series 8 cold load

[RG at MIT-AI (Richard Greenblatt)]

  the series 8 cold load is making its appearance on
various machines.  
--------------------------
[1]  Meters work differently.  **incompatible change**
[2]  LMIO1;XGP is an initial part of the system.  This
     means ESC-Q always available.
[3]  PKG-LOAD, LOAD-FILE-ALIST, and COMPILE-FILE-ALIST
     are available in a form which takes a functional argument.
[4]  The usual accumulation of bug-fixes, etc, installed.
[5]  A tool exists to help track down the source of 
     "symbol appears more than once in the cold load" errors.
     Look in LISPM;COLDF if you ever need to use this.
[6]  The initial facility which allows you to augment the microcode
     incrementally is operational.  Brave pioneers (who expect
     to get arrows in the back) should see RG.

[1] Meters  (ie counts of various events maintained by the
microcode) work differently.  They used to be available
as variables, ONE-Q-FORWARDed to A-Memory.
  Problem was, 24 bits wasnt enough.  Carries into the
data-type field happened,  eventually
crashing the system when the GC looked at the corrupted
data.  In the new scheme, the meters are no longer directly
accessible.  Instead there exists (READ-METER <meter-name>)
and (WRITE-METER <meter-name>).  The meter names are the
same as before, but note they are in the SI: package.
Meters are now a full 32 bits, thus, READ-METER can return
a BIGNUM.  MOON;LMETER has been updated to use the new scheme.

[2] YEA.

[3] SI:PKG-LOAD-MAP, SI:LOAD-FILE-ALIST-MAP, and SI:COMPILE-FILE-ALIST-MAP
exist (as of now, they're not in GLOBAL, in the future they will be).
These all take a functional argument in the first argument position,
followed by arguments as in the base form.  Anytime it is decided to "do"
anything (compile or load a file), the functional argument is called,
with arguments indicating what is to be done.  Its arranged so that if
the functional argument is (FUNCTION FUNCALL), the entire effect is exactly
like the base form.