Visual Studio Projects/0ReadMe_Projects.txt

This dirctory contains a set of Visual Studio 2008 build projects for the current simh code base.  When used (with Visual Studio Express 2008 or Visual Studio Express 2010) it populates a directory tree under the BIN directory of the Simh distribution for temporary build files and produces resulting executables in the BIN/NT/Win32-Debug or BIN/NT/Win32-Release directories (depending on whether you target a Debug or Release build).  It expects that a winpcap developer pack zip file is expanded in a directory parallel to the simh directory.  

For Example, the directory structure should look like:

    .../simh/simhv38-2-rc1/VAX/vax_cpu.c
    .../simh/simhv38-2-rc1/scp.c
    .../simh/simhv38-2-rc1/Visual Studio Projects/simh.sln
    .../simh/simhv38-2-rc1/Visual Studio Projects/VAX.vcproj
    .../simh/simhv38-2-rc1/BIN/Nt/Win32-Release/vax.exe
    .../simh/winpcap/WpdPack/Include/pcap.h


The winpcap developer pack can be found at:
       http://www.winpcap.org/devel.htm


Some features can be enabled if the pthreads API is available and contained also in a parallel place in the directory structure.


    .../simh/pthreads/Pre-built.2/include/include/pthreads.h


To install pthreads API, create the directory:

    .../simh/pthreads/

download the file: ftp://sourceware.org/pub/pthreads-win32/pthreads-w32-2-8-0-release.exe
to that directory and execute it.  Click on the Extract button.
Once installed, When running a simulator with pthreads support enabled, you will need a copy of the DLL file (simh\pthreads\Pre-built.2\lib\pthreadVC2.dll) to exist in either the %windir%\System32 directory or your working directory while running a simh simulator.  The default working directory for included project files is the "Visual Studio Projects" directory.


Only network devices are capable of using pthreads to enhance their performance.  Build the desire simulator with USE_READER_THREAD defined.  The relevant simulators which have network support are VAX, VAX780, PDP11 and PDP10.