Using the 8254 Timer-Counter.ppt

Using the 8254 Timer-Counter Understanding the role of the system’s 8254 programmable Interval-Timer/Counter Displaying ‘Time-Of-Day’ Algorithm steps: Get the count of timer-interrupts so far today Convert these ‘timer-ticks’ into seconds Breakdown the total number of seconds today into Hours, Minutes, Seconds, and AM/PM Convert numerical values into digit-strings Output these results to the video terminal Where’s the ‘tick’ counter? Getting the ‘tick’ count The ROM-BIOS interrupt-handler for the timer interrupt stores the tick-count as a 32-bit integer located at address 0x046C (it’s in the ROM-BIOS DATA AREA) In real-mode, we can get it like this: Converting ‘ticks’ to seconds The 8254 PIT The 8254 Programmable Interval-timer is used by the PC system for (1) generating timer-tick interrupts (rate is 18.2 per sec), (2) performing dynamic memory-refresh (reads ram once every 15 microseconds), and (3) generates ‘beeps’ of PC speaker When the speaker-function isn’t needed, the 8254 is available for other purposes Input/Output frequencies The input-pulses to each Timer-channel is a long established PC standard, based on the design of the chrystal oscillator chip: 1,193,182 pulses-per-second (Hertz) The frequency of the output-pulses from any Timer-channel is determined by how that channel’s Latch was programmed Three timer/counter ‘channels’ Counter decrements when pulsed 8254 Command-Port Programming a PIT channel Step 1: send command to PIT (port 0x43) Step 2: read or write the channel’s Latch via port 0x40 for channel 0 via port 0x41 for channel 1 via port 0x42 for channel 2 Standard BIOS programming For Channel 0 (the ‘timer-tick’ interrupt) the Latch is programmed during system startup with a value of zero But the Timer interprets zero as 65,536 So the frequency of the output-pulses from Timer-channel 0 is equal to this quotient: output-frequency = input-frequency / frequency-divisor = 1193182 / 65536 (approximately 18.2) Consequently… To co