[TUHS] Happy birthday, PDP-8!
Steve Nickolas
usotsuki at buric.co
Tue Mar 28 09:33:35 AEST 2017
On Tue, 28 Mar 2017, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> Essentially, you pass parameters in memory, as a part of the code stream.
> Also, the PDP-8 certainly do have index registers.
>
> The first thing one must do is stop thinking of the AC as a register. The
> accumulator is the accumulator. Memory is registers.
>
> Some memory locations autoincrement when used indirectly, they are called
> index registers.
>
> That said, then. A simple example of a routine passing two parameters (well,
> three):
>
> First the calling:
>
> CLA
> TAD (42 / Setup AC with the value 42.
> JMS COUNT
> BUFPTR
> BUFSIZ
> . / Next instruction executed, with AC holding number
> of matching words in buffer.
> .
>
> Now, this routine is expected to count the number of occurances of a specific
> word in a memory buffer with a specific size.
> At calling, AC will contain the word to search for, while the address
> following the JMS holds the address, and the following address holds the
> size.
>
> The routine:
>
> COUNT, 0
> CIA
> DCA CHR / Save the negative of the word to search for.
> CMA
> TAD I COUNT
> DCA PTR / Setup pointer to the address before the buffer.
> ISZ COUNT / Point to next argument.
> TAD I COUNT
> CIA
> DCA CNT / Save negative value of size.
> DCA RESULT / Clear out result counter.
> LOOP, TAD I PTR / Get next word in buffer.
> TAD CHR / Compare to searched for word.
> SNA / Skip if they are not equal.
> ISZ RESULT / Equal. Increment result counter.
> ISZ CNT / Increment loop counter.
> JMP LOOP / Repeat unless end of buffer.
> CLA / All done. Get result.
> TAD RESULT
> JMP I COUNT / Done.
>
> PTR=10
> CNT=20
> CHR=21
> RESULT=22
>
>
> Addresses 10-17 are the index registers, so the TAD I PTR instruction will
> autoincrement the pointer everytime, and the increment happens before the
> defer, which is why the initial value should be one less than the buffer
> pointer.
>
> Hopefully this gives enough of an idea, but unless you know the PDP-8 well,
> you might be a little confused by the mnemonics.
>
> As you can see, the return address at the start is used for more than just
> doing a return. It's also your argument pointer.
>
> Johnny
>
>
Actually, that reminds me of ProDOS-8 on the Apple ][, which uses a
similar mechanism to pass parameters.
-uso.
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