/[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!
ViewVC logotype

Contents of /upstream/0.4.3/RELEASE

Parent Directory Parent Directory | Revision Log Revision Log


Revision 33 - (show annotations)
Mon Oct 8 16:21:06 2007 UTC (16 years, 5 months ago) by dpavlin
File size: 8673 byte(s)
0.4.3
1 Release notes for Gavare's eXperimental Emulator (GXemul), 0.4.3
2 ================================================================
3
4 Copyright (C) 2003-2006 Anders Gavare.
5
6
7 GXemul is an experimental instruction-level machine emulator. Several
8 emulation modes are available. In some modes, processors and surrounding
9 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
12 The documentation lists the machines and guest operating systems that can
13 be regarded as "working" in GXemul. The best working guest operating
14 systems are probably NetBSD/pmax, NetBSD/cats, and OpenBSD/cats.
15
16
17 Changes between release 0.4.2 and 0.4.3 include, among other things:
18
19 o) SuperH (SH4) emulation is now stable enough to let a NetBSD/dreamcast
20 GENERIC_MD (ramdisk) kernel reach userland.
21
22 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
25 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
29 o) Some changes to the way expressions are evaluated in the built-in
30 debugger, and some changes in command behaviour:
31
32 x) Expressions (including assignments) can now be arbitrarily
33 complex, using parentheses, and the following operators:
34
35 + - * / % (modulo) ^ (xor) & (and) | (or)
36
37 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
41 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 Please read the HISTORY files for more details.
97
98
99 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 configure, Makefile.skel sh and make scripts for building GXemul.
107 demos Tutorial-like demos of testmachine functionality.
108 doc Documentation.
109 experiments Experimental code. (Usually not needed.)
110 src Source code.
111
112 To build the emulator, run the configure script, and then run make. This
113 should work on most Unix-like systems.
114
115
116 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 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 This product includes software developed by Brini.
181
182 This product includes software developed by Mark Brinicombe
183 for the NetBSD Project.
184
185 This product includes software developed by TooLs GmbH.
186
187 This product includes software developed by Manuel Bouyer.
188
189 This product includes software developed by the Alice Group.
190
191 This product includes software developed by Ichiro FUKUHARA.
192
193 This product includes software developed by Marcus Comstedt.
194
195 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 See individual files for license details, if you plan to redistribute GXemul
209 or reuse code.
210
211
212 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

  ViewVC Help
Powered by ViewVC 1.1.26