Frequently Asked Questions

This document is a work in progress.

Installing and running mic1

• What do I to run mic1?
• I've downloaded and installed mic1. What do I need to do now?

  Writing IJVM programs

• How do I use the I/O instructions, IN and OUT?
• How do I use methods in an IJVM program?
• Why doesn't keyboard input read by the IN instruction show up in "Standard out"?
• How do I use constants in my program? tbd
• How do I use local variables? tbd
• Can I declare global variables? tbd

  General mic1 simulator questions

• Why does the PC start at 0xFFFFFFFF instead of 0x0?
• Why is nop1 the first microinstruction, instead of Main1?
• How does I/O work? tbd
• What's the deal with the Debug frame? tbd
• Why does the debug frame show some addresses as word-addresses and others as byte-addresses?

  Questions about sample program echo.jas

• Why doesn't the backspace key work in echo.jas?

Java Development Kit (JDK) 1.0 or later for Win95/98/NT or some flavor of Unix. There is not currently a distribution available for Macintosh.

Some of the java programs may be used in a text-only environment (ijvmasm, mic1asm, mic1dasm, dump) but the simulator itself and certain other programs (mic1sim, gijvmasm, gmic1asm) require a graphical environment. For Win95/98/NT users this should not a problem, but for Unix users, this means that you will need X-Windows to run the simulator or GUI assemblers.

Also, for the Win95/98/NT distribution, you will need approximately 700Kbytes of free disk space to do the install. The Unix installation requires about 600Kbytes.

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Before you run any of the mic1 software, you must set several environment variables.

• PATH: The PATH environment variable must contain the directory which has the JDK executables (java, javac, javadoc, etc).
  • Win95/98/NT: In a DOS shell, type path to view the PATH environment variable. For example:

    
    C:\>path
    PATH=C:\WINDOWS;C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND
    

    If the java bin directory is not in the PATH, you will need to add it to the path defined in env.bat. In the env.bat file you should add

    
    path C:\JDK1.2\BIN;%PATH%
    

    where you would replace "C:\JDK1.2\" with the path of your JDK directory.

    If you don't know the path of the JDK directory, select Find-->Files or Folders... from the Start menu. Enter "javac.exe" in the Named field. Make sure the Look in: field indicates the correct drive, and the Include subfolders option is selected. Click Find Now. Set PATH as the value in the In Folder column. If no value appears, you do not have a JDK installed. If multiple values appear, you might have multiple JDK's installed. In this case, use any of the directories (preferably the directory containing the newer JDK).

  • Unix: At a command prompt, type echo $PATH to view PATH. To add the java bin directory to the path, use one of the following commands, depending on the command shell you are using.

    Bourne-compatable shell (sh, ksh, bash, zsh...)

    
    	export PATH=/usr/lib/jdk1.1/bin:$PATH
    

    C shell-compatable shells (csh, tcsh)

    
    	set path=( /usr/lib/jdk1.1/bin $PATH )
    

• CLASSPATH: The CLASSPATH variable indicates to the java utilities where to look for .class files. The CLASSPATH can contain any number of directories, .zip files, and .jar files.

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• IN: When a key is pressed, the character entered is put into a character buffer. The IN instruction reads the next key from the buffer and pushes its value onto the stack. If the character buffer is empty, a value of 0 is pushed onto the stack. The following is a method that illustrates how to read a single character from a keyboard input.

  
  .method getchar()
  start:	IN		// Read character from keyboard buffer
  	DUP	   	// Duplicate char, one copy for comparison, one for return value
  	IFEQ clear	// If char = 0 (keyboard buffer empty) goto clear
  	IRETURN		// else, return with char as return value
  clear:	POP		// Remove 0 from top of stack
  	GOTO start	// Try reading character again
  .end-method
  

  This method will loop until a key has been pressed. The keyboard buffer can be cleared by clicking the Reset button in the mic1sim window. IN does not echo characters to the standard out text area. See echo.jas for an example of how to echo key strokes to the standard out text area.
• OUT: OUT prints the value on the top of the stack to the standard out text area.

  
  	BIPUSH 0x48	// Push ASCII value for "H"
  	OUT		// Print "H"
  	BIPUSH 0x49	// Push ASCII value for "I"
  	OUT		// Print "I"
  

IN and OUT use ASCII codes to represent keyboard characters. See add.jas for examples of how to convert character strings into numeric values.

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If you are using the included microprogram (mic1ijvm.mic1), the following is the proper procedure for declaring and invoking a method in an IJVM program. To illustrate this, we will write a sample method called DIFF_NEG_YN, which takes two parameters, calculates the difference, prints "Y" if the difference is negative, "N" if positive, and sets as a return value the difference.

1. Declare the method. Use the .method directive to name the method and any parameters. Our example method is named DIFF_NEG_YN and has two parameters, which we will name p1 and p2. Our method declaration would thus look like this:

   
     .method DIFF_NEG_YN (p1,p2)
   

   The parameter list is comma-seperated. The names in the list are automatically declared as local variables and assigned the values passed to the method. If a method takes no parameters, the method name should be followed by empty parenthesis, ie, .method PRINT ().
2. Declare any local variables for the method. Use the .var and .end-var directives to declare local variables. For our example, we will declare a local variable called diff

   
     .var
     diff
     .end-var
   

3. Write the contents of the method. This is the program code for the method. This code can access local variables (parameters and locally declared variables), global constants (declared in the .constant section of the program), and the local stack. The invoked method has no means of accessing the stack or the local variables of the invoking method. Likewise, any jumps (GOTO, IFEQ, IFLT, IF_ICMPEQ) can only happen within a method -- jumps between methods are not allowed. Here is the code for our sample program:

   
   	ILOAD p1	// Push the first parameter
   	ILOAD p2	// Push the second parameter
   	SUB		// Subtract
   	ISTORE diff	// Store the difference in diff
   	ILOAD diff	// Push diff
   	IFLT lt 	// If diff < 0, goto lt
   	BIPUSH 0x4E	//  else, print "N"
   	OUT
   	GOTO return
   lt:	BIPUSH 0x59	// (diff < 0)
   	OUT		// print "Y"
   return:	ILOAD diff  	// Push diff
   	IRETURN		// Return (value of diff will be pushed onto the
   			//  top of the invoking method's stack)
   
   .end-method
   

   The method must end with the .end-method directive. The IRETURN instruction is necessary for the method to properly execute.
4. Write the code for invoking the method. These steps must be followed to properly invoke a method.
   1. Push OBJREF. This may be any value. For more information on OBJREF, see chapter 4 of Structured Computer Organization. In our example program, we will push a constant called OBJREF, which was declared in the .constant section of the program.

      
      	LDC_W OBJREF
      

   2. Push values that are to be method parameters in the order they are declared in the method declaration.

      
      	BIPUSH 0x10
      	BIPUSH 0x15
      

      When the method is called, p1 will be assigned the value 0x10 and p2 will be assigned the value of 0x15.
   3. Invoke the method using INVOKEVIRTUAL

      
      	INVOKEVIRTUAL DIFF_NEG_YN
      

   4. The return value of the method is on the top of the stack. For our example program, we will just ignore this value.

      
      	POP
      

// --- Start program ---

.constant
OBJREF 0x10
.end-constant

.main
	LDC_W OBJREF
	BIPUSH 0x10
	BIPUSH 0x15
	INVOKEVIRTUAL DIFF_NEG_YN
	POP
	HALT
.end-main


.method DIFF_NEG_YN (p1,p2)

.var
diff
.end-var

	ILOAD p1	// Push the first parameter
	ILOAD p2	// Push the second parameter
	SUB		// Subtract
	ISTORE diff	// Store the difference in diff
	ILOAD diff	// Push diff
	IFLT lt 	// If diff < 0, goto lt
	BIPUSH 0x4E	//  else, print "N"
	OUT
	GOTO return
lt:	BIPUSH 0x59	// (diff < 0)
	OUT		// print "Y"
return:	ILOAD diff  	// Push diff
	IRETURN		// Return (value of diff will be pushed onto the
			//  top of the invoking method's stack)
.end-method

// --- End program ---

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Because you might not want it to. The IN instruction reads from a device that is strictly an input device, and the OUT instruction writes to a device that is strictly an output device. If you want to display what the user is typing while running your IJVM program, you will need to cause this to happen by doing an explicit OUT instruction for each character that you read and want to echo.

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It seemed reasonable that the control store should begin execution at control store location 0x000. This happens to be the location for the NOP IJVM instruction, so we begin our interpretation loop there. We then proceed to "Main1" to increment the PC, and begin a fetch from this incremented address (the fetch happens at the end of the clock cycle and the fetched value is not available from MBR until the end of the next cycle). Since we want execution of the ISA-level program to begin at 0x00000000, we have accomplished this by pre-setting the PC to 0xFFFFFFFF and allowing the initial increment along with an initial NOP, this "wastes" one micro-instruction every time we RESET the machine.

We could have used the same approach (with PC 0xFFFFFFFF) and started at "Main1" instead of "nop1", in the mic1ijvm.mal microprogram, but then we would have had to anchor "Main1" at some particular location which would then have to be well-known to the "hardware" designers. It seemed more reasonable to agree that the first micro-instruction to be executed would always be the one at control store location 0x000 which is fine for the mic1ijvm interpreter, and probably a reasonable design choice for many microprograms (opcode 0x00 is often a NOP instruction for many ISA-level designers).

Another approach would have been to designate some other location as the first micro-instruction and require that a "fetch" happen with PC 0x00000000 (and then another instruction to wait for the fetch into the MBR to complete) before entering the main loop. Since many microprograms have similar increment/fetch loops, we felt that it was reasonable to require that the PC be started at 0xFFFFFFFF as part of the hardware design.

Feedback on this item is particularly welcomed (rayo@ontko.com).

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In order for "goto(MBR)" to work when MBR contains the opcode for NOP, the control store location 0x000 must contain the microinstruction "nop1". This means that "Main1" must be at some other location not used by one of the other opcodes, and that if we wanted to start our execution of the microprogram at "Main1" this location would have to be well known to the hardware designers for the mic1 hardware. Since we may want to be able to run other microprograms on the mic1 architecture, it seemed reasonable to pick control store location 0x000 as our starting address for all such microprograms.

While any address would do as a starting location, this one seemed particularly appropriate, since many microprograms might employ "goto(MBR)" and many ISA-level languages might employ opcode 0x00 as a NOP instruction.

Feedback on this item is particularly welcomed (rayo@ontko.com).

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Because the simulator output device (a Java TextArea) doesn't handle backspace characters. It's hard to decide whether this is a feature or a limitation. The "Standard Out" window is not meant to simulate a cursor-addressable screen display, but only a serial device that displays the next printable character it receives.

We could modify the behavior of the standard output device to interpret the backspace character as "delete the last character (if any) on the current line in the output buffer", but we feel this would be more confusing an implementation of a simple output device than one which ignores non-printable characters.

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The MAR stores a number that is a word address (not a word-aligned byte-address), and the PC stores a byte address. This is specified in Chapter 4, of Tanenbaum. When the MAR is expressed on the memory bus, it is at that point shifted by two bits.

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