Crossware

Table of Contents        Previous topic       Next topic       

Overview->Virtual Workshop Integration

The Embedded Development Studio automatically detects the presence of the 8051 Virtual Workshop by looking for a file called sim.dll located in the directory:

<installation directory>\8051\bin

where <installation directory> is the directory into which the complete package is installed.

Therefore sim.dll must remain in this directory and must not be renamed.  The installer will normally look after placing the simulator in the appropriate directory.  The Virtual Workshop remains inactive until an 8051 project is created and/or opened.  Once such a project is open, the Embedded Development Studio:
    

Normally, at this point, the Virtual Workshop will place an additional Toolbar on the Embedded Development Studio workspace.

If the project type is for an executable program or stand-alone simulator (as opposed to a library) the Go, Step Into and Trace commands will be active on the Simulate menu.  If the cursor is located in a source file window, the Step to Cursor and Set Breakpoint at Cursor commands will also be active.  When any of Go, Step Into, Trace and Step to Cursor commands are used, the Embedded Development Studio will check that the 8051 program exists and is up-to-date and instruct the Virtual Workshop to load it.  As well as loading the 8051 program, the Virtual Workshop will update the menu bar and status bar of the Embedded Development Studio.  The Build and Simulate menu bar items of the Embedded Development Studio will be removed and replaced with Simulate, Peripherals and Options menu bar items from the Virtual Workshop.  The Virtual Workshop will also add additional items to the View and Windows menus.  After loading the program and updating the Embedded Development Studio, the Virtual Workshop will open and position any Virtual Workshop specific windows that were open when it last loaded this same program.

Persistent data specific to the Virtual Workshop is stored in the same directory as the program file and with the same file name as the program but with a .51S extension.

The Virtual Workshop will also retrieve any non-source level breakpoints and other information from this file.  (Source level breakpoints are stored in the Embedded Development Studio's .XWS file.)

Once the Virtual Workshop has loaded the 8051 program, initialised itself and updated the Embedded Development Studio, the Embedded Development Studio will transfer further information to it.

All source level information will be transferred.  The Virtual Workshop will set a breakpoint at the program address corresponding to the source line.  If there is not an exact match between the source line and a program address, the breakpoint will be positioned at the nearest following source line.  If there is no appropriate following source line, the breakpoint will be disabled.

Information about the target memory is transferred to the Virtual Workshop.  The linker options are used to set the Virtual Workshop maximum program address, maximum external data address and maximum internal data address.  If the code and data in ram linker option is checked, the Virtual Workshop program memory will be mapped to external data space.