On Oct 7, 2:17, Iggy Drougge wrote:
> >> >If it's another 40 pin chip, then that's the custom ULA chip that
> >> >includes most of the glue logic.
> >>
> >> Is that like a lot of 74138s or something?
>
> >It's rather more than that (I assume that's the address decoder part,
> >which is in the ULA). It also handles the DRAM timing, most of the video
> >display, and so on.
>
> I thought one of the selling points of the Z80 was its built-in ability
to
> handle DRAM. But perhaps it's lacking the 6502's ability to easily share
> memory with other devices by only doing memory accessing every second or
> fourth cycle.
The Z80's special ability in handling DRAM is merely the presence of an
on-board counter which increments once in every instruction cycle, and
which is output onto the address bus once per instruction. This is only
part of the requirement, however (see below). The refresh counter means
the chip is guaranteed to cycle through the addresses (with no omissions)
in a given period. This is exactly what you need for DRAM refresh. Of
course, if you have a video circuit accessing the same DRAM, it too will
cycle through the address range (or part of it) and achieve the same end,
so the Z80 refresh is only a useful bonus if you don't have video accessing
your DRAM. Anyway, it's only a 7-bit counter, which is fine for 16Kbit
DRAM but not for most 64Kb devices.
The downside is that a Z80 uses the clock in a different way from a 6502.
A 6502 does some things on one half of the clock cycle (like accessing
memory to read instructions or read/write data) and other things (internal
operations) on the other half cycle. During the half-cycle when it doesn't
need memory access, it releases the bus, leaving it free for use by other
devices (eg video). A Z80 uses successive cycles (of a faster clock)
instead of alternate half-cycles for different purposes and there is no
clock state when it's guaranteed not to be using the bus. However, there
is one (whole) clock cycle when it doesn't need the bus, and that's the
refresh period; it's just more complicated to decode that than to just use
the phase of the clock (high or low) to enable your video access (or
whatever). It's also less suitable than the 6502 since Z80 instruction
cycles vary in length and therefore the interval between refresh cycles is
not constant. The interval between successive half cycles of a 6502 clock
is (usually!) constant.
I said the refresh was only part of the requirement. That's because DRAM
normally splits the address into two parts, row addresses and column
addresses, to address a given cell in the memory matrix. Usually these two
parts of the address are multiplexed onto the same pins of the IC.
Therefore, on the first part of the memory access cycle, you put the row
addresses on the pins and signal this to the DRAM with the /RAS (row
address select) signal. The IC latches these address bits internally, and
after some time period, you turn off /RAS, replace the row address bits
with the column address, and apply the /CAS signal. Neither the Z80 nor
the 6502 have any special feature to simplify this (unless you count the
fact that you have two clock phases per memory address on a Z80). So in a
Spectrum, ZX81, etc, the ULA takes care of the address multiplexing and
RAS/CAS timing.
> But what does glue logic really mean?
Just slang for the assorted logic that does address decoding, signal
buffering, RAS/CAS generation, etc. In a typical system with, let's say,
ROM, RAM, processor, some I/O ports, perhaps a DMA device, each section
that connects to the address/data bus (and perhaps the control bus too, if
DMA is involved) would have its own set of buffer ICs, each being enabled
only when the relevant section is accessing the bus. The glue logic
includes all the decoding/multiplexing of the address and control signals.
If you think of a system as CPU, RAM, ROM, I/O ports, then the glue logic
is all the extra circuitry you need to "glue" them together into a working
system.
> Couldn't Sinclair have socketed the BASIC? It must have been a lot of
work to
> piggy-back it onto each imported Spectrum, unless the customers had to do
it
> by themselves.
Sinclair never used sockets if they didn't have to, for reasons of both
cost and reliability. If there was a special Sinclair-original ROM for
Scandinavian countries, I would have expected that to be factory-fitted
instead of the standard ROM. It's possible they retrofitted something like
that -- it might be cheaper to piggyback a new ROM instead of removing the
old one -- but I would guess that what you have is something done by the
original owner, in order to have both systems. Sinclair would be most
unlikely to fit something as extravegant as a switch.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
University of York
Received on Sun Oct 07 2001 - 06:40:28 BST