NSIM release news
Copyright 1995 Eric L. Smith (eric@telebit.com)
$Header: /usr/home/kolwynia/eric/hpcalc/nasm/RCS/NEWS,v 1.2 1995/08/21 22:23:20 eric Exp eric $

Notes on Release 0.5 (August 21, 1995)
---------------------------------------

The simulator will now save its state and memory.  You won't have to start
from "MEMORY LOST" every time you run it.

The command line arguments to the simulator have changed.  With no arguments,
the simulator will try to find default ROM and RAM files in your home
directory, based on the name the simulator was invoked with.  For example,
if you symlink "hp41" to the simulator, it will try to find ".hp41_rom" and
".hp41_ram".  The RAM file contains not just the RAM but the entire status of
the calculator.  If no RAM file is found, the simulator will initialize
the RAM and state for a cold start.  When the simulator is terminated by an
escape key (via its X window) or by the "q" command to the debugger (described
below), the RAM contents and state will be written to the RAM file.

The command line arguments are:

  -rom <filename>  get ROM image from alternate file
  -ram <filename>  get RAM image from alternate file
  -c       configure for 41C RAM (64 registers)
  -cv      configure for 41CV RAM (320 registers)
  -stop    enter debugger immediately
  -trace   enter trace mode immediately

Some basic microcode debugging capability is now present.  The debugger may
be entered by sending an interrupt signal to the simulator process (typically
by typing Control-C in the xterm window that the simulator was run from,
assuming that it wasn't placed in the background).  The debugger will prompt
with a ">".  The following commands are recognized:

g         go
h         help
s         step
t         trace
q         quit (save state)
x         exit (don't save state)
