[TUHS] PDP-11/70 SPL

[bqt@update.uu.se (Johnny Billquist)]

On 2016-03-27 23:49, jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu  (Noel Chiappa) wrote:
>
>      > From: Johnny Billquist
>
>      > It would also be interesting if anyone can come up with a good reason
>      > why SPL should work that way.
>
> So that when doing:
>
> 	SPL	0
> 	WAIT
>
> you don't lose by having the interrupt happen between the SPL and the WAIT?

Hmm. A good point. If you depend on WAIT waking you up at an interrupt, 
then you need SPL to block here. But this also means that you must be at 
SPL 7 before any of this, otherwise you are still exposed to this 
problem (nothing says that the interrupt won't happen before the SPL as 
well).

In general, I would say that this is not the way I would write code, but 
checking in RSX and 2.11BSD I can tell that RSX do not use this pattern, 
and does a WAIT without any SPL, while 2.11BSD do an SPL 0 followed by 
WAIT. And the routine in 2.11BSD is also called at SPL 7.

So obviously, both ways have been done, and 2.11BSD will work 
potentially with a slight degration if the SPL do not block interrupts. 
It will still work fine, as you will, at a minimum, get an interrupt at 
the next clock tick, which will wake it up. But it might possibly be 
sitting in a WAIT slightly longer than required.

RSX in fact just loops after the WAIT. If an interrupt should cause the 
system to be able to do something more productive, it will not return to 
the idle loop. So yes, it also detects in the interrupt exit processing, 
that it was/is in the idle loop.

I still haven't had time to investigate properly. But at least processor 
and chip manuals do not say that SPL will block interrupts. But that is 
no guarantee that it don't in reality.

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol