Group Echo Meeting Minutes - 2/2/99
Attendance
| Name | Email | Present? |
| Matthew Bentham | mjb67 | No |
| Trevor Boyd | tdb26 | Yes |
| David Dunwoody | dgd21 | No |
| Crispin Flowerday | cehf2 | Yes |
| Simon Frankau | sgf22 | Yes |
| Simon Freytag | sjf34 | Yes |
| Simon Greenway | sag25 | Yes |
Agenda
- No specific points
Minutes
Original minutes written by Simon Freytag
Interfaces
Simon Frankau said that the interfaces in the kernel were adequately defined. Crispin agreed.
Simon Freytag and Simon Greenway are happy with the interfaces in the GUI.
Discussion ensued about interfaces between the GUI and the kernel, specifically for display and output. The tapereader is easy as it receives a String and parses it in the kernel.
It was concluded to pass EDSAC Short and Long words between the GUI and the Kernel. Investigations of how output streams work will be conducted and hopefully we will soon understand them.
This lead to a discussion of packaging. We may need to have the datatypes outside of the kernel and GUI, so it was suggested that the kernel and GUI could be placed in a seperate packaging. Trevor suggested rightly that we
did not know enough about packages but that it may tidy up the project. The consensus was that the simulator is small enough for us to get away with not using them, but they merited further invesitgation.
Testing
Simon Freytag suggested testing strategies would become apparent as code was written. This was agreed. Crispin noted it may be difficult to test the CPU and Trevor suggested that we could bodge it, by ensuring it produced output that matched the EDSAC. Maybe over to Matthew to look at formal proofs of Crispin's work? As before, we noted that testing of work
should be carried out by someone other than the original coder. Crispin in particular seemd to believe in the infallibility of his code..!
As I write this it seems to make sense for simple walk throughs of code to be done as follows:
Simon Freytag walks through Simon Greenway (not literally) and vice versa ... ie the GUI team who can be familiar with each others work
AND
Simon Frankau walks through Crispin.
Trevor and partic. Matthew may need to come up with more rigorous testing / proof.
Maurice Wilkes
Simon Freytag and Trevor are meeting him at 3:00pm on Thursday. Matter to ask him are...
- To get the general look and feel of the GUI correct without compromising functionality
- To find out exactly what buttons the EDSAC had and what they did
- What happens to the middle bit if a long is overwritten with two shorts?
- Invite him to do out presentation...
Anyother matters should be e-mailed to sjf34 or tdb26 (Simon and Trev)
AOB
- Trevor said he wanted to write "Happy Birthday EDSAC" for the presentation
- Crispin suggested Battleships
- Simon Freytag suggested we implement the Network Game project on EDSAC and Crispin suggested likewise with the Logo project
- Trevor suggested maybe all projects should be ported to EDSAC
- Simon Greenway concluded that an EDSAC simulator should be written in EDSAC and we agreed David should have this in place by Wednesday 3rd.
- Simon Greenway said sound was possible in Java and we should implement this similar to the Warwick simulator. Everyone was in agreement.
- Similarly it was suggested some degree of animation would be nice.
- We agreed we should aim for the dial-in input, without compromising our initial targets of getting the 1949 EDSAC to work, as this would allow Trevor and Simon Frankau to play 2-player Pong.
There are some sensible conclusions from all of the above!
Major Decisions
Tasks
| Task | Name | Started | Due | Progress |
| Documentation | mjb67 | 18/1/99 | Continuous | 20% |
| Administration | dgd21 | 18/1/99 | Continuous | N/A |
| Project Plan | dgd21, mjb67 | 18/1/99 | 29/1/99 | 55% |
| Filespace management | mjb67 | 25/1/99 | ASAP | Complete |
| (GUI <->) Kernel <-> Memory interface | sag25 | 25/1/99 | ASAP | 60% |
| GUI <-> Kernel interface | sjf34 | 25/1/99 | ASAP | 60% |
| GUI user interface | sjf34 | 25/1/99 | ASAP | 50% |
| Module coding | cehf2, sgf22, sjf34, sag25 | 29/1/99 | 10/2/99 | 0% |
| Module testing | tdb26 | 29/1/99 | 10/2/99 | 0% |
If you spot anything wrong/missing, please email me.
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Author: David Dunwoody