upstream/0.4.3/RELEASE

Release notes for Gavare's eXperimental Emulator (GXemul), 0.4.3
================================================================

Copyright (C) 2003-2006  Anders Gavare.


GXemul is an experimental instruction-level machine emulator. Several
emulation modes are available. In some modes, processors and surrounding
hardware components are emulated well enough to let unmodified operating
systems (e.g. NetBSD) run as if they were running on a real machine.

The documentation lists the machines and guest operating systems that can 
be regarded as "working" in GXemul. The best working guest operating 
systems are probably NetBSD/pmax, NetBSD/cats, and OpenBSD/cats.


Changes between release 0.4.2 and 0.4.3 include, among other things:

    o)  SuperH (SH4) emulation is now stable enough to let a NetBSD/dreamcast
        GENERIC_MD (ramdisk) kernel reach userland.

    o)  There is now a simple framework for letting emulated clocks, as seen
        by guest operating systems, run at the same speed as the host clock.

        So far, the DECstation, MobilePro (hpcmips), NetWinder, CATS, Malta
        (evbmips), Cobalt, Algor, Dreamcast, and testmips machine modes
        use the new clock/timer framework.

    o)  Some changes to the way expressions are evaluated in the built-in
        debugger, and some changes in command behaviour:

          x)  Expressions (including assignments) can now be arbitrarily
              complex, using parentheses, and the following operators:

                  + - * /    % (modulo)  ^ (xor)  & (and)  | (or)

          x)  Some internal emulator variables can now be read/written using
              normal expressions. Examples of commands that did not work
              earlier, but should work now:

                  print verbose
                  r5 = sp - arch_pagesize * 4
                  machine[0].statistics_enabled = 1

          x)  To force a name to be interpreted as a setting/register name,
              a hash sign (#) is now used instead of the percentage sign (%).
              (In the new expression evaluator, % means arithmetic modulo.)

          x)  The 'focus' command now also selects a cpu, in addition to
              selecting machine and emul.

          x)  The 'reg' command only prints registers for one cpu now, not
              all cpus in the currently focused machine.

    o)  The wdc (standard IDE controller) had a bug which prevented disk
        images larger than 2 GB to work correctly. This has been fixed.

    o)  For MIPS emulation, some combinations of emulated processor + guest
        operating system should now work better when idling (i.e. the host
        should not run at 100% CPU):

          x)  For MIPS32/MIPS64 and RM5200, the 'wait' instruction should
              now work more or less as expected.

          x)  For VR41xx (e.g. MobilePro) emulation, the standby instruction
              should work like the 'wait' instruction.

          x)  For R3000 emulation, where there is no hardware wait instruction,
              I've implemented "instruction combination" hacks for both
              NetBSD/pmax and Debian/pmax, so that their cpu idle loops are
              detected and treated almost as a wait instruction.

    o)  MIPS 64-bit address translation (X=1) was not fully working before;
        TLB exception handling for xkseg and larger-than-2GB-userland should
        now actually work. (Thanks to Juli Mallett and Carl van Schaik for
        noticing these problems.)

    o)  The mouse cursor update routines in DECstation (LK201) emulation
        previously used the fact that guest OSes set the _hardware_
        cursor position. In order to support X Windows when emulating
        modern versions of NetBSD/pmax, which don't set the hardware
        position anymore, a workaround has been implemented which only
        sends relative coordinates to the guest OS. This has two drawbacks:

        1. Ultrix emulation with dual- and tripple-head emulation will
           most likely feel very strange. It will still work, though.

        2. Cursor movement feels "accelerated", because the emulator
           sends unaccelerated movements to the guest OS, which then
           accelerates them. This can however be compensated to some
           degree by running 'xset m 1 0' in the guest OS.

        Having weird accelerated mouse movement is better than having no
        mouse support at all, so this change was necessary.

Please read the HISTORY files for more details.


Files included in this release are:

  HISTORY                     Detailed revision history / changelog.
  LICENSE                     Copyright message / license.
  README                      Quick start instructions, for the impatient.
  RELEASE                     This file.
  TODO                        TODO notes.
  configure, Makefile.skel    sh and make scripts for building GXemul.
  demos                       Tutorial-like demos of testmachine functionality.
  doc                         Documentation.
  experiments                 Experimental code. (Usually not needed.)
  src                         Source code.

To build the emulator, run the configure script, and then run make. This 
should work on most Unix-like systems.


Regarding files in the src/include/ directory: only some of these are written
by me, the rest are from other sources (such as NetBSD). The license text says
that "All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software"
must display acknowledgements. Even though I do NOT feel I mention features or
use of the header files (the "software") in any advertising materials, I am
still very grateful for the fact that these people have made their files
available for re-use, so regardless of legal requirements, I guess thanking
them like this is in order:

    This product includes software developed by the University of
    California, Berkeley and its contributors.

    This product includes software developed for the
    NetBSD Project.  See http://www.netbsd.org/ for
    information about NetBSD.

    This product includes software developed by Jonathan Stone for
    the NetBSD Project.

    This product includes software developed for the NetBSD Project
    by Matthias Drochner.

    This product includes software developed by the NetBSD
    Foundation, Inc. and its contributors.

    This product includes software developed by Christopher G. Demetriou.
    [for the NetBSD Project.]

    This product includes software developed by Adam Glass.

    This product includes software developed by the PocketBSD project
    and its contributors.

    This product includes software developed by Peter Galbavy.

    Carnegie Mellon University   (multiple header files,
    no specific advertisement text required)

    This product includes software developed by Charles M. Hannum.

    This product includes software developed under OpenBSD by Per Fogelström.

    This product includes software developed by Per Fogelström.

    This product includes software developed at Ludd, University of
    Luleå, Sweden and its contributors.

    This product includes software developed by Hellmuth Michaelis
    and Joerg Wunsch

    The font(s) in devices/fonts are Copyright (c) 1992, 1993, 1994
    by Hellmuth Michaelis and Joerg Wunsch.  ("This product includes software
    developed by Hellmuth Michaelis and Joerg Wunsch", well, the font
    is maybe not software, but still...)

    impactsr-bsd.h is Copyright (C) 2004 by Stanislaw Skowronek.

    This product includes software developed for the NetBSD Project by
    Wasabi Systems, Inc.  [by Simon Burge]

    arcbios_other.h is Copyright (c) 1996 M. Warner Losh.

    This product includes software developed by Marc Horowitz.

    This product includes software developed by Brini.

    This product includes software developed by Mark Brinicombe
    for the NetBSD Project.

    This product includes software developed by TooLs GmbH.

    This product includes software developed by Manuel Bouyer.

    This product includes software developed by the Alice Group.

    This product includes software developed by Ichiro FUKUHARA.

    This product includes software developed by Marcus Comstedt.

Also, src/include/alpha_rpb.h requires the following:

    Copyright (c) 1994, 1995, 1996 Carnegie-Mellon University.
    All rights reserved.

    Author: Keith Bostic, Chris G. Demetriou

    Permission to use, copy, modify and distribute this software and
    its documentation is hereby granted, provided that both the copyright
    notice and this permission notice appear in all copies of the
    software, derivative works or modified versions, and any portions
    thereof, and that both notices appear in supporting documentation.

See individual files for license details, if you plan to redistribute GXemul
or reuse code.


If you have found GXemul useful in some way, or feel like sending me comments
or feedback in general, then mail me at anders(at)gavare.se.

1	dpavlin	32	Release notes for Gavare's eXperimental Emulator (GXemul), 0.4.3
2	dpavlin	28	================================================================
3	dpavlin	2
4	dpavlin	22	Copyright (C) 2003-2006 Anders Gavare.
5	dpavlin	2
6
7	dpavlin	14	GXemul is an experimental instruction-level machine emulator. Several
8			emulation modes are available. In some modes, processors and surrounding
9	dpavlin	12	hardware components are emulated well enough to let unmodified operating
10			systems (e.g. NetBSD) run as if they were running on a real machine.
11	dpavlin	2
12	dpavlin	22	The documentation lists the machines and guest operating systems that can
13	dpavlin	28	be regarded as "working" in GXemul. The best working guest operating
14	dpavlin	22	systems are probably NetBSD/pmax, NetBSD/cats, and OpenBSD/cats.
15	dpavlin	2
16	dpavlin	20
17	dpavlin	32	Changes between release 0.4.2 and 0.4.3 include, among other things:
18	dpavlin	12
19	dpavlin	32	o) SuperH (SH4) emulation is now stable enough to let a NetBSD/dreamcast
20			GENERIC_MD (ramdisk) kernel reach userland.
21	dpavlin	2
22	dpavlin	32	o) There is now a simple framework for letting emulated clocks, as seen
23			by guest operating systems, run at the same speed as the host clock.
24	dpavlin	10
25	dpavlin	32	So far, the DECstation, MobilePro (hpcmips), NetWinder, CATS, Malta
26			(evbmips), Cobalt, Algor, Dreamcast, and testmips machine modes
27			use the new clock/timer framework.
28	dpavlin	2
29	dpavlin	32	o) Some changes to the way expressions are evaluated in the built-in
30			debugger, and some changes in command behaviour:
31	dpavlin	2
32	dpavlin	32	x) Expressions (including assignments) can now be arbitrarily
33			complex, using parentheses, and the following operators:
34	dpavlin	2
35	dpavlin	32	+ - * / % (modulo) ^ (xor) & (and) \| (or)
36	dpavlin	2
37	dpavlin	32	x) Some internal emulator variables can now be read/written using
38			normal expressions. Examples of commands that did not work
39			earlier, but should work now:
40	dpavlin	20
41	dpavlin	32	print verbose
42			r5 = sp - arch_pagesize * 4
43			machine[0].statistics_enabled = 1
44
45			x) To force a name to be interpreted as a setting/register name,
46			a hash sign (#) is now used instead of the percentage sign (%).
47			(In the new expression evaluator, % means arithmetic modulo.)
48
49			x) The 'focus' command now also selects a cpu, in addition to
50			selecting machine and emul.
51
52			x) The 'reg' command only prints registers for one cpu now, not
53			all cpus in the currently focused machine.
54
55			o) The wdc (standard IDE controller) had a bug which prevented disk
56			images larger than 2 GB to work correctly. This has been fixed.
57
58			o) For MIPS emulation, some combinations of emulated processor + guest
59			operating system should now work better when idling (i.e. the host
60			should not run at 100% CPU):
61
62			x) For MIPS32/MIPS64 and RM5200, the 'wait' instruction should
63			now work more or less as expected.
64
65			x) For VR41xx (e.g. MobilePro) emulation, the standby instruction
66			should work like the 'wait' instruction.
67
68			x) For R3000 emulation, where there is no hardware wait instruction,
69			I've implemented "instruction combination" hacks for both
70			NetBSD/pmax and Debian/pmax, so that their cpu idle loops are
71			detected and treated almost as a wait instruction.
72
73			o) MIPS 64-bit address translation (X=1) was not fully working before;
74			TLB exception handling for xkseg and larger-than-2GB-userland should
75			now actually work. (Thanks to Juli Mallett and Carl van Schaik for
76			noticing these problems.)
77
78			o) The mouse cursor update routines in DECstation (LK201) emulation
79			previously used the fact that guest OSes set the _hardware_
80			cursor position. In order to support X Windows when emulating
81			modern versions of NetBSD/pmax, which don't set the hardware
82			position anymore, a workaround has been implemented which only
83			sends relative coordinates to the guest OS. This has two drawbacks:
84
85			1. Ultrix emulation with dual- and tripple-head emulation will
86			most likely feel very strange. It will still work, though.
87
88			2. Cursor movement feels "accelerated", because the emulator
89			sends unaccelerated movements to the guest OS, which then
90			accelerates them. This can however be compensated to some
91			degree by running 'xset m 1 0' in the guest OS.
92
93			Having weird accelerated mouse movement is better than having no
94			mouse support at all, so this change was necessary.
95
96	dpavlin	24	Please read the HISTORY files for more details.
97
98
99	dpavlin	2	Files included in this release are:
100
101			HISTORY Detailed revision history / changelog.
102			LICENSE Copyright message / license.
103			README Quick start instructions, for the impatient.
104			RELEASE This file.
105			TODO TODO notes.
106	dpavlin	4	configure, Makefile.skel sh and make scripts for building GXemul.
107	dpavlin	24	demos Tutorial-like demos of testmachine functionality.
108	dpavlin	2	doc Documentation.
109			experiments Experimental code. (Usually not needed.)
110	dpavlin	4	src Source code.
111	dpavlin	2
112	dpavlin	24	To build the emulator, run the configure script, and then run make. This
113	dpavlin	22	should work on most Unix-like systems.
114	dpavlin	2
115	dpavlin	24
116	dpavlin	4	Regarding files in the src/include/ directory: only some of these are written
117			by me, the rest are from other sources (such as NetBSD). The license text says
118	dpavlin	2	that "All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software"
119			must display acknowledgements. Even though I do NOT feel I mention features or
120			use of the header files (the "software") in any advertising materials, I am
121			still very grateful for the fact that these people have made their files
122			available for re-use, so regardless of legal requirements, I guess thanking
123			them like this is in order:
124
125			This product includes software developed by the University of
126			California, Berkeley and its contributors.
127
128			This product includes software developed for the
129			NetBSD Project. See http://www.netbsd.org/ for
130			information about NetBSD.
131
132			This product includes software developed by Jonathan Stone for
133			the NetBSD Project.
134
135			This product includes software developed for the NetBSD Project
136			by Matthias Drochner.
137
138			This product includes software developed by the NetBSD
139			Foundation, Inc. and its contributors.
140
141			This product includes software developed by Christopher G. Demetriou.
142			[for the NetBSD Project.]
143
144			This product includes software developed by Adam Glass.
145
146			This product includes software developed by the PocketBSD project
147			and its contributors.
148
149			This product includes software developed by Peter Galbavy.
150
151			Carnegie Mellon University (multiple header files,
152			no specific advertisement text required)
153
154			This product includes software developed by Charles M. Hannum.
155
156			This product includes software developed under OpenBSD by Per Fogelström.
157
158			This product includes software developed by Per Fogelström.
159
160			This product includes software developed at Ludd, University of
161			Luleå, Sweden and its contributors.
162
163			This product includes software developed by Hellmuth Michaelis
164			and Joerg Wunsch
165
166			The font(s) in devices/fonts are Copyright (c) 1992, 1993, 1994
167			by Hellmuth Michaelis and Joerg Wunsch. ("This product includes software
168			developed by Hellmuth Michaelis and Joerg Wunsch", well, the font
169			is maybe not software, but still...)
170
171			impactsr-bsd.h is Copyright (C) 2004 by Stanislaw Skowronek.
172
173			This product includes software developed for the NetBSD Project by
174			Wasabi Systems, Inc. [by Simon Burge]
175
176			arcbios_other.h is Copyright (c) 1996 M. Warner Losh.
177
178			This product includes software developed by Marc Horowitz.
179
180	dpavlin	14	This product includes software developed by Brini.
181
182			This product includes software developed by Mark Brinicombe
183			for the NetBSD Project.
184
185	dpavlin	20	This product includes software developed by TooLs GmbH.
186
187			This product includes software developed by Manuel Bouyer.
188
189	dpavlin	22	This product includes software developed by the Alice Group.
190
191	dpavlin	24	This product includes software developed by Ichiro FUKUHARA.
192
193	dpavlin	32	This product includes software developed by Marcus Comstedt.
194
195	dpavlin	12	Also, src/include/alpha_rpb.h requires the following:
196
197			Copyright (c) 1994, 1995, 1996 Carnegie-Mellon University.
198			All rights reserved.
199
200			Author: Keith Bostic, Chris G. Demetriou
201
202			Permission to use, copy, modify and distribute this software and
203			its documentation is hereby granted, provided that both the copyright
204			notice and this permission notice appear in all copies of the
205			software, derivative works or modified versions, and any portions
206			thereof, and that both notices appear in supporting documentation.
207
208	dpavlin	2	See individual files for license details, if you plan to redistribute GXemul
209			or reuse code.
210
211	dpavlin	24
212	dpavlin	2	If you have found GXemul useful in some way, or feel like sending me comments
213			or feedback in general, then mail me at anders(at)gavare.se.
214