28 Mar
2017
28 Mar
'17
5:30 a.m.
On 2017-03-27 04:00, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog(a)lemis.com> wrote:
On Monday, 27 March 2017 at 6:49:30 +1100, Dave
Horsfall wrote:
This is probably extremely off-topic, so I'll keep it short.
This is actually very simple and straight forward on a PDP-8, but it
might seem strange to people used to todays computers.
Essentially, you pass parameters in memory, as a part of the code
stream. Also, the PDP-8 certainly do have index registers.
The first thing one must do is stop thinking of the AC as a register.
The accumulator is the accumulator. Memory is registers.
Some memory locations autoincrement when used indirectly, they are
called index registers.
That said, then. A simple example of a routine passing two parameters
(well, three):
First the calling:
CLA
TAD (42 / Setup AC with the value 42.
JMS COUNT
BUFPTR
BUFSIZ
. / Next instruction executed, with AC holding
number of matching words in buffer.
.
Now, this routine is expected to count the number of occurances of a
specific word in a memory buffer with a specific size.
At calling, AC will contain the word to search for, while the address
following the JMS holds the address, and the following address holds the
size.
The routine:
COUNT, 0
CIA
DCA CHR / Save the negative of the word to search for.
CMA
TAD I COUNT
DCA PTR / Setup pointer to the address before the buffer.
ISZ COUNT / Point to next argument.
TAD I COUNT
CIA
DCA CNT / Save negative value of size.
DCA RESULT / Clear out result counter.
LOOP, TAD I PTR / Get next word in buffer.
TAD CHR / Compare to searched for word.
SNA / Skip if they are not equal.
ISZ RESULT / Equal. Increment result counter.
ISZ CNT / Increment loop counter.
JMP LOOP / Repeat unless end of buffer.
CLA / All done. Get result.
TAD RESULT
JMP I COUNT / Done.
PTR=10
CNT=20
CHR=21
RESULT=22
Addresses 10-17 are the index registers, so the TAD I PTR instruction
will autoincrement the pointer everytime, and the increment happens
before the defer, which is why the initial value should be one less than
the buffer pointer.
Hopefully this gives enough of an idea, but unless you know the PDP-8
well, you might be a little confused by the mnemonics.
As you can see, the return address at the start is used for more than
just doing a return. It's also your argument pointer.
Johnny
And as for subroutine calls on the -8, let's
not go there... As I dimly
recall, it planted the return address into the first word of the called
routine and jumped to the second instruction; to return, you did an
indirect jump to the first word. Recursion? What was that?
This was fairly
typical of the day. I've used other machines (UNIVAC,
Control Data) that did the same. Later models added a second call
method that stored the return address in a register instead, only
marginally easier for recursion.
At Uni I was given a relatively simple task to do in PDP-8 assembler:
a triple precision routine (36 bits!) to clip a value to ensure it
stayed between two limits. Simple, eh? Not on the PDP-8. Three
parameters, each three words long. only one register, no index
registers. I didn't finish it. Revisiting now, I still don't know
how to do it elegantly. How *did* the PDP-8 pass parameters?