"Assume old format mic file..."

["Charles R. Fry" <Chucko%vermithrax.sch.symbolics.com@RELAY.CS.NET>]

    Date: Tue, 18 Jul 89 14:06 PDT
    From: Chucko@VERMITHRAX.SCH.Symbolics.COM (Charles R. Fry)

	Date: Tue, 18 Jul 89 10:50 PDT
	From: Spock@SAMSON.CADR.DIALNET.SYMBOLICS.COM (Mr. Spock)

	    Date: Mon, 17 Jul 89 22:11 EDT
	    From: pan@Athena.Pangaro.Dialnet.Symbolics.Com (Paul Pangaro)

	    Ever since some recent machinations of my CE, swapping boards and
	    re-loading world and microcode files and such, whenever I cold boot I
	    get the following message in my FEP after loading microcode into A, B, C
	    and "map" memory:

	    --- Assuming old format mic file

	    I am loading 3675-mic.mic.420 at the time.

	    Any idea what this means? It never used to do this, I swear....

	    Best,
	    PANgaro

	Our 3600 started printing this message out sometime after getting our
	IFU upgrade but I don't remember exactly when.  I haven't seen any
	adverse effects so I figure if it wants to assume, let it assume.  Since
	you bring it up, I'd be interested in knowing what it means too.

    It's supposed to mean "whoever wrote this microcode file didn't quite obey the
    current EOF mark convention."  Other than that I don't see anything wrong.  I
    do not know why it started appearing recently; the code that implements Load
    Microcode has barely changed in 3 years!

    However, since you brought it up, I'll send mail to the NFep crew to see if
    they can explain.

Here's the answer, thanks to one of the developers:
  
  At some point in time, the microcode compiler was enhanced to generate
  IFU dispatch tables in the .mic file.  The FEP was supposed to be fixed
  to accept them, but we may not have gotten around to it.  The warning is
  because the old FEP doesn't recognize the new .mic files.

The Fep loader hasn't changed, as I reported above.  So that's your answer.