This chapter describes the steps necessary to build and install the VirtualT application for Linux, Windows and MacOS platforms.
VirtualT is a freeware, open source software project that is provided under the terms of the BSD License (see Appendix C). As an open source project, the program is provided in source code format and can be built and/or modified by the user.
To successfully build the application for a given Linux system or MacOSX, perform the following steps:
FLTKDIR=/users/myname/fltk-1.1.7
For Windows users, a binary distribution is provided, but if you wish to perform your own builds of intermediate version of VirtualT, the following process should be followed:
NOTE: With VirtualT 1.0, the Visual Studio 6 project files have not been updated to include the new files. Instead, Visual Studio 2005 Solution and Project files (.sln, .vcproj) have been provided. The main reason for the migration is temporary lack of access to Visual Studio 6 environment. A Visual Studio 6 project file will be provided later.
VirtualT uses a very specific directory structure to allow emulation of multiple laptop models while keeping program data separated (RAM storage files, ROM files, etc.). Version 1.0 and later releases will automatically create the necessary directory structure using ROM image files located in the ROMs subdirectory. This directory will be created the first time VirtualT is launched. Below is the directory structure that will be created:
main_virtualt_dir | |----virtualt (application) |----M10 (Emulation directory) |----M100 (Emulation directory) |----M102 (Emulation directory) |----PC8201 (Emulation directory) |----T200 (Emulation directory)
For the most part, VirtualT is a GUI driven application with all features configurable from within the GUI. The only exception to this is the socket interface used for remote control and debugging. To enable the socket interface, VirtualT must be invoked with a command-line option to specify the socket port as follows:
virtualt -p port_number
NOTE: On Windows platforms, the Windows firewall sometimes blocks unkown ports and may need to be configured. Sometimes simply invoking VirtualT with the '-p' option a second time will "open" the port.
This will cause VirtualT to launch a socket listener thread for remote control appliations as described in Chapter 5. To connect to the socket interface using the vt_client application, from a command prompt perform the following:
- 'cd' to the VirtualT directory
- type './vt_client port_number'
The vt_client application will connect to the socket interface of VirtualT and present a command-line interface for control.