KA630 guru/tests?

From: der Mouse <mouse_at_Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
Date: Mon Jul 26 23:32:47 2004

Now that I'm back on the list, by dint of unsub + resub (which I really
should have thought to do earlier, rather than waiting against the time
Jay finally emerges from the aftermath of VCF East)....

I'm trying to build a KA630 emulator, more because I think it'll be fun
and will teach me stuff than because I actually have a use for such a
thing (there are plenty of good open-source VAX emulators out there
already). I picked the KA630 because it's the only VAX implementation
I have enough information on to even really attempt to build a
simulator for.

I dumped the ROMs from one of my KA630s (e/l/p/n:3fff 20040000, plus
some postprocessing of the capture file) to get firmware. But the
emulated VAX hangs at selftest step B. The manual I have
(EK-KA630-UG-001) says this means that the IPCR is not working properly
(probably broken Qbus electronics, on a real KA630), but it doesn't go
into any significant detail.

Furthermore, if I break to the simulator and manually advance it past
the "blbc r0,." that it's hanging at, it continues, but ends up with an
error at step 7 - apparently it can't find any working memory(!).

Now, the manual could be simply wrong. I've found it lying (or, let me
be charitable, "not matching the machine I have") at once already; it
claims certain bits are write-only, but the ROM code depends on being
able to read them.

Or I could be mis-emulating the Qbus stuff.

Or I could have a bug in the emulation of an instruction somewhere.

So, I'm looking for either or both of (a) someone who's enough of a
KA630 guru to help or (b) some kind of VAX instruction-set test suite,
to help verify that I have the instruction emulations right. (I caught
one instruction emulation bug already, quite by chance; there is surely
at least one more.)

Thoughts?

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Received on Mon Jul 26 2004 - 23:32:47 BST