1. Resolving interrupt conflicts An introduction to reprogramming of the 8259A Interrupt Controllers

2. Intel’s “reserved” interrupts Intel had reserved interrupt-numbers 0-31 for the processor’s various exceptions But only interrupts 0-4 were used by 8086 Designers of the early IBM-PC ROM-BIOS disregarded the “Intel reserved” warning So interrupts 5-31 got used by ROM-BIOS code for its own various purposes This created interrupt-conflicts for 80286+

3. Exceptions in Protected-Mode The interrupt-conflicts seldom arise while the processor is executing in Real-Mode PC BIOS uses interrupts 8-15 for devices (such as timer, keyboard, printers, serial communication ports, and diskette drives) CPU uses this range of interrupt-numbers for various processor exceptions (such as page-faults, stack-faults, protection-faults)

4. Handling these conflicts There are two ways we can ‘resolve’ these interrupt-conflicts when we write ‘handlers’ for device-interrupts in the ‘overlap’ range –We can design each ISR to query the system in some way, to determine the ‘cause’ for the interrupt-condition (i.e., a device or the CPU?) –We can ‘reprogram’ the Interrupt Controllers to use non-conflicting interrupt-numbers when the peripheral devices trigger their interrupts

5. Learning to program the 8259A Either solution will require us to study how the system’s two Programmable Interrupt Controllers are programmed Of the two potential solutions, it is evident that greater system efficiency will result if we avoid complicating our interrupt service routines with any “extra overhead” (i.e., to see which component wished to interrupt)

6. Three internal registers IRR IMR ISR 8259A IRR = Interrupt Request Register IMR = Interrupt Mask Register ISR = In-Service Register output-signal input-signals

7. PC System Design 8259A PIC (slave) 8259A PIC (master) CPU INTR Programming is via I/O-ports 0xA0-0xA1 Programming is via I/O-ports 0x20-0x21

8. How to program the 8259A The 8259A has two modes: –Initialization Mode –Operational Mode Operational Mode Programming: –Write a (9-bit) command to the PIC –Maybe read a return-byte from the PIC Initialization Mode Programming: –Write a complete initialization sequence

9. How to access the IMR If in operational mode, the Interrupt Mask Register (IMR) can be read or written at any time (by doing in/out with A0-line=1) –Read the master IMR:in $0x21, %al –Write the master IMR:out %al, $0x21 –Read the slave IMR: in $0xA1, %al –Write the slave IMR: out %al, $0xA1

10. How to read the master IRR Issue the “read register” command-byte, with RR=1 and RIS=0; read return-byte: mov $0x0B, %al out %al, $0x20 in $0x20, %al

11. How to read the master ISR Issue the “read register” command-byte, with RR=1 and RIS=1; read return-byte: mov $0x0A, %al out %al, $0x20 in $0x20, %al

12. End-of-Interrupt In operational mode (unless AEOI was programmed), the interrupt service routine must issue an EOI-command to the PIC This ‘clears’ an appropriate bit in the ISR and allows other unmasked interrupts of equal or lower priority to be issued The non-specific EOI-command clears the In-Service Register’s highest-priority bit

13. Some EOI examples Send non-specific EOI to the master PIC: mov $0x20, %al out %al, $0x20 Send non-specific EOI to both the PICs: mov $0x20, %al out $%al, 0xA0 out %al, $0x20

14. Initializing the 8259A A series of 9-bit values is sent to the PIC Once it’s begun, it must be completed Each 9-bit values is called an Initialization Command Word (abbreviated ICW) The least significant 8 bits are sent on the PC’s data-bus, while the 9 th bit is sent as bit 0 on the PC’s address-bus

15. Official Reference The official Intel programming reference manual for the 8259A is available online (see ‘Resources’ on our course website) This document is 24 pages in.pdf format Many pages are irrelevant to programmers (e.g., they are concerned with electrical specifications, physical dimensions, pin configurations, and heating restrictions)

16. ICW1 and ICW2 0 A7A6A5 1 LTIMADISNGLIC4 1 A15 / T7 A14 / T6 A13 / T5 A12 / T4 A11 / T3 A10A9A8 ICW1 ICW2 LTIM (1 = Level-Triggered Interrupt Mode, 0 = Edge-Triggered Interupt Mode) ADI is length of Address-Interval for call-instruction (1 = 4-bytes, 0 = 8-bytes) SNGL (1 = single controller system, 0 = multiple controllers in cascade mode) IC4 means Initialization Command-Word 4 is needed (1 = yes, 0 = no)

17. ICW3 1 S7S6S5 1 00000ID2ID1ID0 (master) (slave) S4S3S2S1S0 S Interrupt-Request Input is from a slave controller (1=yes, 0=no) ID number of slave controller’s input-pin to master controller (0-7)

18. ICW4 1 000SFNMBUFM / SAEOIµPM microprocessor mode 1=8086/8088 0=8080 Automatic EOI mode 1 = yes, 0 = no Special Fully-Nested Mode (1 = yes, 0 = no) NON-BUFFERED mode (00 or 01) BUFFERED-MODE (10 = slave, 11 = master)

19. Initializing the master PIC Write a sequence of four command-bytes (Each command is comprised of 9-bits) 0 00010001 1 1 00000100 1 00000001 A0D7D6D5D4D3D2D1D0 ICW1=0x11 ICW2=baseID ICW3=0x04 ICW4=0x01

20. Initializing the slave PIC Write a sequence of four command-bytes (Each command is comprised of 9-bits) 0 00010001 1 1 00000010 1 00000001 A0D7D6D5D4D3D2D1D0 ICW1=0x11 ICW2=baseID ICW3=0x02 ICW4=0x01

21. Unused real-mode ID-range We can use our ‘showivt.s’ demo to see the “unused” real-mode interrupt-vectors One range of sixteen consecutive unused interrupt-vectors is 0x90-0x9F We created a demo-program (‘reporter.s’) to ‘reprogram’ the 8259s to use this range This could be done in protected-mode, too It would resolve the interrupt-conflict issue

22. Other ideas in the demo It uses an assembly language ‘macro’ to create sixteen different ISR entry-points:.macroisrid pushf pushw$\id callaction.endm All the instances of this macro call to a common interrupt-handling procedure (named ‘action’)

23. The Macro’s expansion If the macro-definition is invoked, with an argument equal to, say, 0x08, like this: isr0x08 then the ‘as’ assembler will ‘expand’ that macro-invocation, replacing it with: pushf pushw $0x08 callaction

24. Upon entering the ‘action’ procedure, the system stack has six words: The two “topmost” words (at bottom of picture) will get replaced by the interrupt-vector corresponding to ‘int-ID’ How ‘action’ works FLAGS CS IP FLAGS Interrupt-ID return-from-action SS:SP

25. The stack states FLAGS CS IP CS IP FLAGS Int-ID action-return FLAGS vector-HI vector-LO Stage 1 Stage 2Stage 3 Stage 4 Upon entering ‘isr’ Upon entering ‘action’ Before exiting ‘action’ After exiting ‘action’ (and entering ROM-BIOS interrupt- handler)

26. The on-screen status-line We call ROM-BIOS services to setup the video display-mode for 28-rows of text We use lines 0 through 24 for the standard 80-column by 25-rows of text output Line 25 is kept blank (as visual separator) Lines 26 and 27 are used to show sixteen labeled interrupt-counters (IRQ0-IRQ15) Any device-interrupt increments a counter

27. In-class exercise The main new idea was reprogramming of the 8259A Interrupt Controllers, in order to avoid “overloading” of any Intel “reserved” interrupt-numbers: 0x00 - 0x1F Modify our ‘tickdemo.s’ program so that a timer-tick interrupt in protected-mode will get routed through Interrupt Gate 0x20 (instead of through “reserved” Gate 0x08)