Release Changes

VM Labs SDK Internal Release 0.85
March 12
, 2001


Important Upgrades

The following changes are recommended for the SDK release.

  • You should upgrade your debug stub to version 4.9.5. See the Debug Stub Info document for details on how to do this.
  • You should upgrade your flash ROM to the latest firmware versions (included in this release). See the Flash ROM Info document for details on how to do this.

If these upgrades are not performed, the development tools and downloaded code may produce unexpected results or fail to operate.

The following changes have been made to the release install scripts, documentation, and directory structure for SDK Release.

Problem ID#

Description

Changes

Please Note: This is an internal version of the SDK.

For an external version of the SDK, please contact sdk-release@vmlabs.com.

Updated Scripts, Executables and Documentation
  Windows installation.

If you do not have the ROOTDIR environment set, you must set it for the sh.exe (from the MKS tools) that we include with the internal SDK release:

set ROOTDIR=C:

See the windows installation documentation for more information.

 

Aries Debug Stub 4.9.5

File Server connectivity has been stabilized.
  • Includes polling to recover from missed interrupts on the 860
  • Prevent the stub from sending an extra packet to an mpe after receiving an xoff
See the Debug Stub Documentation for more information.
 

Mload 4.9.5

Allows the -fs, -me and -ms options to appear after the filename to be loaded.
  BIOS 1.03.16.00 Extended the timeout period to 20 seconds. The new bios is used with the new stub to improve file server connectivity. See Flash Rom Documentation for more information.
  PAL/NTSC firmware

Movies and audio cds now work in PAL mode. Video games can be played in PAL mode, though there are black bars displayed at the top and bottom of the screen.

The default video mode set by the firmware is NTSC. To switch to PAL video mode, execute set-pal. To switch back to NTSC video mode, execute set-ntsc.

See Flash Rom Documentation for more information.

 

Updated vml_make.mk; there is now a vml_make_os.mk file.

Split the OS determination part out into its own fragment, vml_make_os.mk. See new Makefile Fragments documentation.

  Added bin/windows/DataTool.exe

The NUON Data Tool is used to concatenate a list of smaller data files into a larget NUON.DAT file. Currently it is only available for Windows.

See help file or the NUON Application Programming Guide.

  Updated bin/windows/rgb2ycrcb.exe  
  Added bin/windows/m3dinfo.exe M3DL library utility that dumps information about the M3D files output by the 3D Studio MAX plug-in.
 

Updated bin/windows

  • which.exe
  • cp.exe
  • sh.exe

Since the SDK is an internal release, we included the MKS version of these tools. If you do not have ROOTDIR set, please set it to your C: drive by doing either of the following:

  • Add the following to your autoexec.bat file:

    set ROOTDIR=C:

  • You can also set these environment variables on Windows NT/2000 systems by executing Start->Settings->Control Panel, double click on System, select the Advanced tab, click on the Environment Variables button, and finally add the ROOTDIR variable and set it to C:

Other UNIX like tools are from the GNU royalty-free set of Win32 gnu utilities provided at http://www.edv.agrar.tumuenchen.de/~syring/win32/UnxUtils.html

The Unix tools that we include are: cat.exe, less.exe, gawk.exe, echo.exe, m4.exe, diff.exe, touch.exe, sed.exe, rmdir.exe, rm.exe, mv.exe, ls.exe, grep.exe, find.exe and chmod.exe

  Updated bin/linux/h2i and bin/windows/h2i.exe Fixed bug.
  Updated the 3D Studio Max Plug-ins in the bundled directory Now includes MAX v3.1 as well as MAX v2.5.
 

Removed from bin/windows:

  • msvcrt.dll
  • mmath.dll
No longer needed.
Updated Libraries and Include files
  Updated lib directory.

See the Library Updates documentation.

  Updated include directory. See the Include File Updates documentation.
Platforms Tested
Windows 98, Windows 2000, Red Hat Linux 6.2
Known Problems
  Firmware Problems
  • PAL version:
    • Video games and samples have black bars displayed at the top and bottom.
    • After setting your system to PAL mode, the Flash Programming window will be distorted when you flash the PAL/NTSC boot images again. Your boot images are being loaded into your system though. This will be fixed in a future release. To avoid this problem, set your system to NTSC mode before flashing the boot images, by typing set-ntsc.
  • There is a problem playing "enhanced" audio cd's; they may take awhile before they begin to play. This bug is being looked into and will be resolved as soon as possible.
  • Audio cds sometimes crash the dev system. This bug is being looked into and will be resolved as soon as possible.

 

  Compiler Problems
  • The extiva2 firmware built with the new compiler is incorrectly displaying the first chapter of the DVD movie starting at 117:00:00:00 instead of 00:00:00:00. This bug will be resolved as soon as possible.
  • There is a register allocation bug in the reload pass of the compiler. This can cause the compiler to crash when compiling some functions with a lot of local variables, particularly with -O2 and better optimization. Using a lower optimization level will usually fix this. (This bug seems to be a general gcc 2.95.2 bug.)
  • On Windows OS machines, if you see cc1.exe crashing, check to see if you have the ROOTDIR environment variable set. If it is not set, update your autoexec.bat file or your System control panel environment variables to set this:

    set ROOTDIR=C:

  Puffin Problems On Windows 98/2000, Puffin is not working correctly with Day5 (bright.d) of the tutorial; it doesn't load the dmademo.cof file into the dev system. This bug is being looked at and will be fixed as soon as possible. It works correctly on Windows NT. On Linux, it loads the cof file but then core dumps.
  bin/linux/mgcc Uses hardcoded paths to libraries before using your specified library paths.
  bin/windows/sendmidi.exe Needs to be updated to use TCL81.dll. Currently it uses TCL80.dll.

For changes to the SDK .85 beta release, please see ReleaseChanges-0.85beta.html.


Please email comments or questions to SDK-Release@vmlabs.com

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