2010-11-13

Hardware Single Step for the 8085

As usual my current developments tend to wander towards all directions, as the ever expanding universe... Although I haven't really finished any of my other "side jobs", I want to further develop the mini85 into a real single board CP/M computer, but more on that later.
This week, I looked for a Hardware Single Stepping circuit for the 8085. Something that proves that "everything is on the internet" is not true (if you didn't already knew), at least until up to now.
The internet came up with nothing, so I had to resort to older methods... Books, applications notes, etc... First of it was the 8080 datasheet, on the description of the READY line it states "Can be used for single stepping the processor" but this sentence is strangely absent from the 8085 datasheet (a nice circuit with one wait state is drawn instead). Then I found something on a great book "Microcomputers and Microprocessors - The 8080, 8085 and Z-80 Programming, Interfacing, and Troubleshooting" by John Uffenbeck. There are caveats, about the same as others and my previous pseudo-DMA circuit for the 8085, doesn't allow the use of dynamic RAM hidden-refresh (end of M1). I've redrawn it with gschem.


It is not exactly what I want. I want a single lever switch with 3 positions RUN, HALT, SingleStep. I found this one on Digikey a nice C&K switch that "has the looks" of a 1980 Computer and could do the job. The problem is that I need to do some adaptation from the schematics above to a single switch with 3 positions, the main problem is halt the computer when the switch is off (centre position) and at the same time set the FF clock low... I might need some magic...

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Could please explain the hardware single stepping used in 8085 microprocessor