I was wondering if it was possible to disable simulation of the ports? I am not using them for serial communication and I want to use these bit addressable registers another way. I am simulating a M8051EW and everytime that I reset the micro-controller the ports all reset to 0xFF. I don't want the micro-controler to reset these registers. I want them to keep the same value that they had before the reset occured. How do I turn off simulation of different device features?
"a serial port reset (which resets all ports to 0xFF)" Eh? What do you mean by that?? Does the M8051EW core have a special "serial port reset" that is distinct from any other sort of reset? The beauty of a soft core is that you can effectively design your own chip; the downside, of course, is that it's your chip, so you have to provide the support for it...! There is an application note that describes AGSI - Keil's simulation "API".
When I said the serial port reset I meant just a general simulator reset. For example, using Keil's simulation "API"(AGSI), it calls TriggerReset() or if you click on "reset CPU" while in debug mode of the uVision simulator. When you do any of these, the simulator automatically resets the port SFR's to 0xFF and any other normal 8051 defined registers to 0x00, their default values. I am not using the Serial ports. When I compile the soft core I will choose not to add them. So when I simulate my soft core right now, I don't want them to reset to 0xFF. I want them to act like any other undefined register and keep the value that was in the register before the reset. So I am looking for a way to disable the reset of pre-defined SFR's.