5.2 NEURON 3.0 & InterViews graphical interface

Unix version

Mike Hines chose an X-windows based graphical interface builder called "InterViews". With it he has developed an interface designed to offer great convenience to the user for carrying out a wide variety of simulation displays while simultaneously retaining remarkable conceptual control. Along with this simulation power come corresponding restrictions to certain operating systems and environments.

space requirements which exceed the 640 kb limit of DOS's address space. Thus it is not possible to run NEURON 3.0 on PCs with 286 CPUs.
existing InterViews implementation ran only under X11, the window environment on unix workstations
To circumvent these restrictions, Mike has now developed versions to run on later (than the 80286) Intel CPUs as described below.
X-windows consists of two major components an "Xclient" (which is asociated with the computation) which communicates the results to an "Xserver" which displays the output on a monitor. This is a powerful system allowing display from either remote or local CPUs. That is the Xclient and Xserver may be on the same or different machines. Unix operating systems can have both Xclients and Xservers on the same machine; of course this offers the fastest way to simulate because network delays are avoided.

Until mid-1995, InterViews was supported only on Unix operating systems but a PC and Macintosh users had other options for using this GUI version - NEURON 3.0:

1. Run a Unix system for Intel x86 computers on a PC. Linux is a freely available copywrited program which provides all of the functionality needed to run NEURON.
2. An Xserver on a PC or PowerMac can display the InterViews interface on the local monitor while NEURON is running on a Unix machine. Versions of such servers are available in both DOS and MS Windows 3.1 as well as in native PowerMac code for a relatively modest price ($250 or less).
The organization of two Unix systems on Intel x86 (386, 486, Pentiums) machines is shown below. NEURON under Linux has been thoroughly tested on several machines. NEURON also works well under Solaris (on "SUN" computers) and now, that beginning with version 2.4, the SUN and x86 versions are identical, it should be trouble free on x86 machines. The figure below gives the organization of the program structures.

PC versions of NEURON 3.0

Microsoft Windows 3.1 version

Serious efforts to port InterViews to the newer 32-bit operating systems for Intel CPUs began in 1993. Our colleague, Kevin Martin (martin@cs.unc.edu) has tried to port NEURON 3.0 to other 32-bit operating systems but found problems with both OS/2 and Windows NT. With heroic efforts over many months, Mike Hines has finally ported NEURON and InterViews to Win32s (a subset of the full 32-bit MS Windows system used in Windows NT) calls. With installation of Win32s, NEURON will now run on PC's under Microsoft Windows 3.1 (and up). This version, which is essentially identical to the unix version, runs nicely on a 486 or Pentium with 8 or more megabytes of RAM and occupies less than 10Mb of hard disk space. Because drawing the graphic windows and plotting therein are the rate-limiting steps (rather than the CPU speed), it is important to have fast video graphic cards and drivers. This version of NEURON for Intel 386 and up CPUs running Microsoft Windows 3.1. is now available by ftp from:

ftp://ftp.nnc.yale.edu/neuron/mswin
       get: nrndisk1.exe  - a self-extracting zip file and
              nrndisk2.zip  -  a neuron.zip file.
              README file  for installation instructions.
              Notes file about some limitations

DOS version

DOS "32-bit extenders" allow 386 CPUs (and up) to use what is conventionally called "extended memory", allowing up to 32 bit address space (4.29 Gb). Mike has made use of a "freely avaliable" DOS extender (from D.J. Delorie ) to provide a DOS version of NEURON . However use of this program is not encouragied by Mike because it has no graphical interface and was only hacked together to have a PC version before the MS windows version was available.

Future prospects

Mike is planning an imminent release of version 3.1 of NEURON for both unix and MS Windows.

Following that, he plans to start development of a version of NEURON for "Fresco", the graphical interface successor to InterViews. Fresco is being developed to be machine independent, running on unix workstations, PCs, and Power PCs, thus further extending the availability of NEURON to PowerMac users.

Back to: 5.1 Interpreter & Compiled Routines
Back to: Top of 5.2InterViews Version of NEURON
Forward to: 5.3 Operations
Forward to: 5.4 NEURON'S Main Menu
Last update: Sept. 11, 1995