Re: [Rcxemul-discussion] Update 13/09/02 - the epic tale of my recent shenanigans

[Brian B. <bba...@mt...>]

Hi, David. Epic is right! That's quite complex stuff but it sounds like
you're conquering it all. Is all this going to have a physical 3d/2d
environment that the RCX emulator runs in? If so, do you have a plan on what
it'll look like and how you'll develop it?

> Now, an interesting (but complicated problem). I want to be able to
> create a fake IR tower application that takes output from the
> firmware/program download applications (lejosfirmdl and lejos) and
> communicates it to the serial port of the RCX. The serial port is quite
> complex and it's going to take me some time to implement. Add to that
> the fact that I don't have a clue how to interface these things! It
> would be ideal if I could do it without having to modify the firmware
> download code too much (e.g. just set RCXTTY=fakeir or something). Also,
> I don't know the best way of interfacing. Some ideas:
>
> 1. Sockets. Cygwin does sockets similarly to Unix, so I could create a
> message-based protocol to transfer information to and from the emulator.
> This could also be used when updating the state of the emulator. It
> would enable a UI to run in another language (e.g. Java) and even on
> another machine.
>
> 2. Some other convoluted way such as pipes or shared memory. Shared
> memory wouldn't be too bad, but I don't have a clue about it and whether
> it's portable. That way I wouldn't have to deal with the overhead of
> processing messages.

This will be really strange in a simulated environment. I don't envy having
to create that.

> So, that's about where I am. Congratulations if you read this far! Now
> I'll tell you how to compile and run the thing!
>
> Step 1. Obtain latest code from CVS.
>
> Step 2. Put it all in a directory.
>
> Step 3. Compile it.
> a) gcc -o emul.exe *.c       will do it.
> b) gcc -DRCX_DEBUG -o emul.exe *.c      will give you a version
> with debug info (recommended).
> c) gcc -DRCX_DEBUG -DRCX_DEBUG_REGISTERS -o emul.exe *.c    will
> give you a version with some registers output as well. Not all that
> useful.
>
> Step 4. Get a ROM and RAM image.
> a) ROM: Kekoa's page has info on how to get this.
> http://graphics.stanford.edu/~kekoa/rcx/. I don't know how safe it is to
> do this, but all it does is install a new firmware that reads the ROM
> and outputs it in S-record format.
> b) firmware (RAM): The file bin\lejos.srec in the lejos
> distribution should do it. It doesn't actually use the firmware, but it
> has to be there for the thing to work.
>
> Step 5. Run it!

Impressive.

> Type: emul -f lejos.srec -r rom.srec -d
>
> This assumes your firmware is called lejos.srec and your ROM is called
> rom.srec. The -d signifies that you want debug mode. There are 4 levels
> of output and the following flags control them:
>
> -d (or --debug): highest level - output most (recommended)
> -q (or --quiet): don't output very much
> -v (or --verbose): about half way
>
> If you don't put a flag it defaults to between -q and -v.
>
> Other flags:
>
> -f (or --ram): followed by the firmware image
> -r (or --rom): followed by the rom image
> -h (or --help): output some help info
>
> It compiles under my installation of cygwin using gcc. I don't know if
> it will compile for anyone else; it would be nice if someone lets me
> know if they can get it to run.
>
> In the actual application, pressing return will execute the next
> instruction. Pressing d (followed by return) will dump the memory to
> screen, and b will output it to a file (in binary format).
>
> Phew! That's about it for now...
>
> Dave.
>
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