[ES40-announcements] ES40 emulator version 0.15 released

[Camiel V. <iam...@gm...>]

Hello everyone,

Shortly after releasing version 0.14, the "first boot" version, here is
version 0.15; version 0.14 was one I wanted to get out to you as soon as
possible, but which had some small shortcomings.

Version 0.15 corrects a few small bugs, adds instruction set completeness,
true 32-bit floating point support, and increased speed (OpenVMS boots about
4 times faster on my humble system, boot time went down from 42 minutes to
12).

This version:

* Boots OpenVMS (7.3-1 and 8.3 tested);
* Can run most commands like DIR and MON SYS.

Changes are:

* Complete Alpha instruction set implemented;
* Performance improvements to icache and translation buffers;
* More correct simulation of 32-bit floating point ops;
* Bug fix to prevent crashing on certain floating point ops.

Of course, this version is available for download right now.

Major work that still needs to be done:

* Correct emulation of integer overflow and floating point exceptions;
* Increase speed even more;
* Fix bugs in serial port (console) emulation.

Let me clarify that last one: There seems to be something wrong with the
serial port emulation; when we do a non-conversational boot of OpenVMS,
after the startup process terminates, it is not possible to get a login
prompt by hitting <ENTER>. When we try to run the OpenVMS installation
CD-ROM, all is well until it asks for a password, then we get a message
we're using characters that aren't allowed, even if a valid password is
entered.

If anyone has any ideas for any of these areas, or other ideas, and would
like to contribute, please let me know!

Thanks, and have fun!

Camiel.