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PDPjs Support for PDP-11 Machines |
/modules/pdp11/ |
This PDPjs module for PDP-11 Machines was added to the PCjs Project in 2016.
It was adapted from the PDP-11/70 Emulator written by Paul Nankervis, with permission.
The module is currently comprised of the following components, as listed in machines.json (see the pdp11.scripts property):
- bus.js
- computer.js
- cpu.js
- cpuops.js
- cpustate.js
- debugger.js
- defines.js
- device.js
- disk.js
- drive.js
- keyboard.js
- memory.js
- messages.js
- panel.js
- pc11.js
- ram.js
- rk11.js
- rl11.js
- rx11.js
- rom.js
- serial.js
Since this module was written in 2016, it seemed appropriate to start adopting some of the more useful features of ECMAScript 2015 (aka ES6), including:
- Classes
- const and let
- Computed Properties
- Default Parameters
- Octal and Binary Constants
- Template Literals
- String Interpolation (i.e., ${expr})
- New Built-in Methods
- String.repeat()
- import and export
However, I've still configured the Closure Compiler to "transpile" to ECMAScript 5 (aka ES5), because some people may still be using older browsers that don't support ES6 -- or at least the subset of ES6 features I'm currently using.
Eventually, I need to do some performance testing and determine whether the ES6 version performs any faster and/or consumes fewer resources than the ES5 version. If it does, then I should either bite the bullet and generate ES6 code, or generate both versions and use a loader that detects the browser's capabilities and loads the appropriate version.
With regard to import and export statements, the main reason I use them is to inform my development environment (WebStorm) about each file's dependencies, thereby preventing inspection warnings. And ultimately, I plan to make PDPjs run as a Node application, so explicitly declaring all imports and exports will be required, but for now, it's just a web application, so strictly speaking, they're not required.
When loading uncompiled PDPjs files into a web browser, the Node-based web server bundled with PCjs still relies on
the <script> tag to load all JavaScript files, and as far as I know, no browser currently knows what to do with the
import and export keywords under those conditions. Chrome, for example, will immediately throw an exception when
it encounters a file containing them.
As a work-around, the bundled web server intercepts all requests for .js files and inserts line comments in front of
every import and export statement, so that your web browser won't barf on them. The statements are completely
superfluous anyway, since the web server generates <script> tags for all the necessary scripts, in the order they are
listed in machines.json (see the pdp11.scripts property).
This work-around assumes that all export statements appear AFTER the object they're exporting; e.g.:
export default ComputerPDP11;
and NOT as part of the object declaration; e.g.:
export default class ComputerPDP11 extends Component { ... }