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Automation

MITS Altair8800 computer is capable of running automatic emulation. Automation can operate in the interactive or non-interactive mode.

In case of the non-interactive mode (--no-gui flag set in the command line), the input and output of the terminal ADM-3A will be redirected to files, instead of terminal GUI. The input/output file names are configurable, please refer to ADM-3A terminal documentation.

Example

In this example we will run a non-interactive automatic emulation. Input for the terminal will be stored in a default file name adm3A-terminal.in. The content of the file must be prepared in the advance, e.g.:

Hello, world!

NOTE: Do not forget to keep the last EOL character!

The following command will emulate the computer and run “reverse text” program on it:

./emuStudio -cf config/MITSAltair8800.toml --input-file examples/as-8080/reverse.asm auto --no-gui
  • computer configuration “MITS Altair8800” (file config/MITSAltair8800.toml) will be loaded
  • input file for compiler is one of the examples
  • (--auto) automatic emulation will be executed
  • (--no-gui) non-interactive mode will be set

After the program finishes, emuStudio is closed. The program output will be in the file adm3A-terminal.out:

Reversed text ...
Enter text: Hello, world!
!dlrow ,olleH

Console will contain additional information about the emulation progress:

[INFO] [88-SIO, device=LSI ADM-3A terminal] Device was attached
[INFO] Starting emulation automation...
[INFO] Emulating computer: MITS Altair8800
[INFO] Compiler: Intel 8080 Assembler, version 0.41
[INFO] CPU: Intel 8080 CPU, version 0.41
[INFO] Memory: Byte-cell based operating memory, version 0.41
[INFO] Memory size: 65536
[INFO] Device: MITS 88-DCDD, version 0.41
[INFO] Device: MITS 88-SIO, version 0.41
[INFO] Device: LSI ADM-3A terminal, version 0.41
[INFO] Compiling input file: examples/as-8080/reverse.asm
[INFO] Compiler started working.
[INFO] [INFO   ] Intel 8080 Assembler, version 0.41
[INFO] [INFO   ] Compile was successful.
	Output: /home/emuStudio/examples/as-8080/reverse.hex
	Program starts at 0x03E8
[INFO] [INFO   ] Compiled file was loaded into memory.
[INFO] Compilation finished.
[INFO] Resetting CPU...
[INFO] Running emulation...
[INFO] Normal stop
[INFO] Instruction location = 0x41C
[INFO] Emulation completed