify, $FC marks the start of an archived variable and $F0 marks the start of a deleted archived variable to be removed at the next garbage collection. These flags exist at the start of every archived user variable, not just at the start of user archive sectors, but of course if a user archive sector is non-empty, it will start with a user variable, and that will start with $FC or $F0. So if a sector starts with either of those two flags, it's a user variable storage sector.

Quote from: Runer112 on April 18, 2014, 10:32:51 am

Hey there.
I have 2 answers, actually:

• TI will only ever put the swap sector starting at page $08 or $0C, but technically third-party code could put it somewhere else and the OS should theoretically still function fine. If you need to locate it, I'd recommend using B_CALL(_FindSwapSector). Despite what that documentation says, I wouldn't worry about the swap sector not existing, and the call is not pointless.
• Sounds like you got a little mixed up about the variable data flag: "The flag byte will be 0FCh (valid) or 0F0h (deleted, ignore it)." To clarify, $FC marks the start of an archived variable and $F0 marks the start of a deleted archived variable to be removed at the next garbage collection. These flags exist at the start of every archived user variable, not just at the start of user archive sectors, but of course if a user archive sector is non-empty, it will start with a user variable, and that will start with $FC or $F0. So if a sector starts with either of those two flags, it's a user variable storage sector.

Thx for the answers =]
About question 2 :
Actually, the sector status byte and the variable status byte are two different things.
I am talking about the sector status byte, not the other one.
For example, if you have a random variable stored at the very begining of the archive, and that variable is valid (not to be deleted), the first byte will be $F0 (meaning the sector is used for variable data storage), followed by $FC (the variable status byte).
What i want to know is, under which circumstances can the sector status byte be $FC.

Quote from: Runer112 on April 18, 2014, 11:07:29 am

The swap sector should always exist, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Hmm, actually, it seems it is created during the very first garbage collect (according to wabbit, for what it's worth).

Quote from: the_mad_joob on April 18, 2014, 11:09:49 am

Quote from: Runer112 on April 18, 2014, 11:07:29 am

The swap sector should always exist, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Hmm, actually, it seems it is created during the very first garbage collect (according to wabbit, for what it's worth).

Anyone have any mint condition calculators to check this with? ... Probably not.