Emulator version 1.05 released

[Paul Kimpel]

Nigel and I are pleased to announce that version 1.05 of the retro-B5500 emulator has been released. All changes have been posted to the repository for our GitHub project. The hosting site has also been updated with this release.

This is primarily a bug-fix release containing enhancements and corrections accumulated since 1.04 was released about 18 months ago

There are a few items that bear specific mention here. Details are in the blog and the project wiki:

1. The emulator would not properly initialize in Apple Safari 11.0 for macOS due to changes in the way that Safari now restricts pop-up windows. The issue has been fixed in this release.
2. At long, long last, two serious bugs have been fixed that caused programs to abort with Flag Bit and Invalid Address errors during a heavy mix, and sometimes caused system-fatal Invalid Address errors. It has taken me almost five years to isolate these suckers, and I think I now have finally nailed them.
3. The Application Cache (AppCache) feature that allowed the emulator to run locally within a browser without an active network connection has been removed. The AppCache has been deprecated as a draft web standard, and both Chrome and Firefox have announced it will be removed from their browsers in a future release. Due to the way AppCache updates cached applications, you will probably need to load the emulator's home page twice the first time you attempt to run this release. The first load will remove the AppCache from your browser, but the browser will have loaded the old version. Reloading the page at that point will bring in the new version.
4. This release fixes a bug in the card reader that prevented the Cold- and Cool-Start decks from working properly. Because of this, the COLDSTART-XIII.card and COOLSTART-XIII.card decks in the tools/ directory of the project repository have an extra blank card after the first STOP card and before the binary bootstrap card for the Tape-to-Disk Loader in each deck. That extra card has been removed in this release. If you have any decks derived from these two, please check for and remove any similar blank card in them.
   

[Peter Quirk]

I have been experimenting with Microsoft Edge (Version 83.0.478.45, built on Chromium) and have experienced  initialization errors. Further research with emulator 1.06 shows the problem exists in Chrome (Version 83.0.4103.97) as well. The workaround seems to be to run the main emulator window with the developer tools (F12) panel open. The popups and their error messages are made visible. Once you get through the creation of the two IndexedDB stores, you don't experience the problems again. The first popup can also be made to display by clicking on the title bar of the emulator window without the developer tools panel open. I haven't found a reliable way to make the second popup display without activating the developer tools. The image below shows the error in Edge, which is identical in Chrome.

The next image shows the popup displaying correctly while in developer mode, after powering up the emulator.

If you run the main emulator window with developer tools, you will also notice that there is an error logged in the console due to favicon.ico not being present.

Peter 

[Paul Kimpel]

I gave up trying to run retro-b5500 in Edge some time ago, but have not tried using the Chromium-based version. I have exactly the same version of Google Chrome for Windows that you cited (64-bit), but cannot reproduce the problem you are reporting. I used a laptop that had not run the emulator before, opened the emulator from the www.phkimpel.us hosting site, and had absolutely no trouble setting up the configuration, coldstarting, loading system software, and running a few compile & gos.

I have found that bad things happen in all of the modern browsers when the B5500Console.html main page is not on the current tab of the top browser window. What I usually see, though, is extremely slow performance, which I think is an attempt by the browser developers to keep poorly-behaved applications from running full-tilt in the background and sucking all of the juice out of laptop batteries. That situation does not seem to be the case here.

I'll try to download and install the newer version of Edge and see if I can reproduce your problem with it.

On Friday, June 12, 2020 at 2:44:31 PM UTC-7, Peter Quirk wrote:

I have been experimenting with Microsoft Edge (Version 83.0.478.45, built on Chromium) and have experienced  initialization errors. Further research with emulator 1.06 shows the problem exists in Chrome (Version 83.0.4103.97) as well. ...

[Paul Kimpel]

I managed to download and install the latest version of Microsoft Edge (83.0.478.45, Official build, 64-bit) on the same Windows 10 Home laptop where I tried Chrome earlier today. Same story -- I had no problems loading the emulator from the hosting site, setting up the configuration, coldstarting, and running a few compile & gos. The new Edge has much the same visual appearance as Chrome (not surprisingly) and seems to work exactly the same, although it seems a little slower and the SPO printing is a little jerky. That seemed to improve after I ran the emulator for several minutes, so perhaps there was some internal tuning taking place.

So, Peter, I don't know what the problem is that you are encountering, but I'm unable to reproduce it in either Chrome or the new Edge.