Continuing PDP11 saga

From: Pete Turnbull <pete_at_dunnington.u-net.com>
Date: Wed Jan 9 18:47:46 2002

On Jan 9, 18:19, Tom Leffingwell wrote:
>
> I think I finally get the picture on the addressing...However,
> that raises two more questions. If my program is trying to talk to a
> 22-bit address, and I have 18-bit addressing, will it not work, or will
it
> be converted?

It will be converted. When the CPU is running a program, it only uses
16-bit addresses in the program. The MMU treats anything above 160000 as
an access to the I/O page, and remaps it.

> Also, if my backplane becomes 22-bit (by replacing it or
> adding the jumpers for the other 4 bits) does everything automagically
> change to 22-bit, or do you change a jumper on the M8186, or on the
MSV11,
> or both?

It automagically works, except for a very few cases (and I can't even think
of an example at the moment). The reason is that most I/O devices actually
decode a signal called BBS7 (Bus Bank Select 7) instead of the highest
address bits. The signal gets its name from the fact that the original
LSI-11 used 16-bit addressing, and bank 7 was the I/O page. It's still
only activated for I/O page access, regardless of whether your processor
uses 16- 18- or 22-bit addressing.

-- 
Pete						Peter Turnbull
						Network Manager
						University of York
Received on Wed Jan 09 2002 - 18:47:46 GMT

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