A few minor issues with SX-SIM and a request for an additional feature

Paul Baker

Guenther,

First off I want to thank you for developing the wonderful utility and actively updating and providing support for it, I find it indispensable to do·rapid prototyping without worrying about reducing the lifetime of my SX chip.

When I upgraded to SXSIM 1.40 to take care of the iread issue, I noticed a couple things had changed. When the list file is updated and SXSIM reloads, it unchecks the break walk box and the break point boxes. The breakpoints are still there, they just are not marked, but the break walk state is actually changed. This behavior is different from the previous version I had installed. I have not not had a chance to install 1.50 yet so I don't know if you have already dealt with either of these yet.

As for my request for an additional feature, I typically·place breakpoints at landmarks within my code and single step to the portion I am analyzing. However, as time progresses and·my concentration starts to slip, I have a tendancy to press the step button one or two times too many, forcing me to restart the process. Could you implement an 'undo step' feature? Providing only two levels of undo would be a great time saver and would rectify all but the most egregious carelessness on my part.

Thanks,
Paul

Guenther Daubach

Paul,

thank you for your comments on SxSim, and the bugs you have reported. I'll take care of them as soon as possible.

On 'undo step', I agree with you - this would really be a nice feature, I more than once would have needed it with the "real" SX-Key, where it cannot be implemented. In SxSim, it can - of course. Let me think about how it could be implemented - I have put this feature on top of the wishlist.

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Greetings from Germany,


G

Guenther Daubach

Paul,

in the meantime, I have checked the problems you had mentioned concerning the restoration of breakpoints and the setting of the break walk box. This is not really a bug but a "feature".

SxSim saves the information about breakpoints, the break walk box and other stuff in *.SIM files. These files momentarily are plain ASCII, and must have a special format otherwise, run-time errors might occur. Therefore, the very first line of the *.SIM files contains the version number of the SxSim that saved the file. When you use a newer version of SxSim for the first time, i.e. when the version information in the *.SIM file does not match the current SxSim version, the contents of the *.SIM files are ignored to make sure that incompatible file formats don't crash the program. When you quit (i.e. a new *.SIM file is written), and reload a '.LST file again later, the associated *.SIM file will be read and the settings of the last session are there again.

My TODO list contains a request to make handling of *.SIM files smarter, i.e. version-independent, similar to the good old INI files. I don't want to save all that information in the Windows registry because each new *.LST file you open would cause new registry entries.

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Greetings from Germany,


G

Paul Baker

Great, thanks for the prompt reply. I'll check when I get home to see if things are fixed (I can't remember if I ran the new version more than once).

Paul Baker

You know it just occured to me that someone who is industrious enough could potentially make a programmer/debugger utilizing the newly disclosed commands (plus storing a virtual copy of all other registers in off board ram) to implement an undo on the actual SX, the only thing at this point that seems incapable of being undone is a function call/return. Hmmm that would be tr