prirun.p50em/notes.2012

July 7, 2012
Emulator Version 247

Updates to the Prime Emulator since rev 102:

- the emulator runs on both PowerPC and Intel CPU architectures.
  It cannot be built as a "Universal" program (runs on both Intel and
  PPC); there are separate PPC and Intel versions.

- the format of the licensing information stored on the dongle has
  changed.  It is possible to run either the old emulator or new
  emulator with the same dongle, but when switching between old and
  new, the machine must be connected to the Internet.

- one copy of the emulator can run on one machine.

- the dongle is updated as soon as the Prime starts.  If your Prime
  is rebooting very often for some reason, like many times per hour,
  and is not connected to the Internet, it may deplete the dongle
  charge sooner than expected.  Connect to the Internet if this
  happens and the dongle will recharge.

- AMLC handling is much more efficient (uses less CPU time) and
  allocates resources more fairly among active AMLC lines

- AMLC telnet negotiation has been fixed, so it's not necessary to use
  /NOWAIT with Kermit

- AMLC baud rates have changed from:
    1200, 2400, 4800, 9600, 19200, 38400, 57600, 115200
  to:
     300, 1200, 9600, 19200, 9600*, 38400, 57600, 115200
  * this is the AMLCLK speed; the default is 9600 like a real Prime

- AMLCLK can be used to set the 4th (starting at 0) baud rate,
  like on a real Prime; the default speed is 9600

- the AMLC config filename has been changed from "amlc" to "amlc.cfg"

- assigned AMLC lines can be used for TCP/IP printing in amlc.cfg.
  Here is an example config line in amlc.cfg:
    010 192.168.1.1:9100
  This will connect AMLC line 8 (decimal) to this IP address & port.
  If the printer disconnects, the emulator will try to re-establish
  the connection the next time there is data to send.  If DTR is
  dropped, for example by T$AMLC, the emulator will drop the connection.
  When DTR is raised, the emulator will re-establish the connection
  the next time there is data to send.

- supports PNC emulation (Prime "RingNet") over TCP/IP

- support added for old-style Prime T&M hardware diagnostics;
  new-style DIAG diagnostics already ran.  The emulator passes
  nearly all CPU diagnostics.  It is difficult to pass all Prime
  diagnostics because many of them expect certain microcode bugs
  to be present for certain models.

- if a SIGTERM signal is received, the emulator will try to do a
  graceful Primos shutdown.  This is useful when a UPS battery
  backup is used and the UPS is connected to a USB port: when
  the UPS battery gets low, OSX will send SIGTERM to all running
  processes.  The emulator sees SIGTERM, passes it on to Primos,
  and Primos shuts down all disk drives.  This prevents disk
  corruption that can occur when a Prime is abruptly halted.
  It is also possible to send SIGTERM with: kill -TERM n, where
  n is the emulator's process id.

- hitting Ctrl \ on the system console will cause the emulator
  to shutdown Primos.  If this doesn't work for some reason, a
  second Ctrl \ will cause an immediate halt.

  IMPORTANT NOTE: these last 2 features do not work with the faster,
  dedicated register PowerPC build, because signals trash the
  registers.

- hitting Ctrl ] on the system console caused the old emulator
  to suspend, and "fg" would continue.  But it changed the
  system console terminal settings.  This key has been disabled.

- the emulator prints a reminder to check error.log if it is
  not empty.  Error and warning messages are written here.

- indirect loops in address calculations are now limited like on a
  real Prime.  Before, there was no limit, so it was possible to
  "hang" the emulator with a specially constructed indirect
  instruction.

- previously, the -cpuid option took a number from 0 to 44 to
  indicate the CPU model.  Now it also accepts model numbers
  like 750, 2250, 4050, 9950, etc.

- Ctrl Y, Ctrl V, and Ctrl O work on the system console

- several Prime disk drives had track limits that were off
  by 1 or 2.  This could cause seek errors, especially when
  running Prime diagnostics.