hiebeler@cs.rpi.edu (Dave Hiebeler) (04/10/90)
Two pieces of news for Cellsim users. The FTP site for obtaining
Cellsim has changed, and some bugs in V2.5 have been fixed.
================
Anonymous FTP is no longer available on the machine that Cellsim was
previously being distributed from, so we have moved the distribution
files to another site. You can now obtain Cellsim (the current
version is V2.5) via anonymous FTP to turing.cs.rpi.edu (128.213.1.1).
Use "anonymous" as username, and your e-mail address as a password.
All Cellsim files are in the directory "pub/cellsim". The current V2.5
tarfile has had the bugfixes applied to it already. If you got Cellsim
before April 8, 1990, you should read below to see how to fix your version.
***NOTE***
Be sure to transfer files in binary mode (type "bin" at the FTP prompt
to set binary mode). Also, please try to restrict your FTP's to the
non-business hours (e.g. after 7pm, before 8am, Eastern time zone).
**********
If you've never heard of Cellsim before, this is briefly what it is: a
SunView-based cellular automata simulator that runs on color and B&W
Sun-3's, Sun-4's, and Sparcstations. It can run 1-D and 2-D CA, on
array-sizes of up to 512x512, using up to 256 states/cell. It can
also attach to a Connection Machine either locally or through the
network, and perform the computations there much more quickly. A copy
of the Cellsim V2.5 announcement, which has some more information including
details on how to obtain the package, is in the FTP directory as
the file "cellsim_2.5.announcement". If you obtain Cellsim for the first
time, please send a message to one of the authors, so you will be added
to the mailing-list to be notified of future releases or bug fixes.
If you already got Cellsim V2.5 when it was first announced, then you
don't need to generate lots of network traffic by getting the entire
distribution again. You only need to get a few files through anonymous FTP:
1. Get the file "2.5fixes.patch.Z".
2. If you use Cellsim with a Connection Machine, get the file
"2.5CMfixes.patch.Z".
2. Get the file "2.5fixes.README", which explains how to apply the patches
to V2.5.
If you can't FTP, then send a message to hiebeler@turing.cs.rpi.edu, I
will probably be able to mail the files to you (I think they're small enough).
The following bugs were reported in V2.5, and have been fixed:
1. When you did "Run/bound" when attached to CM, the current time was not
updated in the control panel after running.
2. When you changed the CMFE host in the CM defaults popup, it wouldn't take
effect until you closed the popup (similarly for CMFE port). Now it takes
effect immediately, so you can leave the CM defaults popup open if you
like.
3. Couldn't turn off CMFB display while running on the CM.
4. When running skip/bounded on CM, it didn't update Sun display at the end,
even if the Sun display was enabled.
5. "B" wasn't defined in the distributed CMnborhood.h, so if you wanted to
write a Paris rule that needed B, it wouldn't compile.
6. When you tried to dump a raster image while running on a Sun-3, it
complained that it was in closeup mode (even when it wasn't!)
7. "Run/bounded" didn't work right in 1-D (it acted like "screenful").
"Run/skip" and "Run/skip-bound" also didn't work right in 1-D
Also, the following two features have been added:
1. Added ability to load/save 2-d images, when in 1-d mode. Previously, only
the bottom ("current") line of the array would be saved or loaded when in
1-D mode. Now, there is a toggle in the "Image" defaults popup which you
can toggle so that load/save will operate on the entire 2-D image.
2. When running on a Sun, you can now use any array size (up to a maximum of
512) that is a multiple of 4. Previously, the only allowed sizes were
64, 128, 256 and 512. Note that if you're attached to the CM, the only
allowed sizes are still 128, 256, and 512.
In a future release, we hope to have truly arbitrary array-sizes working
on the Sun (not just multiples of 4), and perhaps even on the CM although
that may not be practical.
Note that these two new features are *not* mentioned in the V2.5
documentation. They weren't going to be available until the next version,
but a user needed these features quickly, so I put them in early.
Thanks to everyone who has notified us of bugs in Cellsim V2.5. If
you notice a bug that is not listed here, please let us know. We also
appreciate suggestions for new features to incorporate into Cellsim;
many of the new features in V2.5 were suggested by the user community!
Chris Langton Dave Hiebeler
Theoretical Division hiebeler@heretic.lanl.gov
T-13, MS B213 or hiebeler@turing.cs.rpi.edu
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos, NM 87545 USA
cgl@lanl.gov
--
Dave Hiebeler / Computer Science Dept. / Amos Eaton Bldg. /
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute / Troy, NY 12180-3590 USA
Internet (preferred): hiebeler@turing.cs.rpi.edu Bitnet: userF3JL@rpitsmts
"Off we go, into the wilds you ponder..."