PiDP-8/I Software

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Ticket Hash: efa0f0588642d6aef252ad305c6b9d5d652c54d4
Title: Merge in Deeper Thought 2
Status: Closed Type: Feature Request
Severity: Minor Priority: Medium
Subsystem: other Resolution: Rejected
Last Modified: 2017-01-21 08:07:44
Version Found In:
User Comments:
tangent added on 2016-11-22 01:38:04:

If rc.pidp8 senses IF mode 7 when it starts, it should launch Deeper Thought 2 if present rather than duplicate IF mode 0. (Or, reverse the logic if starting Deeper Thought in IF mode 0 makes more sense.)

Given this, merge in one of the public forks of Deeper Thought, or possibly multiple forks to get all the available features.

Also add a way to return from Deeper Thought 2 to PiDP-8 mode.

This could be optional at build time. e.g. configure --with-deeper-thought


tangent added on 2017-01-06 20:41:24:
Messing about with IF means special-casing this, and it interferes with Deeper Thought besides.

Instead, let's make the switch combo Sing_Step + Sing_Inst + Exec, with the mnemonic "deeper examination." Then to get back from Deeper Thought to the PiDP-8/I simulator, either give the same switch combo or make it + Cont, meaning "continue with the simulation."

I don't think we'll have a problem with the symmetric combo, since the "sleep(2)" following the launch of the GPIO thread should prevent rapid ping-ponging between the two programs. The maximum cycle time should be at least 4 seconds, with half of that being time for the user to notice that their command has been obeyed and to let up on the switch.

Still, it might be nice to have additional hold-off time before starting each program to allow any momentary switches to be lifted before proceeding. It could be part of the base gpio.c implementation: until all momentary switches are open, spin.

tangent added on 2017-01-21 08:07:44:
Can't do this. I contacted all the relevant copyright holders on this program, and they all ignored my request to license the software under some suitable license. Since there is no current license declared for any of this, that puts it under standard copyright, so we can't integrate it at all.

See [6c1f29ab59] for Plan B.