Resolving interrupt conflicts

1
Resolving interrupt conflicts

• An introduction to reprogramming of the 8259A
  Interrupt Controllers

2
Intels reserved interrupts

• Intel had reserved interrupt-numbers 0-31 for the
  processors 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
  systems 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
input-signals
8259A
IRR
output-signal
IMR
ISR
IRR Interrupt Request Register IMR Interrupt
Mask Register ISR In-Service Register
7
PC System Design
8259A PIC (master)
CPU
8259A PIC (slave)
INTR
Programming is via I/O-ports 0x20-0x21
Programming is via I/O-ports 0xA0-0xA1
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-line1)
• 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 RR1
  and RIS0 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 RR1
  and RIS1 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 Registers 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 its 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 PCs
  data-bus, while the 9th bit is sent as bit 0 on
  the PCs 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
A7
A6
A5
1
LTIM
ADI
SNGL
IC4
ICW1
1
A15 / T7
A14 / T6
A13 / T5
A12 / T4
A11 / T3
A10
A9
A8
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
S7
S6
S5
S4
S3
S2
S1
S0
(master)
S Interrupt-Request Input is from a slave
controller (1yes, 0no)
1
0
0
0
0
0
ID2
ID1
ID0
(slave)
ID number of slave controllers input-pin to
master controller (0-7)
18
ICW4
1
0
0
0
SFNM
BUF
M / S
AEOI
µPM
microprocessor mode 18086/8088
08080
Special Fully-Nested Mode (1 yes, 0
no)
NON-BUFFERED mode (00 or
01) BUFFERED-MODE (10 slave, 11 master)
Automatic EOI mode 1 yes, 0 no
19
Initializing the master PIC

• Write a sequence of four command-bytes
• (Each command is comprised of 9-bits)

A0
D7
D6
D5
D4
D3
D2
D1
D0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
1
ICW10x11
1
ICW2baseID
1
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
ICW30x04
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
ICW40x01
20
Initializing the slave PIC

• Write a sequence of four command-bytes
• (Each command is comprised of 9-bits)

A0
D7
D6
D5
D4
D3
D2
D1
D0
0
0
0
0
1
0
0
0
1
ICW10x11
1
ICW2baseID
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
0
ICW30x02
1
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
1
ICW40x01
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
• .macro isr id
• pushf
• pushw \id
• call action
• .endm
• All the instances of this macro call to a common
  interrupt-handling procedure (named action)

23
The Macros expansion

• If the macro-definition is invoked, with an
  argument equal to, say, 0x08, like this
• isr 0x08
• then the as assembler will expand that
  macro-invocation, replacing it with
• pushf
• pushw 0x08
• call action

24
How action works

• 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

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