I'm sure kevin would like any help or testing he can get. Although the
idea is to get away from this secondary windows presence depend, it
still is a large point of hesitation for many. Here is an announcement
from May 14 that appeared on the site (plex86.org). It should be
converted to plain text but the html is so much prettier. I once saw
this thing on the mandrakesoft.com labs section that said to expect a
significant and reasonable enduser app by early-mid spring 2001. hehe.
But at least they finally getting somewhere. Too bad as soon as win98
is usable through plex with perfect charm and ease XP will be old and
stale. I go vomit now, too much win talk for me.
*Phase #1 of DT integration: test release available.
Monday 14th of May 2001 @ 07:11 pm GMT
*
The first phase of the DT integration is nearly complete.
FreeDOS/Linux/Win95 all boot again in plex86 using the
new Dynamic Translation architecture. You won't see
performance gains until Phase #2. This version is
for plex86 testers only.
It's available at :
ftp://plex86.org/source-tarballs/plex86-2001_0514a.tar.gz
Here's a copy of the email I sent to the developers list:
- "Kevin P. Lawton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>>: Mon
May 14 14:03:20 EDT 2001
Integrated a lot of new DT architecture (from dt-testbed/proto4) into
plex86. Eliminated the previous Software Instruction Virtualization
layer (SBE). Parts that are now integrated/added:
- Tcode (translated code) storage/allocation.
- Guest instruction address to tcode address sparse tables. These
are on a per-page basis.
- Reverse tcode address to guest instruction address sparse tables
for exception handling.
- Maintenance of two hash tables for high speed lookups. One
for guest offset (EIP) to tcode address, and one for linear
page address to page meta info index. These will be more important
when I integrate the branch translations.
- Invalidation of tcode based on writes to managed tcode pages.
- Revalidation of tcode pages across guest OS context switches.
- Arbitrary code expansion. We're not locked into maintain the
same page offsets anymore.
- Updated the 'PERFORMANCE' file with more related ideas/todos.
Parts not integrated yet. The only thing that wasn't integrated is
the branch translations. To make debugging easier, for this phase,
_all_ branches (even static intra-page branches) are translated as
INT3 and emulated by the monitor. This means performance will suck
until I add them. The code is prototyped already in dt-testbed/proto4,
and now the hash table management logic is tested and works. So this
should be reasonable to add in short time.
FreeDOS / Pragma Linux (kernel 2.0.33) / Win95 all work again.
I used 'conf/freedos', 'conf/pragma', and 'conf/win95'.
This release is for testing only. To decrease noise on the developers
list, test it only with host = {single processor Linux kernel}, and
guest = {FreeDOS, Pragma Linux} and guest = {Win95} if you already
have an installed disk image.
Performance will be very slow for this phase. This is OK and expected,
as every guest branch instruction is monitored/emulated. First,
I need your help to test this code. After a small amount of time
to shake out bugs, I will integrate the branch translation logic
from the prototype (phase#2), and things should get fun!
*Written by Kevin Lawton < [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>>*
