/[gxemul]/upstream/0.4.3/RELEASE

This is repository of my old source code which isn't updated any more. Go to git.rot13.org for current projects!

Diff of /upstream/0.4.3/RELEASE

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-revision 22 by dpavlin,
Mon Oct  8 16:19:37 2007 UTC
+revision 32 by dpavlin,
Mon Oct  8 16:20:58 2007 UTC
 Line 1
- Release notes for Gavare's eXperimental Emulator (GXemul), 0.3.8
+ Release notes for Gavare's eXperimental Emulator (GXemul), 0.4.3
  ================================================================
  Copyright (C) 2003-2006  Anders Gavare.
 Line 10 
 hardware components are emulated well en
  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 supported guest operating
+ be regarded as "working" in GXemul. The best working guest operating
  systems are probably NetBSD/pmax, NetBSD/cats, and OpenBSD/cats.
- The user-visible changes between release 0.3.7 and 0.3.8 include:
-     o)  The IQ80321 (Xscale) machine mode is now working well enough to
+ Changes between release 0.4.2 and 0.4.3 include, among other things:
-         run NetBSD/evbarm 2.1.
-     o)  Faster framebuffer output in some situations.
+     o)  SuperH (SH4) emulation is now stable enough to let a NetBSD/dreamcast
+         GENERIC_MD (ramdisk) kernel reach userland.
- Source code related changes include:
+     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.
-     o)  I've finally begun to reimplement the MIPS emulation mode using the
+         So far, the DECstation, MobilePro (hpcmips), NetWinder, CATS, Malta
-         new dyntrans system. It will be quite some time until it can run
+         (evbmips), Cobalt, Algor, Dreamcast, and testmips machine modes
-         anything, but things are moving in the right direction.
+         use the new clock/timer framework.
-     o)  Some changes to the concepts of input-only, output-only, and
+     o)  Some changes to the way expressions are evaluated in the built-in
-         input-output consoles.
+         debugger, and some changes in command behaviour:
-     o)  Some more clean-up of PCI bus concepts.
+           x)  Expressions (including assignments) can now be arbitrarily
+               complex, using parentheses, and the following operators:
-     o)  Machine definitions have been moved out of src/machines.c, and into
+                   + - * /    % (modulo)  ^ (xor)  & (and)  | (or)
-         individual files in a new sub-directory (src/machines/).
+           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:
+. Ultrix emulation with dual- and tripple-head emulation will
+            most likely feel very strange. It will still work, though.
+. 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.
- There have also been lots of other changes, too many and small to mention here.
  Files included in this release are:
-   BUGS                        A list of known bugs.
    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
+ 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"
-Line 127 
 them like this is in order:
+Line 188 
 them like this is in order:
      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.
-Line 143 
 Also, src/include/alpha_rpb.h requires t
+Line 208 
 Also, src/include/alpha_rpb.h requires t
  See individual files for license details, if you plan to redistribute GXemul
  or reuse code.
- Thanks to (in no specific order) Joachim Buss, Olivier Houchard, Juli Mallett,
- Juan Romero Pardines, Alec Voropay, G�ran Weinholt, Alexander Yurchenko, and
- everyone else who has provided me with feedback.
  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.

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