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General Category => Amstrad CPC hardware => Topic started by: arnoldemu on 17:32, 22 June 10

Title: external interrupts
Post by: arnoldemu on 17:32, 22 June 10
the cpc supports external interrupts. But to do this the interrupt needs to remain active until it is manually reset (e.g. with out instruction) - or at a minimum have some way to know the source of the interrupt so it can be handled correctly.

the firmware interrupt handler re-enables interrupts, and if the interrupt is still active it assumes that it comes from an external interrupt and executes &003b.

&003b should be patched with the code to disable the external interrupt.

the raster interrupts are cleared manually.

so how can I test this on a normal cpc?

I think it can be done on the cpc+ already with dma interrupts. (Yes looking at the docs this is possible providing the auto-clear of dma interrupts is disabled).

Is there other hardware that used the external interrupt feature?
Title: Re: external interrupts
Post by: TFM on 19:28, 23 June 10
And don't forget the NMI at &0066 ;-)

Well, what's about the MF-II, doesn't it use the interrupt feature??? Don't remember it exactly.

There was the Z80-STI expansion card from Schneider. By soldering one line on the board, the interrupts have been established. And since they can be programmed, it was a nice toy ;-)
Title: Re: external interrupts
Post by: arnoldemu on 09:41, 24 June 10
Quote from: TFM/FS on 19:28, 23 June 10
And don't forget the NMI at &0066 ;-)

Well, what's about the MF-II, doesn't it use the interrupt feature??? Don't remember it exactly.

There was the Z80-STI expansion card from Schneider. By soldering one line on the board, the interrupts have been established. And since they can be programmed, it was a nice toy ;-)
I already know about the NMI and quite a lot of hardware uses it.
Multiface-II uses NMI too.

I was more interested in the maskable interrupts from a source outside CPC and the Z80-STI you describe is exactly what I was wanting. Thanks for the info. :)

Thanks TFM :)
Title: Re: external interrupts
Post by: TFM on 21:06, 27 June 10
There was a loooong time ago an ECB bus project for the CPC. For this ECB bus they have been able to use the so called daisy chain interrupt handling. Quite impressive :-)
I still have three ECB cards which are interrupt capable, one is a fast 38000 RS232 SIO, the others are a SRAM and a EPROM-disc. They were implemented in CP/M.
If you're interrested, then I can try to find informations about it. But this stuff is 25 years old and I don't remember exactly where to start to search...
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