OPERATING SYSTEM OVERVIEW

HARDWARE

There is 64K of memory and maximum of 256 ports. Input ports are arranged in pairs - the first of each pair, when read, will tell how many bytes are available to be read. The second is where actual data is available.

PORTS

OUTPUT

0 - mem_bank

Write either 0, 1, 2 or 3 to indicate which chunk of memory to bank (meaning the 16K chunk starting at N * 0x4000) following by a byte indicating which ROM or which extra chunk of RAM to map in.

1 - mem_unbank

Write either 0, 1, 2 or 3 to indicate which chunk of memory to unbank.

2 - io_wr_stdout

Write a byte to the host machine's STDOUT.

0xFF - hw_start_clock

Starts the machine clock. The clock generates NMIs. Writing anything to this port works.

INPUT

BOOT LOADER

The machine starts with PC = 0x0000, the Boot ROM paged in at 0x0000 and the OS ROM paged in at 0x4000.

The Boot loader first copies some code to the top of memory, then jumps to it. That code disables the Boot ROM, copies the first 256 bytes of the OS from the OS ROM to 0x0000, disables the OS ROM, starts the clock, then jumps to 0x0000.

BOOTING THE OS

There's just a few bytes 0x0000, and a jump past the RST block.

The stack is initialised and the memory-map reset.

It then reads each port in turn until no more data are available, flushing them. The various bits of memory reserved for the OS are then marked as such in the memory map. Finally, the file shell.cmd is executed.

REGISTERS

The alternate register set may be used by OS functions.

MEMORY MAP

    0xFF80 to 0xFFFF: stack
    0xFF00 to 0xFF7F: memory allocation bitmap
                      each bit represents 64 bytes
    ...
    0x0000 to 0xXXXX: OS code

ACCESS TO OS FUNCTIONS FROM USER CODE

Parameters are passed via the stack, and are all sixteen bits long The last parameter passed should be the function number to call. To execute the function, RST 1. RST 1 itself is not re-entrant.

NMIs

The NMI increments a 32-bit clock counter in memory and may, if we're not inside RST 1, may perform a task switch.

RST 1

This function saves the user's registers, pages in the OS ROM, and calls the relevant function. When that function returns, the OS ROM is paged back out and registers restored. Any return values will be on the stack.

PROCESSES

User processes may be loaded and executed at any address. Consequently they should not use any absolute addresses in their code.

Associated with each process is a control structure. This is stored at 0xXXXX + 0xXX * PID and consists of:

    offset | size | use
    -------------------
    0      | 2    | storage for AF register
    2      | 2    | storage for BC register
    4      | 2    | storage for DE register
    6      | 2    | storage for HL register
    8      | 2    | storage for PC register
    10     | 2    | storage for SP register