- EXPECT will now tolerate a HALTAFTER=n parameter which delay the simulator stopping execution for n instructions. Unpredictable behavior will happen if multiple EXPECT conditions see matching data before the first actualy halt occurs.
- SEND has an AFTER=n argument which delays the initial stuffed data from being input for at least n instructions. It also has a DELAY=m argument which specifies the minimum number of instructions which must execute between stuffed input data.
- Changed run_cmd() to no longer clear pending breakpoint actions before starting instruction execution.
- Added a -Q switch to the commands which dispatch through run_cmd() (RUN, STEP, NEXT, GO, BOOT, etc.). This switch will suppress status output when execution stops. This will allow sequences of breakpoint action commands to silently execute when needed.
Ideas based on Dave Bryan's console halt efforts.
sim> SEND {<mux>:line} {DELAY=n,}"string"
Where <mux> is the name of the device pointed to by the TMXR structure. If <mux>:line isn't specified, then the console device is implicitly being referenced.
Delay is optional and once set persists for subsequent SEND operations to the same device. Delay defaults to 1000. The DELAY value is a minimum number of instructions which must execute before the next character in the provided string will be injected to the console port. The DELAY value has effect between the characters delivered as well. "string" requires quotes and within the quoted string, common C escape character syntax is available (\r\r\t, etc.).
Each device (console, and each line in each mux) has a separate value for DELAY.
An arbitrary number of 'expect' conditions can be defined. The command syntax is:
sim> EXPECT {<mux>:line} {[cnt]} "matchstring" {actioncommand {; actioncommand ...}}
Where <mux> is the name of the device pointed to by the TMXR structure. If <mux>:line isn't specified, then the console device is implicitly being referenced.
"matchstring" requires quotes and within the quoted string, common C escape character syntax is available (\r\r\t, etc.). The quotes used can be single or double quotes, but the closing quote must match the opening quote. The match string might be extended to allow the use of perl style regular expressions in the "matchstring" when a -R switch is specified on the command line.
sim> EXPECT "Enter Color: " SEND "Red\r"; g
A specific 'expect' condition can be removed with:
sim> NOEXPECT {<mux>:line} "matchstring"
All 'expect' conditions can be removed with:
sim> NOEXPECT {<mux>:line}
'expect' conditions can be examined with:
sim> SHOW EXPECT {<mux>:line}
Expect rules are one-shots (i.e. they disappear once a match has occurred) unless they are explicitly described as persistent with the -P switch.
The -C switch is available when defining expect rules. The effect of a rule defined with the -C flag is that when an expect match occurs for that rule, ALL rules are cleared for that device (console or <mux>:line).
The goals here being to simplify calling code while getting consistent output delivered everywhere it may be useful.
Modified most places which explicitly used sim_log or merely called printf to now avoid doing that and merely call sim_printf().
- Avoid assignments of void * values. Cast all memory allocation return values to appropriate types.
- Add output to sim_log where missing in various places.
- Fixed issue with lost file positions after a restore for devices which leverage the UNIT_SEQ flag.
sim> set debug -r -a -t -p somefile
-a produces seconds.msec time format
-t produces hh:mm:ss.msec time format
-r causes time values displayed to be relative to the wall clock time when the 'set debug' command was issued
-r by itself will cause default of -t
-a and -t can both be specified if desired
-p adds display of current PC value to the debug timestamp output
sim> show debug
- Added event debug support to scp and the vax simulator
- Moved external declarations into include files related to modules which define them and removed random externs from modules which referenced them
- Fixed typos in sim_ether
- Fixed sim_disk and sim_tape to properly manage asynchronous threads on an i/o flush
scp.c,scp.h - Gave priority to a command message handler to determine what values result in displayed messages and exported run_cmd_message for use by simulators which add simulator specific BOOT commands which leverage the run_cmd logic and should also leverage the run_cmd_message for message display
VAX/vax610_sysdev.c, vax730_sys.c, vax750_cmi.c, vax780_sbi.c - Added BOOT command message dispatch to run_cmd_message for simulators which perform preprocessing on BOOT activities but otherwise then dispatch to run_cmd.
Added support for per line tcp listen ports.
Added support for per line outgoing tcp/telnet connections.
Removed DEV_NET from pdp11_dz and pdp11_vh emulators to allow proper restore of
It also modifies the HP 2100 and PDP11 multiplexers to add serial support as demonstrations of the capability that, one day, might be extended to all simulators. I have tested the HP support, but I relied on Holger Veit to test the DEC stuff, so I can't guarantee that it works. I also relied on Holger to test under Linux, so the same caveat applies.
The changes needed in the device simulators are relatively small. For example, if you look at the patches for "hp2100_baci.c", you'll note that most of them are documentation changes. The only things of note are:
- an expansion of the TMXR initializer
- additional code in the "attach" routine to try attaching a serial port
if attaching a socket fails
- additional code in the "detach" routine for the same reasons
The HP MPX device (hp2100_mpx.c) needs a tiny bit of additional support from the ATTACH and DETACH commands. Specifically, SCP was modified to set a flag ("sim_unit_ref") to indicate whether ATTACH MPX or ATTACH MPX0 was done, i.e., to differentiate between a device and a unit attach (recall that SCP treats these as both referring to unit 0). This is needed because the socket attaches (logically) to the device, whereas a serial port attaches to a line. Without this flag, the attach routine cannot differentiate between ATTACH MPX and ATTACH MPX0, as the distinction is lost by the time the VM's attach routine is called. This support isn't needed for the HP MUX device because the socket attaches to a different device than the lines do.
MPX also requires a bit more work due to the capability to mix serial and Telnet lines on the same multiplexer (BACI is a single-line terminal device).
The attached PDF contains revisions to the "Writing a Simulator for the SIMH System" publication that documents the additions and changes to the multiplexer library for serial port support. User documentation for serial port support currently exists only in the initial comments in "sim_tmxr.c"; I will add the appropriate text to the "SIMH User's Guide" if we decide to add this to the release version.
Added Message Suppression flag for status values, including providing a -Q option to the RETURN command to return with a message suppressed status
Added Do command file default extension of .sim (from Dave Bryan)
Added -O option to DO command file invocation which causes the caller's ON state and actions to be inherited in the newly called DO command file
Added Command Line expansion to include a %* which expands to the whole set of arguments (%1 ... %9)
Relaxed Command Line argument substitution (delimited by %'s) which cause environment variable lookups to first lookup the literal name provided and if that fails, lookup the name upcased.
Added a SIM_VERIFY special Command Line expansion variable which expands to "-V" when command echoing is active
Added a SIM_MESSAGE special Command Line expansion variable which expands to "-Q" when error message display is suppressed
Added Command Aliasing, which causes the initial token on a command line to be looked up in the environment variable table, and if it exists to substitute the expansion for the initial token.
Changed environment variable defining (with SET ENV variable=value) to always upcase the variable name.
Added SHIFT command which shifts the numbered argument variables %1 ... %9 to the left by one (%1 becomes what was %2, etc.)
Added CALL command which will call a routine (label) in the currently executing command file
Added SET VERIFY and SET NOVERIFY commands which enable or disable DO command echoing
Added SET MESSAGE and SET NOMESSAGE commands which globally enable or disable the display of status messages when commands (or Do Commands) return with unsuccessful status
Added SET ON INHERIT and SET ON NOINHERIT to globally enable inheritance of ON state and actions when DO commands are invoked
Added PROCEED and IGNORE commands which are do nothing but return success. These can be used in specific ON actions to possibly ignore particular return status values
Added DO command file line number to error messages which are displayed while processing DO command files
Expanded the DO command nesting level to 20 to potentially allow for more nesting due to the extensive use of CALL commands are used
- Removed flawed logic which assumed that sim_interval was meaningful when referenced by an asynchronous thread.
- Adjust the event_time of events removed from the asynch queue to account for the average time spent on the queue before the event was noticed by the instruction execution thread.
- Added a sim_activate_notbefore function which specifies an rtime which is the earliest time the event should fire.
- Changed the 'wakeup from idle' logic to force an immediate asynch queue check if the wakeup was not due to a timeout (i.e. it was due to an asynch queue insertion).
- Fixed the descrip.mms to build asynchronous support on AXP and IA64 VMS with kernel threads enabled
I’ve always wanted to have the option to have simulated devices behave
more naturally with respect to I/O operations. By more naturally I
mean that the current simulator model I/O is either polled (for asynchronous
things link Muxes and Network), or it is performed in the middle of some
instruction execution taking possibly many milliseconds (disk and/or tapes).
The existing model creates quite deterministic behavior which helps to debug
and understand issues, but it trades off potential instruction execution
while performing these I/O operations in between instruction execution.
To address this concept (while still retaining the potential advantages of
the original model), I’ve designed an Asynch I/O model extension for simh.
In order to flesh-out and debug this design, I’ve also refactored several
devices to utilize this capability. Please read the attached
0readmeAsynchIO.txt file for concept details about the approach.
In order to make disk devices easy to implement (within or without the
AsynchIO framework), I’ve created a sim_disk.c library which is modeled
on the sim_tape.c library to generalize disk I/O like tape I/O is
generalized in sim_tape.c. This sim_disk.c library now provides that
natural place to implement support for various disk implementation formats
(just like sim_tape support several formats, and one day will be the place
to add direct physical tape access). The current sim_disk library provides
the framework for direct support of 3 different disk formats:
1) standard simh disk format
2) platform specific physical disk access
and 3) platform independent Virtual Disk format.
The Virtual Disk format is an implementation of the format described in
the ”Microsoft Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) Image Format Specification”. The
VHD specification is available for anyone to implement under the "Microsoft
Open Specification Promise" described at
http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp/default.mspx.
The VHD implementation includes support for:
1) Fixed sized disks
2) Dynamically expanding disks
and 3) Differencing Disks.
Dynamically expanding disks don’t change their “Virtual Size”, but they
don’t consume disk space on the containing storage until the virtual
sectors in the disk are actually written to (i.e. an RA81 or RA92 VHD
with a VMS installed on it may initially only contain 30+ MB of files,
and the resulting VHD will be 30+ MB). The VHD format contains meta data
which describes the virtual device. Amongst this meta data is the simh
device type which the VHD was originally created as. This metadata is
therefore available whenever that VHD is attached to an emulated disk
device in the future so the device type & size can be automatically be
configured.
Sim_disk_attach is used by device emulations to attach a simh/vhd/raw
device to a simulated device. The following simh command switches
are used by the sim_disk_attach API:
-R Attach Read Only.
-E Must Exist (if not specified an attempt to create the
indicated virtual disk will be attempted).
-F Open the indicated disk container in a specific format
(default is to autodetect VHD defaulting to simh if the
indicated container is not a VHD).
-X When creating a VHD, create a fixed sized VHD (vs a
Dynamically expanding one).
-C Create a VHD and copy its contents from another disk
(simh, VHD, or RAW format).
-D Create a Differencing VHD (relative to an already
existing VHD disk)
Examples:
sim> show rq
RQ, address=20001468-2000146B*, no vector, 4 units
RQ0, 159MB, not attached, write enabled, RD54, autosize, SIMH format
RQ1, 159MB, not attached, write enabled, RD54, autosize, SIMH format
RQ2, 159MB, not attached, write enabled, RD54, autosize, SIMH format
RQ3, 409KB, not attached, write enabled, RX50, autosize, SIMH format
sim> atta rq0 RA81.vhd
sim> show rq0
RQ0, 456MB, attached to RA81.vhd, write enabled, RA81, autosize, VHD format
sim> set rq2 ra92
sim> att rq2 -f vhd RA92.vhd
RQ2: creating new file
sim> sho rq2
RQ2, 1505MB, attached to RA92.vhd, write enabled, RA92, autosize, VHD format
sim> ! dir RA92.vhd
Volume in drive H is New Volume
Volume Serial Number is F8DE-510C
Directory of H:\Data
04/14/2011 12:57 PM 5,120 RA92.vhd
1 File(s) 5,120 bytes
0 Dir(s) 3,074,412,544 bytes free
sim> atta rq3 -c RA92-1.vhd RA92.vhd
sim> atta rq3 -c RA92-1.vhd RA92.vhd
RQ3: creating new virtual disk 'RA92-1.vhd'
RQ3: Copied 1505MB. 99% complete.
RQ3: Copied 1505MB. Done.
sim> sh rq3
RQ3, 1505MB, attached to RA92-1.vhd, write enabled, RA92, autosize, VHD format
sim> ! dir RA92*
Volume in drive H is New Volume
Volume Serial Number is F8DE-510C
Directory of H:\Data
04/14/2011 01:12 PM 5,120 RA92-1.vhd
04/14/2011 12:58 PM 5,120 RA92.vhd
2 File(s) 10,240 bytes
0 Dir(s) 3,074,404,352 bytes free
sim> sho rq2
RQ2, 1505MB, not attached, write enabled, RA92, autosize, VHD format
sim> set rq2 ra81
sim> set rq2 noauto
sim> sho rq2
RQ2, 456MB, not attached, write enabled, RA81, noautosize, VHD format
sim> set rq2 format=simh
sim> sho rq2
RQ2, 456MB, not attached, write enabled, RA81, noautosize, SIMH format
sim> atta rq2 -c RA81-Copy.vhd VMS055.dsk
RQ2: creating new virtual disk 'RA81-Copy.vhd'
RQ2: Copied 456MB. 99% complete.
RQ2: Copied 456MB. Done.
sim> sho rq2
RQ2, 456MB, attached to RA81-Copy.vhd, write enabled, RA81, noautosize, VHD format
sim> det rq2
sim> ! dir RA81-Copy.vhd
Volume in drive H is New Volume
Volume Serial Number is F8DE-510C
Directory of H:\Data
04/14/2011 01:22 PM 178,304,512 RA81-Copy.vhd
1 File(s) 178,304,512 bytes
0 Dir(s) 2,896,097,280 bytes free
sim> ! dir VMS055.dsk
Volume in drive H is New Volume
Volume Serial Number is F8DE-510C
Directory of H:\Data
03/08/2011 01:42 PM 403,663,872 VMS055.dsk
1 File(s) 403,663,872 bytes
0 Dir(s) 2,896,097,280 bytes free
sim>
The ControlFlow changes fix a potential bug in breakpoint handling
which arguably merely could be “not supported”. That bug is that if
a breakpoint’s actions have multiple actions AND an action early in
the list invokes a do command file, the subsequent pending breakpoint
actions are not performed.
The ControlFlow patch/changes implement the following extensions to
the SCP command language without affecting prior behavior:
GOTO <Label> Command is now available. Labels are lines in which the first non whitespace character is a “:”. The target of a goto is the first matching label in the current do command file which is encountered. Since labels don’t do anything else besides being the targets of goto’s, they could be used to provide comments in do command files, for example (“:: This is a comment”)
SET ON Enables error trapping for currently defined traps (by ON commands)
SET NOON Disables error trapping for currently defined traps (by ON commands)
RETURN Return from the current do command file execution with the status from the last executed command
RETURN <statusvalue> Return from the current do command file execution with the indicated status. Status can be a number or a SCPE_<conditionname> name string.
ON <statusvalue> commandtoprocess{; additionalcommandtoprocess}
Sets the action(s) to take when the specific error status is returned by a command in the currently running do command file. Multiple actions can be specified with each delimited by a semicolon character (just like breakpoint action commands).
ON ERROR commandtoprocess{; additionalcommandtoprocess}
Sets the default action(s) to take when any otherwise unspecified error status is returned by a command in the currently running do command file. Multiple actions can be specified with each delimited by a semicolon character (just like breakpoint action commands).
ON <statusvalue>
ON ERROR Clears the default actions to take when any otherwise unspecified error status is returned by a command in the currently running do command file.
Error traps can be taken for any command which returns a status other
than SCPE_STEP, SCPE_OK, and SCPE_EXIT.
ON Traps can specify any status value from the following list:
NXM, UNATT, IOERR, CSUM, FMT, NOATT, OPENERR, MEM, ARG, STEP,
UNK, RO, INCOMP, STOP, TTIERR, TTOERR, EOF, REL, NOPARAM, ALATT,
TIMER, SIGERR, TTYERR, SUB, NOFNC, UDIS, NORO, INVSW, MISVAL,
2FARG, 2MARG, NXDEV, NXUN, NXREG, NXPAR, NEST, IERR, MTRLNT,
LOST, TTMO, STALL, AFAIL.
These values can be indicated by name or by their internal numeric
value (not recommended).
Interactions with ASSERT command and “DO –e”:
DO –e is equivalent to SET ON, which by itself it equivalent
to “SET ON; ON ERROR RETURN”.
ASSERT failure have several different actions:
If error trapping is not enabled then AFAIL causes exit from the current
do command file.
If error trapping is enabled and an explicit “ON AFAIL” action is defined,
then the specified action is performed.
If error trapping is enabled and no “ON AFAIL” action is defined, then
an AFAIL causes exit from the current do command file.
Other related changes/extensions:
• The “!” command (execute a command on the local OS), now returns
the command’s exit status as the status from the “!” command.
This allows ON conditions to handle error status responses from
OS commands and act as desired.
• Argument substitution has been extended for do command file
execution. The extended argument substitution include
substitution of any program environment variable (referenced by
%ENVVARNAME%) along with dynamic expansion of several pseudo
environment variables:
%DATE% expands to a string of the form: yyyy/mm/dd (i.e. 2011/01/23)
%TIME% expands to a string of the form: hh:mm:ss (i.e. 17:23:44)
%CTIME% expands to a string of the form: www mmm dd hh:mm:ss yyyy
(i.e. Mon Jan 24 08:22:33 2010)
%ENVNAME% expands to a string which has the value of the environment
variable ENVNAME
The makefile now works for Linux and most Unix's. Howevr, for Solaris
and MacOS, you must first export the OSTYPE environment variable:
> export OSTYPE
> make
Otherwise, you will get build errors.
1. New Features
1.1 3.8-0
1.1.1 SCP and Libraries
- BREAK, NOBREAK, and SHOW BREAK with no argument will set, clear, and
show (respectively) a breakpoint at the current PC.
1.1.2 GRI
- Added support for the GRI-99 processor.
1.1.3 HP2100
- Added support for the BACI terminal interface.
- Added support for RTE OS/VMA/EMA, SIGNAL, VIS firmware extensions.
1.1.4 Nova
- Added support for 64KW memory (implemented in third-party CPU's).
1.1.5 PDP-11
- Added support for DC11, RC11, KE11A, KG11A.
- Added modem control support for DL11.
- Added ASCII character support for all 8b devices.
1.2 3.8-1
1.2.1 SCP and libraries
- Added capability to set line connection order for terminal multiplexers.
1.2.2 HP2100
- Added support for 12620A/12936A privileged interrupt fence.
- Added support for 12792C eight-channel asynchronous multiplexer.
2. Bugs Fixed
Please see the revision history on http://simh.trailing-edge.com or
in the source module sim_rev.h.
