Reading and Writing

The PROM provides a variety of 8-bit, 16-bit, and 32-bit operations. In general, a c (character) prefix indicates an 8-bit (one-byte) operation; a w (word) prefix indicates a 16-bit (two-byte) operation; and an L (longword) prefix indicates a 32-bit (four-byte) operation.

A suffix of ! indicates a write operation. The write operation takes the first two items off the stack. The first item is the address, and the second item is the value.

ok 55 ffe98000 c!

A suffix of @ indicates a read operation. The read operation takes the address off the stack.

ok ffe98000 c@
ok .s
55

A suffix of ? is used to display the value without affecting the stack.

ok ffe98000 c?
55

Be careful when trying to query the device. If the mappings are not set up correctly, trying to read or write could cause errors. Special words are provided to handle these cases. cprobe, wprobe, and lprobe, for example, read from the given address but return zero if the location does not respond, or nonzero if it does.

ok fffa4000 c@
Data Access Error

ok fffa4000 cprobe
ok .s0

ok ffe98000 cprobe
ok .s
0 ffffffffffffffff

A region of memory can be shown with the dump word. This takes an address and a length, and displays the contents of the memory region in bytes.

In the following example, the fill word is used to fill video memory with a pattern. fill takes the address, the number of bytes to fill, and the byte to use. Use wfill and an Lfill for words and longwords. This fill example causes the cgsix to display simple patterns based on the byte passed.

ok " /sbus" select-dev
ok 800000 2 100000 map-in
ok constant fb
ok fb 10000 ff fill
ok fb 20000 0 fill
ok fb 18000 55 fill
ok fb 15000 3 fill
ok fb 10000 5 fillok fb 5000 f9 fill