[HECnet] DMC11 in next simh version... looks nice, and question about TOPS-10

[G.]

On Thu, 3 Jan 2013 08:26:49 +0100, you wrote:

I have been struggling particularly with PDP10, trying to get TOPS-10 to use 
it, but I really don't know how and my attempt to build a new monitor with 
DMR11 emulation (almost identical to DMC11) failed at the link stage, but I 
don't know why.

That is what happens here too... My guess is it is necessary to build a 
modified TOPS10.REL. But without the docs it can be quite difficult.

No, TOPS10.REL is just a library (MAKLIB made) of relocatable binary objects
(.REL) ready to be assembled. It contains every possible Monitor module for
standard configurations. During Monitor linking only the relevant modules are
extracted and used to build the final Monitor executable file.

When I'll have some spare time, I can try to build a DMR11-enabled Monitor,
just to verify that everything works: I've been able to build a lot of
Ethernet Monitors with no problems, so this would be to exclude bugs in other
modules not used for Ethernet. I've discovered that it wouldn't be so strange
to find some glitch that prevents some configurations from building...

BTW, I once had to replace a module into TOPS20.REL, i.e. CLOCK1.REL, to take
advantage of the KLH10 emulator idle function. I just COMPILed CLOCK1.MAC (and
a couple of other required files, notably F.MAC and S.MAC) and then I replaced
in TOPS10.REL the old CLOCK1.REL with my new one using MAKLIB. :)

The alternative was to patch every new monitor to change a single instruction
instead of changing it into the relevant source module. I think it would have
been feasible even to directly patch TOPS10.REL, but I found easier to replace
the module than to understand and learn how to locate something inside it.

Bye, :)
G.