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\pagenumbering{roman}

\title{RCCL/RCI Update Notes}
\author{John Lloyd}

\date{January 1992}
\maketitle

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\pagenumbering{arabic}

\chapter{Introduction}

This document describes recent changes which have been made to the 
RCCL/RCI system. These changes may or may not be described in the other 
system documents, so it is a good idea to read this document over quickly.

\chapter{New Simulator Program}

The RCCL/RCI simulator program, {\tt robotsim}, has been completely rewritten,
and now provides extensive graphics support for all the PUMA series robots on
X windows, SunView and Silcon Graphics systems.

It is also possible to have the simulator ``control'' multiple robots.

An description of the new simulator has not yet been
incorporated into all the documentation. 
The most up-to-date source of information is the manual page 
for {\tt robotsim}.

\chapter{New RCI primitives}

Some new primitives have been added to RCI. In particular, there
are now
\begin{verbatim}
        genptr rciMalloc (size)
           int size;

        rciFree (ptr)
           genptr ptr; 
\end{verbatim}
which allow the userto allocate and deallocate memory at the control level.
The pool from which memory is allocated is somewhat limited in size
(about 128 Kbytes at the time of this writing).

\chapter{Leaving the robot arm power on}

The RCCL option {\tt RCCL\_LEAVE\_POWER\_ON}, and the {\tt .rciparams}
option {\tt leavePowerOn}, can be used to direct the system to
leave the robot power on after an RCCL control session terminates
(see the manual pages for {\tt rcclSetOptions()} and {\tt RCCL\_params}).
This behaviour does not apply to raw RCI programs, where the
{\tt SET\_POWER\_ON\_RELEASE()} macro can be used to achieve the same
effect. However, the {\tt .rciparams} option {\tt leavePowerOn} 
can also be set for for the system utility programs ({\tt move},
{\tt free}, etc); see the manual page for {\tt sysprogs\_params}.

\chapter{{\tt void*} Arrives}

Use of {\tt genptr} type, defined in {\filefont h/cdefs.h}, has been
replaced with the somewhat more standard {\tt void*}. For MicroVAX
systems, where {\tt void*} is not defined, the definition
\begin{verbatim}
        #define void int
\end{verbatim}
is used.

The bus address variables {\tt rciIOpage} and {\tt rciBus}, and the
the field {\tt location} in the structure {\tt IO\_DEVICE},
have been redefined to {\tt unsigned char*}. 

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