Release Changes

VM Labs SDK Release 0.85 Beta
February 12
, 2001


Important Upgrades

The following changes are mandatory for the SDK release.
  • You must upgrade your debug stub to version 4.9.3. See the Debug Stub Info document for details on how to do this.

The following changes are recommended for the SDK release.

  • 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. Be aware that this upgrade will disable the oldstyle joysticks! If you require a joystick for your development and/or testing, you have 3 options:
    1. continue to use the old BIOS (from the 0.80 SDK);
    2. you can obtain a new style joystick from George Campbell before proceeding; or,
    3. you can use the joystick that is packed in with a Samsung Extiva-1.

    See the Joystick Info document for more information.

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

Updated Scripts, Executables and Documentation
  sample directory moved The sample directory has been moved out of the doc directory, as requested.
 

GCC 2.95.2

Updated Documentation:

Added collect2 executable for Windows and Linux.

 

  Llama 2.74

See:

 

Linker 2.9.10

  • vmstrip
  • zcoff
  • vmld
  • vmdump
  • dump
  • h2i
  • coffdump
  • Library can be linked without '-l'; mentioning libfoo.a is identical to -lfoo. (However, this has not yet been implemented in mgcc.)
  • Supports aligned common symbols needed for Llama 2.74
 

Updated the following Windows executables:

  • mkdir.exe
  • sh.exe

These executables are from a royalty-free set of Win32 gnu utilities provided at http://www.edv.agrar.tumuenchen.de/~syring/win32/UnxUtils.html

We also include cat.exe, less.exe, gawk.exe, echo.exe, m4.exe, diff.exe, touch.exe, which.exe, sed.exe, rmdir.exe, rm.exe, mv.exe, ls.exe, grep.exe, find.exe, chmod.exe, and cp.exe from the above link.

Aliases for your the sh.exe file can be set in $HOME\.zshenv. This is very useful for making DOS command-like aliases out of shell commands, which is needed for the m3dl samples:

alias erase="rm -rf"

 

Updated vml_make.mk and vml_make_targets.mk.

New vml_make_clean.mk file.

See new Makefile Fragments documentation.

vml_make_targets.mk

  • Split clean command into its own file
  • Uses your $VMLABS_LOCAL/util directory if it exists instead of this file.
  • "makecof" target now correctly uses the LOCAL_LIB_PATH variable.
  • Added "sdkrelease" and "no-target" targets.

vml_make_clean.mk

  • OBJDIR is now defined correctly

vml_make.mk

  • Define ISEP, DIFF, AWK, SDK_VERSION, SDK_RELEASE_INFO, QUOTED_VERSION, QUOTED_RELEASE_INFO
  • Uses your $VMLABS_LOCAL/util directory if it exists instead of this file.
  Updated install_linux script.

Fixes some minor bugs.

  Updated user-setup script.

Sets the vmlabs environment in .bash_profile instead of .bashrc. Please remove any reference to .vmlabs from .bashrc.

Fixes bug, now correctly sets the $VMLABS_LOCAL PATH before the $VMLABS PATH.

Now sets the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment.

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

Used to generate flash images, i.e.:

createrom -o extiva2.bin extiva2.rom

  Removed bin/windows/vmmpo.exe and bin/linux/vmmpo No longer used.
  Removed bin/windows/gosynth.bat, bin/windows/loadwave.bat, bin/windows/logo.pcx No longer used.
  Updated Flash ROM binaries. See Flash Rom Documentation.
Updated Libraries and Include files
  Updated lib directory. Now includes the source code in lib/src for libraries:
  • MML2D - includes the mrplib and mltxt source
  • MML3D
  • mgl
  • mutil
  • jpeg
  • m3dl

See the Library Updates documentation.

  Updated include directory. See the Include File Updates documentation.
Platforms Tested
Windows 98, Windows NT/2000, Red Hat Linux 6.2
Known Problems
  Firmware Problems
  • PAL version:
    • PAL version doesn't work correctly with the player. Movies, video games and cd VLM images are distorted with wavy lines displayed on top. This bug is being looked at and will be resolved as soon as possible.
    • After flashing 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; please use the output displayed on the terminal window to determine if the boot images were flashed correctly. This will be fixed in a future release.
  • 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.

 

  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.
 

Windows Unix Utilities problems:

  • find.exe
  • which.exe
  • mkdir.exe
  • find.exe gets confused by upper case letters; just use lower case to find a file.
  • which.exe needs the extension .exe specified executable that you are trying to find the path of.
  • mkdir -p option doesn't work from the DOS window. Use vm_mkdir instead
 

Windows 98 Unix Utilities Problems.

  • cp.exe
  • sh.exe
  • cp.exe has problems copying files over existing files with the same name. This problem doesn't happen on Windows 2000/NT. Workarounds for the problems:
    • Get cp.exe from another set of unix utilities; i.e. MKS or cygwin. We have the MKS cp.exe for internal VMLABS use at \\mammoth\NUON\MKS
    • Upgrade your operating system to Windows 2000/NT
  • sh.exe has problems interacting with Makefiles that use shell commands. It works correctly on Windows 2000/NT. Workarounds for the problems:
    • remove sh.exe from your $VMLABS/bin directory. If you are still having problems building, get sh.exe from another set of unix utilities; i.e. MKS or cygwin. We have the MKS sh.exe for internal VMLABS use at \\mammoth\NUON\MKS
    • Upgrade your operating system to Windows 2000/NT
  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 .84 release, please see ReleaseChanges-0.84.html.


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

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