5 Mar
2018
5 Mar
'18
9:11 a.m.
Mark Abene <phiber at phiber.com> wrote:
I'm posting this here in the hopes that there are
other KLH10 emulator
users on HECnet.
There are, I am one of them.
I've been using KLH10 with the tap patches for
years and years, and idling
has always worked fine. At some point over the recent couple of years,
idling stopped working for me on linux (I run ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS with
latest updates as of yesterday, on a 64-bit intel machine). My CPU is stuck
at 100% utilization, without even starting an emulated OS (I run TOPS-20).
In fact, as soon as I type "GO" in KLH10 and before doing anything else,
the CPU immediately shoots to 100%. Is anyone else seeing this? In older
versions of ubuntu/linux this didn't happen.
Handful of points:
* the idling is done by modifying the idle loop in the guest operating
system to interact with the KLH10 idler device, not by identifying
the idle loop like SIMH does.
* until the OS is up and running, there is no idling. In other words,
while at the BOOT> prompt there will be a loop consuming 100% CPU
waiting for terminal input. This is normal, and it has always been
that way.
* if you have had the same TOPS20 system running, with idling, earlier
everything points at your host os (ubuntu) no longer cooperating with
KLH10. I myself run (mostly) FreeBSD, and I have never had problems
with idling the TOPSxx systems.
* for TOPS10, there are a couple of more things to consider, one of them
is that the idler device by default is at device code 700, which can't
be accessed from the mode the -10 idle code runs in. Using 740 works.
I would look for what has changed in your host os (ubuntu) regarding
system timers and such. Your setup *should* work.
Thanks,
Mark
--Johnny