PDP11 I/O page memory map

Fritz Mueller fritzm at fritzm.org
Fri Mar 2 12:14:48 CST 2018


> On Mar 2, 2018, at 5:37 AM, Noel Chiappa via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> 
>> From: Jerry Weiss
>> Typically execution of the RESET instruction in a user program is
>> treated as a NOP
> 
> Yeah, that's not documented in most PDP-11 CPU manuals, either. It's one of
> the things that makes the PDP-11 impossible to virtualize; only HALT and SPL
> trap, IIRC. M[TF]P[ID] doesn't, I think, and neither does WAIT or RT[IT],
> IIRC.

Re-affirming Noel's *most* from above: having been through a deep dive on the 11/45 during a restoration the last couple years, I know most of this material *is* explicit in the 11/45 processor handbook, though maybe not in the obvious places.

Behavior of HALT, RESET, and SPL in all three modes is documented on page 13, in the Processor Status Word section, for example.  HALT and SPL behaviors are also noted on their individual instruction pages, but the RESET behavior, strangely, is not.

WAIT is permitted in supervisor and user modes on the 11/45.

Current and previous mode bits in the PSW can be set but not cleared when in supervisor and user modes on the 11/45.  RTI/RTT/M[FT]P[DI] function uniformly, but given this PSW behavior they can only effectively preserve or lower the processor mode, or access the address space of same or lower modes, assuming the PSW is properly setup and handled by kernel mode code.  This is documented on page 24 of the processor handbook, in the Multiprogramming section.

I don't recall explicit mention of the MMU reset behavior in the processor handbook, but it may be squirreled away in there somewhere...  I think I absorbed that bit of critical info from the KT11-C maintenance manual when I was working through debugging the one in my /45.

I am much less familiar with the documentation for later-model PDP-11s.  It sounds like a some of this info may have been "sanitized" from the later handbooks?

    cheers!
      --FritzM.



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