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• Touched up bin2mif.py

  land-boards.com • 05/27/2021 at 10:21 • 0 comments

  I touched up the binary to MIF utility (bin2mif.py) to set the address to octal. That makes it easier to map to the PAL list file. The top of the MIF file now looks like:

  -- File: sievePlusLoaders.mif
  -- Generated by bin2mif.py
  -- 
  DEPTH = 4096;
  WIDTH = 12;
  ADDRESS_RADIX = OCTAL;
  DATA_RADIX = OCTAL;
  CONTENT BEGIN
  0000: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000;
  0010: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000;
  0020: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000;
  0030: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000;
  0040: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000;
  0050: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000;
  0060: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000;
  0070: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000;
  0100: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000;
  0110: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000;
  0120: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000;
  0130: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000;
  0140: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000;
  0150: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000;
  0160: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000;
  0170: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000;
  0200: 7300 6046 7200 1377 3010 1376 3022 3410;
  0210: 2022 5207 7305 3020 7200 1020 4775 1423;
  0220: 0024 7440 5247 7200 1020 3021 7300 1021;
  0230: 1020 7430 5247 3021 1021 4775 1024 7040;
  

   This correlates to the lst file:

     13             
     14       0010  *10
     15 00010 0000  incval, 0       / For autoincrementing
     16       0020  *20             / Our variables
     17 00020 0000  checking, 0
     18 00021 0000  multiple, 0
     19 00022 0000  ii, 0
     20 00023 0000  ptr, 0          / Calculated memory location and mask
     21 00024 0000  memmask, 0
     22       5000  *5000
     23 05000 0000  sieve, 0        / Sieve is 512 words, so location 5000 to 5777
     24             
     25       0200  *200            / start of program
     26 00200 7300  main,   CLA CLL
     27 00201 6046          TLS     / Reset the TTY
     28             
     29             / Clear the array
     30 00202 7200          CLA
     31 00203 1377          TAD     (sieve-1)       / put address of array-1 in incval
     32 00204 3010          DCA     incval
     33 00205 1376          TAD     (-words)        / Put -size of array in i
     34 00206 3022          DCA     ii
     35 00207 3410  loop1,  DCA     I incval        / Store 0 in successive locations
     36 00210 2022          ISZ     ii              / until end of array
     37 00211 5207          JMP     loop1
     38             
     39             / Do the marking
     40 00212 7305          CLA CLL IAC RAL         / 2
     41 00213 3020          DCA     checking        / initialize checking variable
     42 00214 7200  loop2,  CLA
     43 00215 1020          TAD     checking        / get checking variable
     44 00216 4775@         JMS     calcpm
     45 00217 1423          TAD     I ptr           / get memory word
     46 00220 0024          AND     memmask         / get the bit
   

   Now I'm trying to get the bin loader working over the serial port. Not sure what the serial protocol is. Must 8 bits of data, though.

• Demonstration Video

  land-boards.com • 05/23/2021 at 15:37 • 0 comments

  Put together a short highlights video.

• Front Panel Operation

  land-boards.com • 05/22/2021 at 12:58 • 0 comments

  PCB arrived. Built it. Tested it. It took a lot of FPGA tweeks to get it working like I want.

  Pushbuttons

  • DISP - cycles  between DISP LEDs [AC, MD, MADR, PC]
  • STEP - single step the CPU
  • LDPC - load the PC from the bottom slide switches
  • DEP - store the value from the bottom slide switches to the memory at the current Program Counter
  • LDA - load the Accumulator  from the bottom slide switches
  • RES - reset the CPU
  • PB1 - spare

  Slide Switches

  • 0-11  value that is loaded by the pushbuttons. Also the address value in MD mode
  • LNK - set the LINK bit when the accumulator is loaded (not yet  implemented?)
  • RUN/HALT - up = Run the CPU from the current PC, down = Halt the CPU

  LEDs

  • 0-11 - displays the value in the register/memory location selected by the DISP LEDs and selected by the DISP pushbutton
  • PC - display the Program Counter value on 0-11 LEDs 
  • MADR - Not used
  • MD - displays the data in memory at the current PC on 0-11 LEDs
  • AC - displays the Accumulator value on 0-11 LEDs
  • LINK - display the link bit (not yet implemented?)
  • RUN - illuminated when the CPU is running, off when the CPU is halted
  • PWR - power LED

  Mounted above FPGA Card

• Ported to EP2C5 (Multicomp) FPGA

  land-boards.com • 05/17/2021 at 20:28 • 0 comments

  Ported the design to the original Multicomp FPGA. Works great. 

  Webpage for FPGA adapter card.

  Fills up the Internal SRAM resources. Room for more logic left over.

• Interpreting DEC BIN Files

  land-boards.com • 05/16/2021 at 11:27 • 1 comment

  Data Section

  Here's a look at the echo list file vs hex dump of the binary file for the data section.

  The header is demarked as values of 0x80.

  Addresses are marked as values of 0x40-0x4F. The data value follows. This is shown to be more complicated in the above example where the last item data is placed at 400 which is after the code. To fix this, bin2mif would need to keep track of this and do the writes.

  The weird part is the address encoding. For the first locations, the address in the listing is in octal and the address in the hex window is in hex. That makes sense. However, for the final value the number is 400 in both windows - strange? Not really since the upper 2 bits of the second byte get discarded.
  

  Code Section

  Now, take a look at the code section. The mapping is the same here:

  The first cut at the bin2mif program read in the binary data until it found the 4200 (oct) and snagged the following data. That worked fine for the contiguous section of code, but didn't work for section after the code which had to be manually copied in the In System Memory Editor:

  It would be nice if the bin2mif utility could handle this. This transition is also marked in the same way:

  Fixing bin2mif, then, involves detecting the same address bit and filling out the gap between the end of the previous data and the start of the next data section.

  Another way would be to have a 4K Word array and fill it as data arrives. That's arguably the best way to handle this.
  

  Re-Wrote bin2mif.py

  Re-factored the bin2mif code to interpret the addresses. It worked with the echo code. Command line was:

  python ..\bin2mif_2.py echo.bin > echo.mif

  Tested with the sieve code and it worked:
  

  Success!

• Running echo.pal example

  land-boards.com • 05/15/2021 at 18:07 • 0 comments

  The echo.pal example program reads characters from the serial port and echos them out as they are entered. When Enter is pressed, the entire line gets sent to the serial port.

  In the previous log I created a utility bin2mif that does a simple translation of the DEC bin file into a memory initialization file. The program only copies code sections and doesn't deal with non-contiguous code sections. This limitation is fine for the data since it should all be set to zero anyway but it's a problem for the non-contiguous code sections in echo.pal.

  Here's the echo.lst file:

      1             / Serial port test (echo)
      2             / http://homepage.divms.uiowa.edu/~jones/pdp8/man/tty.html
      3       0010  *10
      4 00010 0000  linep, 0
      5       0020  *20
      6 00020 0000  saved, 0
      7 00021 0000  count, 0
      8       0400  *400             / Line stored here
      9 00400 0000  line, 0
     10       0200  *200
     11 00200 7200      CLA          / Clear Accumulator
     12 00201 6046      TLS          / Teleprinter Load and start
     13 00202 7200  newl, CLA        / Clear Accumulator
     14 00203 1377      TAD (line-1)
     15 00204 3010      DCA linep
     16 00205 6031  newc, KSF           / Keyboard Skip if Flag (input data is ready)
     17 00206 5205      JMP .-1       / 
     18 00207 6036      KRB          / Keyboard Read and begin next read
     19 00210 0376      AND (177)    / Get rid of parity bit
     20 00211 6041      TSF          / Teleprinter Skip if Flag
     21 00212 5211      JMP .-1
     22 00213 6046      TLS          / Teleprinter Load and start (Echo it)
     23 00214 3020      DCA saved    / save a copy
     24 00215 1020      TAD saved
     25 00216 3410      DCA I linep  / store it away
     26 00217 1020      TAD saved
     27 00220 1375      TAD (-15)    / CR character?
     28 00221 7440      SZA          / finished line if so - Skip next instruction if Zero Accumulator
     29 00222 5205      JMP newc
     30 00223 1374      TAD (12)     / Echo line feed as well
     31 00224 6041      TSF          / Teleprinter Skip if Flag
     32 00225 5224      JMP .-1
     33 00226 6046      TLS          / Teleprinter Load and start (Echo it)
     34             / Now echo the line
     35 00227 7200      CLA          / Clear Accumulator
     36 00230 1373      TAD (-line)
     37 00231 1010      TAD linep    / get number of characters
     38 00232 7040      CMA          / minus the number
     39 00233 3021      DCA count
     40 00234 1377      TAD (line-1) / reset starting address
     41 00235 3010      DCA linep
     42 00236 7200  echoc, CLA       / Clear Accumulator
     43 00237 1410      TAD I linep  / get character
     44 00240 6041      TSF          / Teleprinter Skip if Flag
     45 00241 5240      JMP .-1
     46 00242 6046      TLS          / Teleprinter Load and start
     47 00243 2021      ISZ count    / Increment and store
     48 00244 5236      JMP echoc
     49 00245 7200      CLA          / Clear Accumulator
     50 00246 1374      TAD (12)
     51 00247 6041      TSF          / Teleprinter Skip if Flag
     52 00250 5247      JMP .-1
     53 00251 6046      TLS          / Teleprinter Load and start
     54 00252 5202      JMP newl
        00373 7400
        00374 0012
        00375 7763

  The problem here is the values in locations 373-375 (oct). They get placed immediately after the code at 263-255, These can be manually inserted using the In System Memory editor.

  The Quartus In System Memory Editor can be used to do an export of the data (first select all). Saved the code as echo_fixed.mif.

  The result is that the echo code runs on the PDP-8 FPGA.

• PDP-8 Software Toolchain

  land-boards.com • 04/24/2021 at 20:24 • 0 comments

  Build PDP-8 Assembler Tool

  • Assembler macro8x.c generates binary (DEC bin) files from PDP-8 Assembly Language files
  • Notes from macro8x.c source code

  This program has been built and successfully executed on:   
  Linux (80486 CPU) using gcc   
  RS/6000 (AIX 3.2.5)   
  Borland C++ version 3.1 (large memory model)   
  Borland C++ version 4.52 (large memory model) with no modifications to the source code.
  On UNIX type systems, store the the program as the pal command and on 
  PC type systems, store it as pal.exe
  

  • Command line to compile assembler (under Linux GCC):

  gcc macro8x.c
  

  • macro8x.c would not compile under VisualStudio
  • macro8x.c source compiled without error under Linux Mint under VirtualBox

  Simple Test Program

  I wrote a very simple test program, easy.pal . The program continually increments a memory location, at 10 (oct).

  • Compile easy.pal code using:

  ../macro8x -x easy.pal
  

  List file is:

  1 0010 *10
  2 00010 0000 linep, 0
  3 0200 *200
  4 00200 2010 ISZ linep
  5 00201 5200 JMP .-1
  6 00202 5200 JMP .-2
  7
  No detected errors

  The binary file from macro8x easy.bin as viewed in HxD (as 16-bit hex values) is:

  Bin to MIF Utility

  The output of the macro8x assembler is DEC bin loader format. The DEC bin format is described in DEC-OO- LBAA-D:

  Wrote a utility, bin2mif.py to convert binary loader data to Altera Memory Initialization (MIF) files. The program:

  • Ignores the (0x80) header values and ignores the data section (0x4008 0x0000 values)
  • Looks for the code section (starting with 0x4200)
  • Assumes code starts at 200 (oct). This could be pulled from the 0x4200 location,
  • Pads the first 200 (oct) locations with 0000 (oct).

  Here's the output:

  -- Generated by bin2mif.py
  --
  DEPTH = 131;
  WIDTH = 12;
  ADDRESS_RADIX = DECIMAL;
  DATA_RADIX = OCTAL;
  CONTENT BEGIN
  0000: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000;
  0008: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000;
  0016: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000;
  0024: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000;
  0032: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000;
  0040: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000;
  0048: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000;
  0056: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000;
  0064: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000;
  0072: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000;
  0080: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000;
  0088: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000;
  0096: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000;
  0104: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000;
  0112: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000;
  0120: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000;
  0128: 2010 5200 5200;
  END;

  Loaded the easy.mif file. Got the expected warning loading it into Quartus (it's OK).

  Critical Warning (127005): Memory depth (4096) in the design file 
  differs from memory depth (131) in the Memory Initialization File 
  "C:/Users/HPz420/Documents/GitHub/Doug Gilliland/Linux-68k/pdp8/
  PDP8_Programs/easy.mif" -- setting initial value for remaining
  addresses to 0.

  Ran. It worked great. The code is at the correct place and increments the location 10 (oct).

  Code loaded at 200 (oct) which is 0x80 (hex), Verified data changes with In System Memory Content Editor. 

  And again:

  Success!

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