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September 2021 Release

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@dmcnaugh dmcnaugh released this 08 Sep 05:35
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THESE PACKAGES MAY NOT BE UPLOADED OR HOSTED ANYWHERE ELSE.​

Release Notes

NOTE: If you are upgrading from a version earlier than v1.9.0, you should upgrade to v1.9.0 first, before applying this patch release upgrade.

This is a patch release that:

  • improves code performance of the PTR: device on the Desktop UI
  • improves behaviour of the PTR: for reading larger tapes (>15KB)
  • updates the SYS: device to better report on system information

Firmware updates:

  • adds a 256 byte input buffer to the PTR: device to avoid overflow conditions (especially when writing to disk during a tape read)

Desktop UI updates:

  • Updated GUI Version to webfrontend-v1.10.1
  • Updated PTR: device to:
    • more quickly load a file as a paper tape
    • load files >15KB without failing
    • punch tapes >5KB without the noticeable slow-down of the previous release
    • include a Queue button that reads though any tape leader (nulls, 0x00) and stops at the first non-null byte
  • Updated SYS: device
    • re-orders information to place IMSAI8080 simulation details before host (ESP32) details
    • show fall-through information for the SIO Ports (HAL) with a + appended to the device name

The bundle is made of three parts:

  • The FIRMWARE for the ESP32-PICO-KIT
  • The IMAGE for the microSD card
  • An update.bin file for updating the desktop GUI

You only need the imsaisim_esp32.bin file from the FIRMWARE bundle if upgrading from v1.9.0
and the update.bin file to update the desktop GUI to v1.10.1

If you are upgrading from a version earlier than v1.9.0, you should upgrade to v1.9.0 first, before applying this patch release upgrade.

FIRMWARE

The FIRMWARE package is a ZIP file containing 6 files

COPYRIGHT.txt
FLASHING.md
bootloader.bin        22K 
imsai_part_table.bin  3.0K 
imsaisim_esp32.bin    999K 
ota_data_initial.bin  8.0K 

Instructions for flashing the firmware to an existing system are included in the Updating Software guide

The FLASHING.md file contains instructions for flashing the firmware to a new ESP32-PICO-KIT

IMAGE

The IMAGE package is a ZIP file of the complete contents of the microSD card and can simply be unzipped onto a newly formatted (FAT32) microSD card with a capacity of 128MB or greater.

Known Issues

  1. There is no UI for changing hard disk images, the required image must be set using the environment variable HARDDISK in the boot.conf file and then the ESP32 hard reset to reload the environment.
  2. The boot.conf file can't include a # in PASSWORD. The occurrence of # at any point on any line indicates the start of a comment.
  3. A race condition can occur when the 'AT' Modem is used as the CP/M console device CON:. This will cause a buffer overflow and the IMSAI8080esp will reboot. To avoid this race condition, always use the new AT&A1 "daemon" (silent) mode
  4. In the HAL there is currently no fall through implemented for carrier detect, but this is not currently a problem as only MODEM implements carrier detect.
  5. Sending to PTP: appends to the end of the tape and can cause an endless-loop if both reading (PTR:) and punching (PTP:) simultaneously.