Monday, February 05, 2024
The difficulties in supporting “write-only memory” in assembly
When I last wrote about this, I had one outstanding problem with static analysis of read-only/write-only memory, and that was with hardware that could be input or output only. It was only after I wrote that that I realized the solution—it's the same as a hardware register having different semantics on read vs. write—just define two labels with the semantics I want. So for the MC6821, I could have:
org $FF00 PIA0.A rmb/r 1 ; read only org $FF00 PIA0.Adir rmb/w 1 ; write only, to set the direction of each IO pin PIA0.Acontrol rmb 1 ; control for port A
So that was a non-issue. It was then I started looking over some existing code I had to see how it might look. I didn't want to just jump into an implementation without some forethought, and I quickly found some issues with the idea by looking at my maze generation program. The code in question initializes the required video mode (in this case 64×64 with four colors). Step one involves writing a particular value to the MC6821:
lda #G1C.PIA ; 64x64x4 sta PIA1.B
So far so good. I can mark PIA1.B as write-only
(technically, it also has some input pins so I really can't,
but in theory I could).
Now, the next bit requires some explaining. There's another 3-bit value that needs to be configured on the MC6883, but it's not as simple as writing the 3-bit value to a hardware register—each bit requires writing to a different address, and worse—it's a different address if the bit is 0 or 1. So that's six different addresses required. It's not horrible though—the addresses are sequential:
| bit | 0/1 | address |
|---|---|---|
V0 | 0 | $FFC0 |
V0 | 1 | $FFC1 |
V1 | 0 | $FFC2 |
V1 | 1 | $FFC3 |
V2 | 0 | $FFC4 |
V2 | 1 | $FFC5 |
Yeah,
to a software programmer,
hardware can be weird.
To set bit 0 to 0,
you do a write
(and it does not matter what the value is)
to address $FFC0.
If bit 0 is 1,
then it's a write to $FFC1.
So with that in mind,
I have:
sta SAM.V0 + (G1C.V & 1<<0 <> 0) sta SAM.V1 + (G1C.V & 1<<1 <> 0) sta SAM.V2 + (G1C.V & 1<<2 <> 0)
OOh. Yeah.
I wrote it this way so I wouldn't have to look up the appropriate value and write the more opaque (to me):
sta $FFC1 sta SFFC2 sta $FFC4
The expression (G1C.V & 1<<n <> 0) checks bit n to see if it's set or not,
and returns 0 (for not set) or 1 (for set).
This is then added to the base address for bit n,
and it all works out fine. I can change the code for,
say, the 128×192 four color mode by using a different constant:
lda #G6C.PIA sta PIA1.B sta SAM.V0 + (G6C.V & 1<<0 <> 0) sta SAM.V1 + (G6C.V & 1<<1 <> 0) sta SAM.V2 + (G6C.V & 1<<2 <> 0)
But I digress.
This is a bit harder to support. The address being written is part of an expression, and only the label (defining the address) would have the read/write attribute associated with it. At least, that was my intent. I suppose I could track the read/write attribute by address, which would solve this particular segment of code.
And the final bit of code to set the address of the video screen (or frame buffer):
ldx #SAM.F6 ; point to frame buffer address bits lda ECB.grpram ; get MSB of frame buffer mapframebuf clrb lsla rolb sta b,x ; next bit of address leax -2,x cmpx #SAM.F0 bhs mapframebuf
Like the VDG Address Mode bits,
the bits for the VDG Address Offset have unique addresses,
and because the VDG Address Offset has seven bits,
the address is aligned to a 512 byte boundary.
Here,
the code loads the X register with the address of the upper end of the VDG Address Offset,
and the seven top most bits of the video address is sent,
one at a time,
to the B register,
which is used as an offset to the X register to set the appropriate address for the appropriate bit.
So now I would have to track the read/write attributes via the index registers as well.
That is not so easy.
I mean, here, it could work, as the code is all in one place, but what if instead it was:
ldx #SAM.F6 lda ECB.grpram jsr mapframebuf
Or an even worse example:
costmessage fcc/r "A constant message" ; read only text buffer rmb 18 ldx #constmessage ldy #buffer lda #18 jsr memcpy
The subroutine memcpy might not even be in the same source unit,
so how would the read/write attribute even be checked?
This is for static analysis,
not runtime.
I have one variation on the maze generation program that generates multiple mazes at the same time, on the same screen (it's fun to watch) and as such, I have the data required for each “maze generator” stored in a structure:
explorec equ 0 ; read-only backtrackc equ 1 ; read-only xmin equ 2 ; read-only ymin equ 3 ; read-only xstart equ 4 ; read-only ystart equ 5 ; read-only xmax equ 6 ; read-only ymax equ 7 ; read-only xpos equ 8 ; read-write ypos equ 9 ; read-write color equ 10 ; read-write func equ 11 ; read-write
This is from the source code, but I've commented each “field” as being “read-only” or “read-write.” That's another aspect of this that I didn't consider:
lda explorec,x ; this is okay sta explorec,x ; this is NOT okay
Not only would I have to track read/write attributes for addresses, but for field accesses to a structure as well. I'm not saying this is impossible, it's just going to take way more thought than I thought. I don't think I'll have this feature done any time soon …
![[The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades]](https://www.conman.org/people/spc/about/2023/1023.t.jpg "The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades")