[Simh] DECwindows issues

[Hans Hübner]

Hi Mark,

thanks for your reply!

> I wonder if this is related to the fact that DECwindows switches the
> > screen resolution of the qvss framebuffer.  When the system initially
> > starts, the black qvss windows only occupies part of the Xorg screen,
> > but when DECwindows starts, it expands the window to the full
> > resolution of the X display.
>
> I haven't seen that.  The QVSS device simulation specifically simulates
> the very basic QVSS framebuffer which is constantly at 1024x864 and
> since that is what the original QVSS was capable of interfacing with,
> there is no provision for dynamically changing those dimensions.
>

This was actually me not looking closely.  DECwindows puts the retro black
and white pattern onto the screen which perfectly blends with the -retro
background of Xorg, so the resolution has not changed at all, I just failed
to see that the QVSS window is smaller than the actual screen (and the
jumping mouse kind of concealed that further).

> During normal system operation with V4.4-0, the simulator sometimes
> >  halts with messages like "Invalid argument, PC: 806EEB6A (MOVL
> 4(SP),(SP))"
> > or "Invalid argument, PC: 00083C16 (BEQL 83C35)".  If I type "c" at the
> > "sim>" prompt, the system continues to run.  Unfortunately, I could not
> > figure out how to cause this issue.
>
> I can't yet either.  I don't see this with the current code, but the most
> recent commits (today) in the github/simh/simh master branch will produce
> more contextual error messages that should help tracking down the root
> cause.
> Please pick up the latest code and if you see messages like this again,
> let me
> know directly or create an issue at https://github.com/simh/simh/issues


Will do!


> > Running DECwindows on a remote X Server (Xorg or Xquartz) kind of works,
> > but for some reason, only some of the DEC fonts which I've extracted
> using
> > getbdf from the VMS X Server are listed in xlsfonts.  In particular, the
> menu
> > font that VAX LISP uses is missing.
>
> I can't speak to why your local X server might not interpret these fonts,
> but
> there may have been some DEC specific font format details which never made
> it back to Xorg.  Hopefully you won't need to deal with at all once you can
> use the QVSS to as a display with DEC's X server leveraging its local
> fonts.
>

I still hope to somehow get the DEC fonts into Xorg as I really like them
beautiful colors :)

Cheers,
Hans
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