Interrupts

2/4/2015 Ali Saleh - Assembly Language Programming 1

Hardware interrupts

• Generated when some attached device (peripheral) needs attention

from the CPU.
• Example: user presses a key on keyboard.
• This causes CPU to suspend its activities and invoke some special
code which will store the keyboard character into a small 16-byte
buffer.

2/4/2015 Ali Saleh - Assembly Language Programming 2

Hardware interrupts

• Example: serial port receives signal from attached device, e.g.

mouse.
• Processing is similar to keyboard interrupt.
• Interrupts may be vectored or prioritized, so that important ones can
“jump the queue”.
• Interrupts may be interrupted.

2/4/2015 Ali Saleh - Assembly Language Programming 3

Software interrupt

• This is not really an interrupt at all, but a call to a standard routine to

handle some basic I/O function.
• It is so named because the actions triggered by it mimic many of
those of a hardware interrupt.
• The most important one for us is int 21h.

2/4/2015 Ali Saleh - Assembly Language Programming 4

The PC BIOS

• BIOS - Basic Input/Output System

• Code is embedded in ROM on PC motherboard
• Supplied by hardware manufacturer such as IBM, or specialist BIOS
company such as Phoenix, Award, AMI.
• Services provided are low-level I/O to disk, video, serial comms,
printer, keyboard.

2/4/2015 Ali Saleh - Assembly Language Programming 5

Common SW Interrupts

• Services are requested via software interrupt; examples later.

• 13h ; diskette services
• 10h ; video services
• 14h ; serial port services
• 16h ; keyboard services
• 17h ; printer controller services

2/4/2015 Ali Saleh - Assembly Language Programming 6

Int 21h

• Example: INT 21H calls DOS for various operating system services,
e.g. open a file.
• Example: INT 10H calls up video services from the system BIOS, for
example write character to screen.
• Addresses of these routines are stored in the interrupt vector table.

2/4/2015 Ali Saleh - Assembly Language Programming 7

Recall Memory Org.

00000 Interrupt Vectors

00400
• 8086 - 1 megabyte of BIOS and DOS Data
memory (220 bytes) DOS

• 00000 – 003ffh Application

Program Area
• Interrupt vector
A0000

B0000 Video
C0000

D0000
Reserved
E0000

F0000 BIOS

2/4/2015 Ali Saleh - Assembly Language Programming 8

 Interrupt vectors
CS
Type 255
03ffh IP
CS Type 254
03fch IP

CS

084h IP Type 33 (INT 21H)

CS
080h Type 32
IP

CS
Type 4 (over flow)
010h IP
CS Type 3
00ch IP
CS
008h IP
Type 2 (NMI)
CS
004h IP Type 1 (single-step)
CS
000h IP
Type 0 (divide error)

2/4/2015 Ali Saleh - Assembly Language Programming 9

Example of interrupt vectors adrress

• INT 21h : the address of the DOS function dispatcher is at address

4*21H = 84H

2/4/2015 Ali Saleh - Assembly Language Programming 10

DOS INT 21/Service 01

•DOS INT 21h/ Service 01

•Read single character from keyboard with echo
•AH:01
•Call with INT 21h
•Char is returned in AL

2/4/2015 Ali Saleh - Assembly Language Programming 11

DOS INT 21h/Service 01

• Mov ah,01
• Int 21h
• The above codes will expect the user to enter a character thru the
key board. The entered character will be stored in AL register

2/4/2015 Ali Saleh - Assembly Language Programming 12

DOS INT 21/Service 09

•DOS INT 21h/ Service 09

•Display character string to the screen
•AH:09
•DX: offset of string to be printed; string must be terminated with a ‘$’
character
•Call with INT 21h

2/4/2015 Ali Saleh - Assembly Language Programming 13

DOS INT 21h/Service 09
Example
• .data
• Message db ‘good morning’,’$’
• .code
• ….
• Mov ah,09
• Mov dx,offset message
• Int 21h
• The above codes will print the message ‘good
morning’ to the screen.

2/4/2015 Ali Saleh - Assembly Language Programming 14

BIOS INT 10H/Service 2

• Position screen cursor

• AH:02
• BH:0 (page number)
• DH: row(0-24d)
• DL:column(0-79d)
• Call with interrupt 10

2/4/2015 Ali Saleh - Assembly Language Programming 15

 BIOS INT 10H/Service 2
• Mov ah,2
• Mov bh,0 ; video page 0
• Mov dh,20 ; x = 20
• Mov dl,25 ; y = 25
• int 10H ; call BIOS

• Mov ah,09
• Mov dx,offset message
• Int 21h

2/4/2015 Ali Saleh - Assembly Language Programming 16