25 Mar
2016
25 Mar
'16
12:06 a.m.
On 2016-03-24 23:50, Peter Jeremy wrote:
Yeah. The fact that the microcode didn't even recognize any signals from
the front panel while in this loop was bad, they realized... :-)
Johnny
On 2016-Mar-24 11:17:18 +0100, Johnny Billquist
<bqt(a)update.uu.se> wrote:
I don't think it should on the PDP-11, and the documentation do not
mention any such thing.
There is a good reason the 8080 (and Z80, and others) have this
property. The RETI instruction on these machines do not enable
itnerrupts themselves, so just as you note, you need to both enable
interrupts and return from interrupt atomically, or else you get into a
mess.
The PDP-11 RETI instruction changes the processor priority as a part of
the instruction. You do not use SPL (whatever) before a RETI.
Thus, it do not make sense that SPL on a PDP-11 would have this
property. If if indeed do disable recognizing interrupts after an SPL,
it sounds more like a bug. I guess I'll go and read the microcode so see
if that mentions any of this, since I'm sortof into reading it anyway as
I was trying to debug a problem on an 11/70 only a couple of months ago...
I'll try and remember to report back when I know something more.
It is the normal behavior of any instruction that
interrupts are not
recognized until the next instruction fetch. This is how the microcode
works, and it is also pretty much the same in any processor today.
...
individual instructions. You still get a fetch
between each instruction,
at which point, interrupts will be recognized.
Some instructions inhibit the "check for interrupts at the end of this
instruction" check. I'm most familiar with the 8080 EI instruction,
which enabled interrupts after the following instruction (so things like
EI;HLT didn't have a window). It seems the PDP-11 SPL behaves the same. memory access
to get the actual content. The fun thing happens if you
set the indirect bit, and give your own address. This is then an
infinite memory reference. And the KA10 can not be broken out of that
lookup. The only solution is to pull the power plug.
I can't think of any modern architectures that still support this sort
of indefinite indirection but I know the ITT 3200 (custom CPU for
controlling telephone exchanges) could do this. In it's case, a normal
front-panel reset would recover.