Continued debugging of the 1053 Emulator - part 5

END OF LINE SIGNAL ISSUE RESOLVED

I did do some tweaking of the code so the first thing I did was to retest by setting a tab stop at column 119 then typing a couple of characters. That should trigger the EOL signal and trigger an automatic carrier return and line feed to reset the column to 1. 

This worked perfectly now.

RIBBON COLOR ISSUE RESOLVED

I went back to the settings for Putty, where I refined the ANSI sequences I was sending and tested under the Wokwi.com simulator. I then fired up the emulator and did some testing to see if the typed characters would come out correctly in black and red. 

I did achieve what I wanted. Each character is typed in either black or red, depending on how the ribbon color is set. The background opens as all white, just like blank paper. 

SPEEDING UP THE TAB OPERATION

I searched with a fast pointer based routine that compared doublewords to zero, advancing through the byte array in steps of eight, then identifying the location that has the non-zero byte. Since I start from the current column number it searches only the amount it needs to. 

I was also calculating the duration of the tab movement on each pass through the main loop until the time had expired; that was quickly moved to a one time calculation when we start the movement. 

The timing and operation of the tab is now perfect, except for one small issue. The cursor on the terminal screen is not advanced to the correct column position to match where the carrier is current positioned. I will fix this before the next testing session. 

SPEEDING UP A CARRIER RETURN

Just as with the tab movements, I was recalculating the time to return to the left margin on every pass through the main loop. This too is now done just once as we begin the return operation. Similarly, the line feed duration was converted to a single calculation.  

REPEATING THE TESTING ON THE 1130

I verified that every character is correctly printed. I then switched to the APL typeball and verified every one of those characters. Carrier return, line feed, tab, space and backspace all work correctly. The ribbon color shifts and the typeball virtually spins to the correct hemisphere for all characters. 

Attempting to pass the right margin will trigger an automatic carrier return and line feed, after having backed up and blanked out the last character we tried to type. I also send the bell signal but there is no sound presently produced by the Putty terminal emulator when it receives that code. I will look into whether that can be changed. 

Since I have one outstanding defect - improper positioning of the cursor on the terminal screen after a tab movement - I will retest quickly when the defect is corrected. I also need to replace an SMS paddle card with an SMS signal socket on the PF2 cable from the emulator. I am waiting on a 3D manufactured part to complete that work. 

INSTALLING MY SMS POWER PADDLE CARD FOR THE EMULATOR

I removed the hacked up SMS card I had been using to grab power for the emulator and installed a proper SMS Power Paddle card. I couldn't find my conformal coating spray so I have to wait for a can to arrive tomorrow before I can seal the card.