VMIPS 1.5 has been released. VMIPS is a MIPS R3000 virtual machine
simulator with support for a serial console and GNU cross-compiler tools.
This release incorporates several new features and bug fixes.

   You can download VMIPS 1.5 from any of the following sites:

* ftp://ftp.dgate.org/vmips/releases/vmips-1.5/
* http://download.sourceforge.net/vmips/
* http://www.dgate.org/vmips/releases/vmips-1.5/
* http://vmips.sourceforge.net/releases/vmips-1.5/

   VMIPS is free software available under the GNU General Public
License; for details, please read the file "COPYING". For installation
instructions, please read "INSTALL". VMIPS was built by Brian Gaeke and
others; for details, please see the files "AUTHORS" and "THANKS". New
features since the last publically released version are detailed in
"NEWS".

   The home page for VMIPS is "http://www.dgate.org/vmips". For bug
reporting instructions, please see the VMIPS Manual.

   User-visible changes in version 1.5 (since version 1.4.1):

   * New features/improvements:

   * VMIPS now includes a basic direct-mapped cache simulation. The
     cache isolation and cache swap bits in the CP0 Status register are
     now honored.

   * The boot monitor distributed with VMIPS now sets up a dummy
     `argv[0]' value for the loaded program. Also, it halts by entering
     an infinite loop rather than attempting to execute a `break'
     instruction when it encounters an unexpected exception.

   * The setup assembly routine distributed with VMIPS has been made
     more TLB-friendly. Identity virtual-to-physical mappings for the
     first few pages of physical RAM are installed in the TLB at program
     start time.

   * When `-o excmsg' is on, TLB miss addresses will be printed to
     stderr.

   * When `-o ttydev=stdout' is specified, simulated program output
     will be sent to VMIPS's standard output, even if it is not a tty.

   * The interactor can now disassemble memory. Also, stepping in the
     interactor now prints the PC after each step.

   * VMIPS now supports more of the GDB remote serial protocol, in
     support of the GDB `info threads' and `detach' commands. The debug
     protocol TCP port is now configurable via the `-o debugport'
     option. Also, if something halts the program while the debugger
     interface is active, VMIPS will tell GDB that the program exited.

   * Bug fixes:

   * A bug was fixed in the debugger interface where disconnecting from
     the debugger socket could cause vmips to enter an infinite loop.

   * The interactor will refuse to dump raw memory words at
     non-word-aligned addresses.

   * The CP0 Cause register IP field is now recomputed whenever the
     register is read, rather than only when exceptions happen. This
     makes polling loops with interrupts disabled work correctly.

   * A bug was fixed in the DECstation-compatible clock device which was
     preventing some of its registers from being zeroed properly.

   * Some endianness bugs were fixed in the generic memory-mapped device
     code and in the DECstation-compatible serial device.

   To get the code from CVS as any bug fixes are added, checkout from branch
"vmips-1_5-branch". VMIPS 1.5 itself can be checked out using the tag
"release-1-5".

   Please refer to the bug reporting instructions in the VMIPS manual
if you have trouble using the software.

-Brian Gaeke and the VMIPS developers <vmips@dgate.org>