[Coco] Interesting reading

[Lothan]

> From: <jdaggett at gate.net>
>
> A while back I was doing some patent searches and came across several 
> Motorola Patents
> on the 6800 series processors. I also came across two other patents that 
> covered the FIRQ
> function.
>
> Well today I really started in depth reading of one patent. Well needless 
> to say it is been very
> educational. Figure #7 of the design and the corresponding description of 
> it is enlightening on
> how the hardware inputs work. From everything I read the embodiement 
> processor for the
> invention is the MC6809. No other processor of that time had Reset, Halt, 
> NMI, FIRQ and
> IRQ external hardware inputs. Patent US-4200912, Processor Interrupt 
> System, describes
> much of the logic behind the MC6809 interrupt system and how it works.
>
> I have gathered this from the patent. There is a priority assigned to the 
> external inputs. They
> are as follows:
>
> RESET   1 (highest)
> HALT    2
> NMI    3
> FIRQ      4
> IRQ        5  (lowest)
>
> Also the priority circuit allows for an asychronous reset to occur and if 
> in HALT mode, once
> the HALT input is released a RESET occurs.

This is really interesting. I didn't realize there was priority logic in the 
interrupt handling logic. The "MC6809-MC6809E 8-Bit Microprocessor 
Programming Manual" published by Motorola gives somewhat the same priority 
levels but seems to base the priority on how the interrupts are latched, 
whether the interrupts can be masked, which interrupts are automatically 
masked, and so on. I had just assumed that was the case, so this is very 
enlightening.

> The priority given given in the first paragraph of Section 3 is NMI, SWI, 
> FIRQ, IRQ, SWI, SWI2. What I don't know is whether SWI actually has a 
> higher priority (e.g. will the 6809 process an SWI interrupt even though 
> it received an FIRQ or IRQ at virtually the same time) or if it's just 
> saying SWI is considered a higher priority in a virtual sense because it 
> sets and I and F bits (masking IRQ and FIRQ) before jumping to the SWI 
> vector. I suspect it's the latter, but I'm curious if anyone knows the 
> details here.