segmented memory models

[Tony Duell]

> 
> Tony Duell wrote:
> > And IMHO one common expression of 'brain damage' is when the design 
> > omitted to ccosider soemthing that later became a major issue.
> >   
> Do you design for a living?  If so, then my hat is off to you for 

Alas, as is well known, I don't design for a living. I wish I did... 
However, I have done so in the past.

I am also not arrogant enough to suggest that my designs were ever 
perfect. I am quite sure I've made my fair share of brain-dead decisions.

> thinking of *EVERY POSSIBLE* use of the design you have made.  I design

I think that;'s going a bit far....

I don't consider that the Z80 is brain-dead because it only has a 16 bit 
address bus, for all 64K is nowhere near enough memory for a personal 
computer now. 16 bit address was a reasonable choice at the time.

I do consider the IBM PC interrupt system to be brain dead because 
-- It lead to major problems later on
-- The 'correct way to do it' was well-known by every electronic engineer 
worth his NaCL, and had been used in many previous machines.
-- The 'cost' to do it right was 1 or 2 inexpensive ICs.
 
> for a living, and I think you're asking way too much of a designer.  The 

IMHO part of being a designer is thinking how the design could be used 
(other than its originally-intended use),

> best designers plan for the stated requirements and try to consider the 
> long term, but they are not prophets.
> 
> I think subjecting the designers choices to things that came much later 
> is ludicrous.
> 
> And on the RAM at $0000 issue, I think that is simply Intel and the PC 
> environment responding to bad choices that people made.  Intel 8080 
> designers no doubt assumed (as the MOS folks did), that startup vectors 
> would be in ROM.  The Development Board chose RAM + switches to offer 
> some flexibility, which is to be expected.  That CP/M and later systems 
> assumed RAM at $0 can't be blamed on Intel.  The fact that they later 

Agreed, and nor do I blame it on Intel.

> tried to fix the issue by moving the jump table to the top segment seems

The poiont is that that fixed nothing. The issue, IMHO, was not caused by 
_where_ the procesor started execuding on rest.
 
> to me to be reacting to the "status quo", not creating a bad design. 
> 
> CPUs need to fetch vectors from a fixed address.  Anywhere you put them 

This is not a $deity-given requirement. For example, after a reset, the 
CPU could 3-state the address bus, assert an extra output pin (or assert 
a normally-unused combination of pins, for example Rd and Wr asserted at 
the same time), and then read in the location to start executing from on 
the address pins. I know of no commericla processor which did it this 
way, but it's certainly possible. Whether it's a sensible thing to do is 
another matter.

> will offend someone.  I think Intel putting them at the bottom sounds 
> like a fine design, at least in the '70s.  'C' and it's desire to have 
> address 0 be NULL was not around on the micros, and putting it at the 

I wasn't aware that this was a requirement of C, or any other language.

> bottom alleviated the need to keep moving it as the "top" of memory 
> keeps moving up. 
> 
> > And what maces the design worse is that the problem had been considered 
> > (and correctly solved) before. On the PDP11, the top part of the address 
> > space was used for I/O devices. And it was the top part on all PDP11s, 
> > whether they had 16, 18, or 22 bit addressing. 
> >   
> I don't think I would call that a correct design.  It forces all 
> programs to treat all IO as relative addresses, since they will move as 

No it doesn't, given that a PDP11 address to a program is always 16 bits. 
The 18 or 22 bit phuysicall addresses were created by the MMU.

> the design moves.  If there are processing penalties for relative 
> addressing, you've sealed the programmer's fate.
> 
> It was a good choice for minicomputers, as they specced out multiple 
> addressing options for various levels of the market, and programmers all 
> designed with that in mind.  How was Intel to know the 8080 would sell 
> as well as a DEC CPU? 

The issue here was witht he 80286 .vs. the 8086. Not the 8080. It was 
clear the 8088 had sold very well (IBM and all that :-)), it was likely 
the 80286 would sell well as well. 

-tony