Release Changes

VM Labs SDK Internal Release 0.86.2
June 14
, 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.

Updates for the SDK 0.86.2 Release.
 

Llama 2.80

bin/windows/llama.exe and bin/linux/llama

No longer emits spurious warnings about instructions with no effect.

See the following for more information:

 

Puffin 5.0.02 Beta

Update for Windows platform: bin/windows/puffin5.exe

Update for Linux platform: bin/linux/puffin5, lib/tcl8.3 and lib/tk8.3

A preliminary version of Puffin5, the new debugger. Currently, it is only an assembly language debugger. The C support will be added in a future release.

To run the new debugger:

The Puffin 5.0.02 Beta release includes the TCL/TK 8.32 files needed to run puffin5 on linux.

There have been some bug fixes and new features added since the Puffin 5.0.01 Beta release. Please see the documentation for more information.

 

Include file update.

include/nuon/video.h

include/nuon/video.h was updated to add the missing int fps field in the bios_viddisplay structure. This missing field had resulted in the incorrect number of bytes (36) returned for the structure; it now returns the correct number of bytes (40).
  Updated patches lib/crt0.o, lib/gcrt0.o and lib/crtend.o See the patch release notes.
 

Removed obsolete files: lib/crt0l.o and lib/gcrt0l.o

These files were used with the obsolete library-based bios, libbios.a.
 

PAL/NTSC firmware:

bin/NUON/flashRcv-pal.cof, bin/NUON/flash-dev-pal.bat, bin/NUON/flash-dev-pal, bin/NUON/nuon-flash.tcl, bin/NUON/dev-pal.cof

The Flash Programming window will no longer be distorted when you flash the PAL boot images while the NUON system is set to PAL mode. However, it will be distorted when you flash the PAL boot images while the NUON system is set to NTSC mode and vise versa.

See the Flash Rom Documentation for more information.

 

Authinfo documentation update.

doc/authinfo.html

The Authinfo documentation has been updated.
 

Linker 2.9.14

Update for Linux platform:

bin/linux/vmld

Fixed "common" variable alignment bug for vmld on Linux.
Updated Executables for the SDK 0.86.1 Release.
 

Linker 2.9.14

Update for Windows platform:

bin/windows/vmld.exe

This version of vmld is necessary for the new compiler to work correctly.

vmld will now continue command line option processing if -v is followed by other commands.

vmdump no longer has random output in gaps and padding when the --snap(-pad)options are used.

Fixed "common" variable alignment bug on Windows only.

Updated Scripts, Executables and Documentation for the SDK 0.86 Release.
  MGCC 2.95.3

Recent Updates:

  • Updated to GCC 2.95.3, which has some improvements in multiword load and store sequences.
  • Renamed cpp to vmcpp
  • Fixed a bug related to the handling of short values.
  • Fixed a bug with volatile and sub-word writes that caused the wrong timecode to be displayed.

Known Bugs:

  • There may be a case where "long long" may not work correctly. If you run into such a case, please report it to sdk-release@vmlabs.com.
  • There is still 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 2.95.3 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:

    If the cc1.exe is still crashing, another workaround is to use the shell environment, by typing "sh" at the command line, then restart your build from this window. This bug is being looked into and will hopefully be resolved in the next release.
  Mload 4.9.6 No longer accepts ths foreslash, /, as a command line option, so that linux users can specify the path of a file to the mload command.
 

Authinfo 0.02

Now correctly identifies application types.
 

Added bin/windows/vmupdate.exe and bin/linux/vmupdate

If the source file is different than destination file, vmupdate will copy the source file over the destination file.

  Removed bin/windows/dump.exe and bin/linux/dump

Replaced with vmdump.

 

Removed obsolete, redundant and unnecessary executables from bin/linux.

The following executables were removed:
  • merlin-local-gdb
  • merlin-local-g77
  • merlin-local-protoize
  • merlin-local-unprotoize
  Added bin/linux/gmake Includes gmake 3.79.1 to correspond to the windows version.
  samples

We have new and improved samples!

We also now include a NUON game called "SameGame"; see sample/Games/SameGame/index.html for more information.

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
Unix like tools for Windows
 

MKS Tools:

  • 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:
 

GNU Tools:

  • chmod.exe
  • find.exe
  • grep.exe
  • ls.exe
  • mkdir.exe
  • mv.exe
  • rm.exe
  • rmdir.exe
  • touch.exe
  • cat.exe
  • gawk.exe
  • echo.exe
  • m4.exe
  • diff.exe
  • less.exe
  • expr.exe

From the GNU royalty-free set of Win32 gnu utilities provided at http://www.edv.agrar.tumuenchen.de/~syring/win32/UnxUtils.html

We also include erase.exe which is just a copy of rm.exe; erase.exe is used by the sample's Makefiles.

Known Problems
  Firmware Problems See the Flash Rom Documentation for more information.
  Puffin2k Problems On Windows 98/2000, Puffin2k 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.
 

Sample Problems:

rgb2ycrcb

The following samples need the rgb2ycrcb executable, which we don't support on Linux. Therefore the following samples won't compile on the Linux platform:

Game-Controllers/Controller-Dump

NUON-Programming-Series/DMA-Sample

Video/Screensaver

 

Sample Problems:

bmp2mbm

The following samples need the bmp2mbm executable, which we don't support on Linux. Therefore the following samples won't compile on the Linux platform:

m3dl/Transparency

  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 release, please see ReleaseChanges-0.85.html.


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

This page © Copyright 2001 VM Labs, Inc. Mountain View, CA. All rights reserved.