sean@ukma.UUCP (Sean Casey) (11/14/85)
IT WORKS! IT WORKS! IT WORKS!
Here's some fixes and suggestions. These are primarily for the guy
who's maintaining it, but I thought they might have some general
usefulness so I'm posting them here.
Makefile: _unix.O
I think it is a good idea to change the makefiles to use the $(LIBDIR)
directory. This cuts down on the complexity by keeping things in a
common directory. Whether or not I can persuade Tom that it's a good
idea, I'd also like to suggest that lines be added to the makefile(s)
to create the _unix.O directory(ies). There were no instructions that
a _unix.O directory would have to be created anywhere, so inexperienced
installers may have a little trouble with it.
3b2 floating point:
A 3b2 has no floating point hardware and must emulate it in software.
Unfortunately, the C compiler doesn't know this, and blindly generates
floating point instructions for the wc32000. This can cause extreme
consternation when the poor user gets "Illegal instruction - core dump"
upon execution of the first floating point instruction. There is a
barely documented option to cc, "-f" that will force the loading of
floating point emulation routines. Note that the "-f" need only appear
in the final load of whatever you are compiling.
execl() bug:
After about 6 hours of testing and recompiling, I found out what broke
execl(). execl() works before sigsave() and not after. Here's the
code to sigsave.c:
----- EMPSUBS/sigsave.c -----
extern int sigaddr[];
sigsave()
{
sigaddr[0] = signal(-1, 1);
sigaddr[1] = signal(2, 1);
sigaddr[2] = signal(3, 1);
}
sigrest()
{
signal(-1, sigaddr[0]);
signal(2, sigaddr[1]);
signal(3, sigaddr[2]);
}
What is signal -1? I can't find it in signal.h, and as documented,
the signal(2) call does nothing special with it. It shouldn't even work,
but it does for BSD. Beats me. My temporary fix was to change the -1
to 1 (SIGHUP), but a REAL fix would use the defines in signal.h.
============
Improvements
============
I'm announcing these because I don't want to duplicate someone's efforts
if I don't have to. Let me know if you are working on any of these...
I'm probably going to hack up empire so that it does NOT use 6 overlapping
modules. I imagine that this was done to make it fit on a small address
space machine. This is really unnecessary for something like a 3b2, or
a Vax that has enough address space to handle it. The scheme uses much
more disk space than is necessary. It also slows it down because a 3b2
has a pretty slow disk (well, ours does). If and when I get this completed
I'll send it to Tom and he can do an official announcement.
I'm also going to write a server to run empire over 3bnet so that everyone
on 3bnet will be playing the same game. The game is much more fun with
lots of players. This will involve modifying part of empire so that it
can be used with a pty.
Happy emping!
Sean
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sean Casey UUCP: sean@ukma.UUCP or
915 Patterson Office Tower {cbosgd,anlams,hasmed}!ukma!sean
University of Kentucky ARPA: ukma!sean@ANL-MCS.ARPA
Lexington, Ky. 40506-0027 BITNET: sean@UKMA.BITNET