Running Venue sysouts on Medley for DOS

[pamoroso]

This discussion reports on my attempts at running some old Venue sysouts on Medley for DOS under DOSBox-X. @masinter suggested this in the August 14, 2024 external meeting.

I renamed the sysouts to adapt them to the DOS file name format:

• full.venuesysout -> VENFULL.SYS
• lisp.venuesysout -> VENLISP.SYS

Next, I copied the files to C:\MEDLEY. When I execute these commands to start Medley:

MEDLEY VENFULL.SYS -M 16 -VESA102

MEDLEY VENLISP.SYS -M 16 -VESA102

I get the following errors at the DOS prompt:

sysout_loader: IFPAGE says sysout size is 0 pages,
but sysout file size is 22463 pages.

sysout_loader: IFPAGE says sysout size is 0 pages,
but sysout file size is 17309 pages.

The errors hint at file format issues but is there anything that can be done?

[nbriggs]

That's a Medley 2.0 emulator on the DOSBox? If so, it can only run Medley 2.0 sysouts. If you got the lisp and full venue sysouts from the current medley repo, they're medley 3.51 sysouts and it's not going to run them.

Make a "tstsout" executable -- to examine the sysout information, on my Mac:

 % cd ~/Projects/maiko/bin
briggs@macrobiotic bin % ./makeright x ../darwin.x86_64/tstsout
making release 351 for darwin on x86_64.
making with display x releasename darwin.x86_64-x ldename ldex
start making lde for darwin.x86_64-x
clang -target x86_64-apple-darwin -std=gnu99 -fno-strict-aliasing ../darwin.x86_64-x/tstsout.o ../darwin.x86_64-x/byteswap.o -L/opt/X11/lib -lX11 -lm -lc -lm -o ../darwin.x86_64/tstsout
ld: warning: ignoring duplicate libraries: '-lm'
briggs@macrobiotic bin % tstsout -v ~/Projects/medley/loadups/full.sysout
ifpage.minbversion 11008
ifpage.process_size 64
ifpage.storagefullstate 0
ifpage.nactivepages 20680
briggs@macrobiotic bin % tstsout -v ~/Projects/medley/*/*/lisp.venuesysout
ifpage.minbversion 11008
ifpage.process_size 0
ifpage.storagefullstate 0
ifpage.nactivepages 17309
briggs@macrobiotic bin % tstsout -v ~/Projects/medley/*/*/full.venuesysout
ifpage.minbversion 11008
ifpage.process_size 0
ifpage.storagefullstate 0
ifpage.nactivepages 22463

briggs@macrobiotic bin % tstsout -v /Users/briggs/Projects/envos/xd1d/./users/maiko/2.0-final/sysouts/LISP.SYSOUT
ifpage.minbversion 15000
ifpage.process_size 0
ifpage.storagefullstate 0
ifpage.nactivepages 0

It's trivial to modify the tstsout.c source to output more of the versioning information from the ifpage -- the fields present there are

	DLword    lversion;
	DLword    minrversion;
	DLword    minbversion;
	DLword    rversion;
	DLword    bversion;

I don't remember the semantics of all the version numbers, but this part at least is documented in the source:

/*  Version control:  Set the two values that keep sysouts and emul-    */
/*  ators in sync:  The LVERSION and MINBVERSION fields in the IFPAGE   */
/*                                                                      */
/*  MINBVERSION is the current emulator version, incremented with each  */
/*  modification.  This must be >= a sysout's ifpage.minbversion.       */
/*                                                                      */
/*  LVERSION is the minimum lisp version that will run with this emu-   */
/*  lator.  This must be <= a sysouts's ifpage.lversion.                */
/*                                                                      */
/*  The loadup process sets both of these values in the sysout.         */
/*                                                                      */

and in the Lisp code you find things like:

./LLFAULT:             (ILEQ 5124 (fetch RVersion of \InterfacePage)))
./LLFAULT:                     (replace (IFPAGE MinRVersion) of \InterfacePage with (CADR VERSIONS]
./DMISC:    (fetch RVersion of \InterfacePage])
./DMISC:                                     (AND MICROCODE (LESSP (fetch RVersion of \InterfacePage)

./LLFAULT:                     (replace (IFPAGE MinBVersion) of \InterfacePage with (CADDR VERSIONS
./DMISC:    (fetch BVersion of \InterfacePage])
./DMISC:                                     (AND BCPL (LESSP (fetch BVersion of \InterfacePage)

[nbriggs]

BTW - we haven't (intentionally) made any changes to the Maiko emulator code that would invalidate the version requirements for 3.5.1. You'll find the minbversion and lversion numbers for previous releases in maiko/inc/version.h

[nbriggs]

If you want to see the other version info in the sysouts -- and look at the MINBVERSION defined in the maiko/inc/version.h

% git diff ../src/tstsout.c 
diff --git a/src/tstsout.c b/src/tstsout.c
index 03b4115..82f383f 100644
--- a/src/tstsout.c
+++ b/src/tstsout.c
@@ -63,7 +63,11 @@ void check_sysout(char *sysout_file_name, int verbose) {
 #endif
   close(sysout);
   if (verbose) {
+      printf("ifpage.lversion %d\n", ifpage.lversion);
+      printf("ifpage.minrversion %d\n", ifpage.minrversion);
       printf("ifpage.minbversion %d\n", ifpage.minbversion);
+      printf("ifpage.rversion %d\n", ifpage.rversion);
+      printf("ifpage.bversion %d\n", ifpage.bversion);
       printf("ifpage.process_size %d\n", ifpage.process_size);
       printf("ifpage.storagefullstate %d\n", ifpage.storagefullstate);
       printf("ifpage.nactivepages %d\n", ifpage.nactivepages);

[pamoroso]

I installed the files in the Medley for DOS repo on DOSBox-X as explained here, which is where the Medley emulator comes from. I got the Lisp and full Venue sysouts from the internal/venuesysouts directory of Medley's repo.

[nbriggs]

Yeah, the internal/venuesysouts directory contains release 3.5.1 sysouts, not 2.0 sysouts. 3.5.1 sysouts won't run on the 2.0 DOS emulator.