Accessing the outside world

Programming a CPU is cool, but at some point you need the help from other devices to do something useful!

The 6809E CPU can communicate with other chips on the computer motherboard (and expansions) using a “bus”. This is just a set of wires which can be in two states (high or low), and each represent a binary digit (0 or 1).

The bus is made of:

  • 16 address lines that allows the CPUto tells who it wants to communicate with,
  • 8 data lines, where the CPU can send or receive data,
  • Several control lines, allowing the CPU to tells which data direction it expects, and a few other things.

Unlike the z80 and chips from Intel x86 family, the 6809E doesn't have a dedicated address space for I/O devices. Instead, they share the same space as memory. Thus, the devices are “memory mapped”. This allows removing a few instructions from the instruction set and simplifies the hardware interfacing.

Memory map

This is the place where TO and MO machines differ the most.

MO machines

Address rangeMappings
0000-1FFFPixel RAM Attribute RAM
2000-20FFMonitor direct-page
2100-21FFBASIC direct-page
2200-9FFFUser RAM
A000-A7BFFloppy ROM
A7C0-A7FFI/O Page
A800-AFFFCustom page
B000-BFFFCartridge RAM expansion
C000-EFFFBASIC ROM
F000-FFFFMonitor ROM

Notes:

  • Screen: 2 8KiB pages. The last 1536 bytes are not visible on screen and can be used as a buffer.|
  • Custom page: Unused by standard peripherals. Available as pre-decoded line on expansion port, and an extra ROM slot on MO5 revision 2 motherboard.

TO machines

Address rangeMappings
0000-3FFFCartridgeRAM banks (pages 0 to 31)Internal ROMs (up to 8 pages)
4000-5FFFPixel RAM (page 0) Attribute RAM (page 0)
6000-60FFMonitor direct-page
6100-61FFBASIC direct-page
6200-9FFFUser RAM (page 1, not remappable)
A000-DFFFlegacy RAM expansion (pages 2 to 8)RAM banks (pages 0 to 31)
E000-E7AFFloppy controller ROM
E7B0-E7BFUnused (free for custom expansions)
E7C0-E7FFI/O Page
E800-FFFFMonitor ROM

I/O page

All the internal peripherals, and most external ones, are mapped in the I/0 page.

MO machines

Address rangeDevice
A7C0-A7C3 System PIA
A7CB Memory extension control register
A7CC-A7CF "Sound and Game" PIA
A7D0-A7D7 Floppy disk controller
A7D8 Expansion port control
A7E0-A7E3 Printer and serial port PIA
A7E4-A7E7 Gate array
A7E8-A7EB RF57-232 6551 ACIA

TO machines

Address rangeDevice TO7TO7/70TO9TO8TO9+TO8D
E7C0-E7C7 System 6846 PIA @#AFA:Yes
E7C8-E7CB System 6821 PIA @#AFA:Yes
E7CC-E7CF “Sound and Game” PIA Exp@#AFA:Yes
E7D0-E7DF Floppy controller ExpWD2793THMFC1
E7DA-E7DB EF9369 Color Palette @#FAA:No@#AFA:Yes
E7DC-E7DD Gate Array (Video configuration) @#FAA:No@#AFA:Yes
E7DE-E7DF 6850 ACIA (keyboard controller) @#FAA:No@#AFA:Yes@#FAA:No@#AFA:Yes@#FAA:No
E7E0-E7E3 CC90 communication controller Exp@#FAA:No
E7E4-E7E7 Gate Array (RAM Management) @#FAA:No@#AFA:Yes
E7E8-E7EB RF57-232 serial controller 6551 ACIA Exp
E7EC-E7EF Digitalization expansion (?) @#FAA:NoExp
E7F0-E7F7 IEEE expansion (?) Exp
E7F8-E7FF Modem Exp@#AFA:YesExp
documentations/devices/io.devices.txt · Last modified: 2015/02/28 18:08 by 127.0.0.1
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