NAME DATE REMARKS Run DEBUG from the DOS prompt.

Type R and then press the Enter key to view

Onin John Paul P. 09-22-23 the registers and their contents. Your screen
Binuya should display the following:
COURSE/YEAR/SECTION INSTRUCTOR

BSCpE 3 Hilda
Wycoco The flags register shown above contains
Santos the following settings.

NV UP EI PL NZ NA PO NC

Experiment 04
The Flags Register The settings mean no overflow (NV), up
direction (UP), enable interrupt (EI), plus
sign (PL), nonzero (NZ), no auxiliary carry
I. Objective
(NA), parity odd (PO), and no carry (NC).

After performing this activity, you should CF (Carry Flag)

be able to
1. Discuss the behaviour of the flags and
status register, and;
2. Identify operations that affect the
flags and status registers.
The carry flag is used to indicate that the
result of an operation is too long to be stored
in any of the registers.
PF (Parity Flag)

II. Introduction The parity flag is used to indicate that the

The flags register, also called status
register, is used to indicate the current status
of the machine and the results of execution.
Many instructions involving comparisons
and arithmetic operations change the status of
the flags.
A flag is a bit whose value (either 0 or 1)
is used to indicate a particular condition. A
flag is set when the flag bit contains a 1, and
reset when the flag bit contains a 0.
Eight of the 16 bits of the flags register
are common to all 8086-family processors.
The figure below shows the location of the
flags in the flags register.
result of an operation contains an even
number or odd number of 1 bit.
AF (Auxiliary Carry Flag)
The auxiliary carry flag is used to indicate
that the result of an operation contains a carry
over to the higher 4 bits.
ZF (Zero Flag)
The zero flag is used to indicate that the
result of an operation is 0.
SF (Sign Flag)
The sign flag is used to indicate that the
result of an operation is negative.

OF DF IF TF SF ZF AF PF CF
IF (Interrupt Flag)
The interrupt flag is used to enable and
disable interrupts.
DF (Direction Flag)
The direction flag is used by string
operations to determine the direction of data
transfer.
OF (Overflow Flag)
The overflow flag is used with signed
numbers to indicate the result of an operation
contains a carry.
Usually, only 3 of the 8 flags are used: the
carry flag, the zero flag and the sign flag. In
the following exercises we will be dealing
with these three registers.
III. Procedures
1. Run debug from the DOS prompt.
2. Type R and then press the Enter key to
view the registers and their contents. Note
the flags register. Write the status of the
flags on Table 1.
3. Use the R command to enter the values
0003 and 0001 in registers AX and BX,
respectively.
4. Use the A command to assemble the
instruction:
add ax,bx
Try tracing through the instruction.
Observe the flags register. Write the
value of the flags on Table 1.
5. Use the R command to enter the value
0004 in register CX. Assemble the
following instruction using the A
command:
sub ax,cx
Use the T command to single-step
through the above instruction. Write your
observations on Table 1.
6. Enter the value FFFF to register DX. Use
the A command to assemble the
instruction
add bx, dx
Try tracing through the instruction.
Observe the flag registers. Write your
observations on Table 1.
Notice that the BX register contains 0000
when the result of the ADD instruction is
10000. Because the register can only hold
2 bytes (four hexadecimal digits) the most
significant part is omitted.
Table 1
STEP CARRY ZERO SIGN
2 NC NZ PL
5 NC ZR PL
6 CY ZR PL
IV. Observation
After doing the procedures, I was able to
understand how different flag registers
behaved by implementing them in debug.
For example, the symbol CY (carry flag)
will be displayed if the result of an arithmetic
operation like addition is too long to be stored
in any of the registers. NZ will be replaced by
ZR (zero flag), which tells us that the result
of the instruction we entered is 0. While the
sign flag can change from PL (positive) to
NG (negative) if the result is negative.
 In addition, we can also observe in step 6
that even though we add the value of dx
(FFFF) to bx (0001) resulting in a value of
10000, the zero flag is displayed together
with the carry flag. This is due to the reason
that BX has a value of 0000 after tracing the
step because the register can only hold 2
bytes or four hexadecimal digits, which omits
the most significant part. However, with the
CY displayed, it indicates that the result is too
long to be stored.

V. Conclusion
Upon accomplishing the activity, I
learned the behavior and conditions of how
different flag resisters work, such as carry
flag, parity flag, auxiliary carry flag, zero
flag, sign flag, interrupt flag, direction flag,
and overflow flag.
Aside from that, I can now identify which
operations can affect the mentioned registers
and how they behave if certain conditions are
satisfied.

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