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- Mystic Pascal User Manual 18
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- 5. System Display
-
- The System Display screen contains technical information
- about the current state of the Mystic Pascal system. This
- information is useful in storage allocation with the installation
- program and when working with multi-tasking programs.
-
- This screen displays the current time-of-day (The PC's
- onboard clock should be correctly set.) and the elapsed time
- since Pascal was started. A storage map and a table of the
- currently active processes are also displayed. The Display
- Screen is updated approximately once every second when it is
- being displayed.
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- 5.1 Storage Map
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- The storage map shows the several main storage areas used by
- Mystic Pascal. The starting address of each area is shown as an
- absolute 20 bit (5 hex digit) number. This information can be
- useful when using the Install program to modify the storage
- configuration.
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- User Area
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- The user area is reserved for variables declared in the
- user's program. Both global variables and procedures' local
- variables are allocated in this region. Pointer variables
- allocated with the NEW procedure are placed in Dynamic Storage,
- not here.
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- Laser
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- The large area code-named "Laser" contains the internal
- symbolic representation of the Pascal program. Compiled object
- code and dynamic variables allocated with the NEW procedure are
- also stored here. The Laser may be up to a maximum of 640K in
- size. The percent of this area which is currently allocated is
- displayed.
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- Dynamic Storage
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- Queue messages and various system control blocks are stored
- in this area. Dynamic storage may be up to 60K in size. The
- percent of this area which is currently allocated is displayed.
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- Section 5: System Display
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- Mystic Pascal User Manual 19
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- Feature Buffer
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- This buffer is used by the advanced feature support.
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- Screen Buffers
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- The non-displayed CRT screens are stored in this buffer
- area.
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- Optimizer Buffer
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- The optimizer stores object code in this area during its
- processing.
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- System Stack
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- This is the 8086 stack segment. A separate stack area is
- maintained for each concurrently executing process.
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- System Data
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- This is the main 8086 data segment.
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- System Code
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- This is the 8086 code segment containing the nucleus and
- compiler assembly code.
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- Program Segment Prefix
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- This 100H byte area is setup by DOS when Mystic Pascal is
- started. It contains DOS system data areas and is not directly
- used by Mystic Pascal.
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- Section 5: System Display
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- Mystic Pascal User Manual 20
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- 5.2 Process Control Table
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- This is a display of the process control blocks (PCB) for
- each process currently allocated. Seven data fields are
- displayed.
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- The nucleus' process manager maintains a "pseudo-timer".
- This is a 16 bit counter which is incremented whenever the
- dispatcher transfers control to another process. The value of
- the pseudo-timer is stored in a process control block when that
- process is dispatched. This provides a very fast method of
- keeping track of how recently each process has been dispatched.
- When the pseudo-timer wraps around to 0, all PCB timer fields are
- also reset to 0.
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- The dispatcher can use this information to give preference
- to those processes that have been waiting a relatively long time
- for a chance to execute. Each process is assigned a static
- priority which is also considered by the dispatcher in selecting
- a ready process.
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- Process
- Name of the process.
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- St
- Process current state
- P = Pascal process STARTed by user
- R = ready
- W = waiting for queue message
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- Count
- The number of times the process has been dispatched.
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- SP
- The process's stack pointer.
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- Time
- The pseudo-timer value when the process was last dispatched.
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- Pr
- The static priority of the process. This value determines
- what proportion of the processor time this process receives if it
- is ready to execute.
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- Dyn
- The dynamic priority of the process. This value actually
- determines which ready process will be next dispatched. This
- value is equal to:
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- static_priority + (current_pseudo_timer - time)
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- Section 5: System Display
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- Mystic Pascal User Manual 21
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- 6. Help Windows
-
- The Help facility is included in Mystic Pascal to make
- learning easier for students and to provide a very fast reference
- source for experienced Pascal users. The Help facility is always
- available from any screen. Four function keys are used for help:
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- F7 Pascal Language Help
- F8 Standard Procedures & Functions Help
- F9 Editor Help
- F10 Function Key Help
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- F7 Pascal Language Help
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- Function key F7 will display a menu window showing the Help
- windows available. Enter the letter or number key to select the
- topic you want to see.
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- Enter any character to leave a topic window and enter any
- non menu character to leave the menu and return to the underlying
- screen.
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- F8 Standard Procedures & Functions Help
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- Function key F8 displays a menu window showing all builtin
- procedures and functions. Enter the letter or number to select
- the topic you want to see
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- F9 Editor Help
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- Function key F9 displays a list of editor commands directly.
- Hitting any key will remove the display.
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- F10 Function Key Help
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- Function key F10 displays a list of all function key
- assignments. This is only a reminder list. The other function
- keys may not be invoked directly from this display window.
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- Section 6: Help Windows
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