Fill.asm random whitespace?

[mmiller7]

I'm getting some strange behavior from Fill.asm.  When I run the test script, it acts like the keypress is not always registered.

Is this just a bug in the simulator?  If not, where would I begin to look to figure out what's going on?

I've attached a very short screen-capture of the test script running in real-time.  I tried pressing the key "really hard" to ensure I wasn't letting it up any, same result.
hw5-1.zip (Edit: zipped the MPEG4, it didn't like the attachment)

If you need more information to diagnose this, let me know what to post.

[cadet1620]

mmiller7 wrote

I'm getting some strange behavior from Fill.asm.  When I run the test script, it acts like the keypress is not always registered.

Is this just a bug in the simulator?  If not, where would I begin to look to figure out what's going on?

My Fill.asm works fine on my system (WinXP Home sp3, java version "1.6.0_22"). The first thing I'd try would be to test your Fill.asm with the HW simulator running on a different OS. If it behaves in the same freakish manner, it's likely to be a bug in your Fill.asm.

If you want to, send me your Fill.asm and I'll see what it does on my system.

--Mark

[cadet1620]

More info:

I habitually use the space key for these tests.  I noticed that you're using enter.  When I use enter I don't get the intermittent key-ups you get, but the Keyboard button flashes up and down; it does not for other keys.  Try using space or a letter and see what happens.

It looks like you're holding the mouse button down on the Keyboard button?  You don't have to for normal keys like space.  Holding the button down doesn't change my behavior with Enter.

The flashing rate looks like it may be auto-repeat related -- longer period of black at the beginning followed by white flashes at auto-repeat rate.

--Mark

[mmiller7]

cadet1620 wrote

More info:

I habitually use the space key for these tests.  I noticed that you're using enter.  When I use enter I don't get the intermittent key-ups you get, but the Keyboard button flashes up and down; it does not for other keys.  Try using space or a letter and see what happens.

It looks like you're holding the mouse button down on the Keyboard button?  You don't have to for normal keys like space.  Holding the button down doesn't change my behavior with Enter.

The flashing rate looks like it may be auto-repeat related -- longer period of black at the beginning followed by white flashes at auto-repeat rate.

--Mark

Interesting, I tried "Space" first but nothing happened.  That's why I moved on to "Enter".  The OS is Solaris, unsure what version we have.  Java reports "java version "1.6.0_23"; Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_23-b05); Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM (build 19.0-b09, mixed mode)"  I'll see if I can download it and run on Ubuntu.

How would I send my asm without posting (for everyone to see) on the forum?  I haven't figured out private messaging on this forum yet (if it exists)?

P.S. when I say "space did nothing" I mean that it did not appear to register a keypress in the CPUEmulator.  The memory address would not change and no text appeared to indicate it recieved a keypress like it does saying Enter.

[mmiller7]

Ok, an update -- I tried it on two other operating systems:

Ubuntu 10.04: much, much, much worse -- every few lines had large amounts of whitespace.

java version "1.6.0_20"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (IcedTea6 1.9.7) (6b20-1.9.7-0ubuntu1~10.04.1)
OpenJDK Server VM (build 19.0-b09, mixed mode)



Windows 7 64-bit: it was significantly better, but there was still small blocks of pixels that were blank, as if it skipped one memory location every few hundred iterations.

java version "1.6.0_24"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_24-b07)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 19.1-b02, mixed mode, sharing)

Strangely, space worked on both of these even though it doesn't work on Solaris.


Where do we go from here?




Unrelated rant, I wish they'd fix the .bat with the path to the Java executable...it's a major pain to have to search my computer for the proper path to java.exe and edit the .bat when it should be programmed to find java.exe on it's own.  Or use a .jar executable that can be double-clicked on every platform I've seen so far without worrying about what the path to java is!

[mmiller7]

Alright, so here's the final result:

I did have a minor bug in my code, but that wasn't the cause of the strange long white lines on Linux.

As far as I can tell, this was an artifact created by auto-repeat keypress option.  When I disabled this (System > Pref > Keyboard in Ubuntu) and rebooted into Linux (vs using VirtualBox) it seems to have fixed the problem.  [EDIT: After a few reboots, VirtualBox is fine, but the key-repeat definately is causing problems.]

Thanks Mark for helping me find the problem!