[LispM] Meroko (TI Explorer 1 Emulator) release announcement

[Daniel Seagraves]

I ran into a wall some time ago with my X1 emulator, so I decided to
source-release it to see what happens. Maybe someone else can help make
this turkey fly. ^_^ It's in C and somewhat Linux specific. To use it in
it's current form you need a spare Linux box with a framebuffer console
(no X11 required) and a network interface. You NEED the network interface
because the emulator will take the local console and leaves it unusable
when it exits. I intended for the emulator to run on boot and basically
turn a PC into an Explorer. It wasn't intended to exit unless you
planned to turn the machine off. ^_^ All debugging and whatnot is done via
ssh in my case. You can use a serial console or just telnet or whatever.

You will also need disk images from a real Explorer 1. Some of you
involved in X1 hacking already have these. I don't know how mad TI will
get about distributing them so I can't make them available to the public.
I can probably give them to people interested in working on this, but I
can't just post them for randoms to FTP.

As it stands now, it doesn't run LISP or anything useful, just the EXPT
standalone diagnostics (not included) and the diagnostics on the CPU ROMs
(included). It's a microcode-level emulator. There isn't anything really
LISPy about it's structure because I don't know LISP. (That's why I was
writing the emulator. I wanted to see a LISP Machine.) It's just a
somewhat brute-force attempt to run the microcode. It passes a lot of the
standalone diagnostic tests but not enough for LISP to run.

It's GPLed.

A source package is available at
http://www.lunar-tokyo.net/~dseagrav/Meroko-release.tgz

You can repost this announcement elsewhere if you wish.