Win32 VM Update & Request for help
Andreas Raab
andreas.raab at gmx.de
Thu Aug 30 05:45:21 UTC 2007
Hi Folks -
I've done two interesting improvements to the Win32 VM mostly for
production uses. First, fetch the latest Windows VM from:
http://squeakvm.org/win32/release/SqueakVM-Win32-3.10.5-bin.zip
and run it. Aaaahhhh! What a nice splash screen ;-) The reason for the
(optional) splash screen is that I finally got beaten into delaying the
main window creation up until the point when there is something to show
but unfortunately this also leads to the problem that if the time to
show something interesting is a couple of seconds there is no
user-visible feedback about the application launch, so the splash screen
support became necessary (shame on the Mac VM for delaying window
creation without splash screen! ;-)
Of course, not being the artist myself, I'd appreciate a nicer looking
splash screen by someone a little more artistically inclined, and that
could mean fame and ... err ... fame for you!
(see also http://squeakvm.org/win32/settings.html for the updated
documentation on the splash screen settings)
The other relevant production improvement in this VM are a few new
system attributes which report very detailed information about the
current platform:
* Smalltalk getSystemAttribute: 10001
Reports detailed hardware information, for example:
Hardware information:
Manufacturer: Panasonic
Model: R5
Number of processors: 1
Page size: 4096
Memory Information (upon launch):
Physical Memory Size: 1038384 kbytes
Physical Memory Free: 330896 kbytes
Page File Size: 1987776 kbytes
Page File Free: 1332884 kbytes
Virtual Memory Size: 2097024 kbytes
Virtual Memory Free: 1931968 kbytes
Memory Load: 68 percent
Processor 0: Genuine Intel(R) CPU U1400 @ 1.20GHz
Identifier: x86 Family 6 Model 14 Stepping 8
~MHZ: 1197
* Smalltalk getSystemAttribute: 10002
Reports detailed OS information, for example:
Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP (Build 2600 Service Pack 2)
Registered Owner:
Registered Company:
SP major version: 2
SP minor version: 0
Suite mask: 100
Product type: 1
* Smalltalk getSystemAttribute: 10003
Reports detailed Graphics information, for example:
Display Information:
Graphics adapter name: Mobile Intel(R) 945GM/GU Express Chipset Family
Primary monitor resolution: 1024 x 768
Device: Mobile Intel(R) 945GM/GU Express Chipset Family
Adapter String: Mobile Intel(R) 945GM/GU Express Chipset Family
Bios String: Intel Video BIOS
Chip Type: Intel(R) GMA 950
DAC Type: Internal
Memory Size: 0x08000000
Driver Versions:
igxprd32: 6.14.10.4785
All of the above can be extremely helpful if you need to find out about
a problem and, perhaps most importantly, the information is also written
in crash.dmp if the Squeak VM ever crashes. This information has allowed
us to successfully debug a few problems that would be otherwise very
hard to find.
As usual, the sources for this version are up on squeakvm.org as well:
http://squeakvm.org/win32/release/SqueakVM-Win32-3.10.5-bin.zip
Enjoy,
- Andreas
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