Using the 8254 Timer-Counter

Understanding the role of the

system’s 8254 programmable
Interval-Timer/Counter
 Displaying ‘Time-Of-Day’
• Algorithm steps:
– Get the count of timer-interrupts so far today
– Convert these ‘timer-ticks’ into seconds
– Breakdown the total number of seconds today
into Hours, Minutes, Seconds, and AM/PM
– Convert numerical values into digit-strings
– Output these results to the video terminal
 Where’s the ‘tick’ counter?

main memory Number of timer-tick

interrupts so far today
(longword at 0x0046C)

0x00500
0040:006C tick_count

0x00400 ROM-BIOS DATA AREA

Interrupt Vector Table

(for real-mode)
0x00000
 Getting the ‘tick’ count
• The ROM-BIOS interrupt-handler for the
timer interrupt stores the tick-count as a
32-bit integer located at address 0x046C
(it’s in the ROM-BIOS DATA AREA)
• In real-mode, we can get it like this:
xor %ax, %ax # address segment zero
mov %ax, %fs # using FS register
mov %fs:0x046C, %eax # copy tick-count to EAX
mov %eax, total_ticks # save in a local variable

segment-override prefix (segment used would be %ds)

Converting ‘ticks’ to seconds

total_ticks_today
total_seconds_today =
number of ticks-per-second

The number of ‘ticks-per-second’ is based upon the way

the PC’s timing hardware has been programmed
 The 8254 PIT
• The 8254 Programmable Interval-timer is
used by the PC system for (1) generating
timer-tick interrupts (rate is 18.2 per sec),
(2) performing dynamic memory-refresh
(reads ram once every 15 microseconds),
and (3) generates ‘beeps’ of PC speaker
• When the speaker-function isn’t needed,
the 8254 is available for other purposes
 Input/Output frequencies
• The input-pulses to each Timer-channel is
a long established PC standard, based on
the design of the chrystal oscillator chip:
1,193,182 pulses-per-second (Hertz)

• The frequency of the output-pulses from

any Timer-channel is determined by how
that channel’s Latch was programmed
Three timer/counter ‘channels’
8284 1193182 Hz
PCLK CLK0
OUT0 Interrupt IRQ0
Channel 0
GATE0

CLK1 Port 0x61, bit #4

OUT1 DRAM refresh
GATE1 Channel 1

CLK2 Port 0x61, bit #5

GATE2 OUT2
Channel 2 speaker
AND

Port 0x61, bit #0

8254 PIT
+5 V
Port 0x61, bit #1
Counter decrements when pulsed

COUNT REGISTER
CLK
MSB LSB

OUT
MSB LSB
LATCH REGISTER
GATE

STATUS

TIMER/COUNTER CHANNEL
 8254 Command-Port

7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

binary
CHANNEL COMMAND OUTPUT MODE
/ BCD

Channel-ID Command-ID Output Mode Counting Mode

00 = chn 0 00 = Latch 000 = one-shot level 0 = binary
01 = chn 1 01 = LSB r/w 001 = retriggerable 1 = BCD
10 = chn 2 10 = MSB r/w 010 = rate-generator
11 = LSB-MSB r/w 011 = square-wave
100 = software strobe
101 = hardware strobe

Commands are sent to the 8254 via io/port 0x43

 Programming a PIT channel
• Step 1: send command to PIT (port 0x43)
• Step 2: read or write the channel’s Latch
– via port 0x40 for channel 0
– via port 0x41 for channel 1
– via port 0x42 for channel 2
 Standard BIOS programming
• For Channel 0 (the ‘timer-tick’ interrupt)
the Latch is programmed during system
startup with a value of zero
• But the Timer interprets zero as 65,536
• So the frequency of the output-pulses from
Timer-channel 0 is equal to this quotient:
output-frequency = input-frequency / frequency-divisor
= 1193182 / 65536 (approximately 18.2)
 Consequently…
• To compute ‘total_seconds’ from ‘total_ticks’:

total_seconds = total_ticks / ticks_per_second

= total_ticks / (1193182 / 65536)
= ( total_ticks * 65536 ) / 1193183

• We can use the Pentium’s integer-arithmetic

instructions MUL (multiply) and DIV (divide)
 How ‘MUL’ works
Before executing the MUL instruction…

EAX multiplicand (32-bits)

reg (or mem) multiplier (32-bits)

32-bit operands

Here’s the instruction… mull reg_or_mem

After executing the MUL instruction…

product (64-bits)
EDX EAX

64-bit product
 How ‘DIV’ works
Before executing the DIV instruction…

dividend (64-bits)
EDX EAX

64-bit dividend

reg (or mem) divisor (32-bits)

32-bit operand

Here’s the instruction… divl reg_or_mem

After executing the DIV instruction…

two results (32-bits)

EDX EAX

32-bit remainder 32-bit quotient

 Implementing the conversion
• So use MUL and DIV to convert ‘ticks’ into
‘seconds’, like this:
# total_seconds = ( total_ticks * FREQ_DIVISOR ) / PULSES_PER_SEC

mov total_ticks, %eax

mov $FREQ_DIVISOR, %ecx
mul %ecx
mov $PULSES_PER_SEC, %ecx
div %ecx
mov %eax, total_seconds

# Now integer-quotient is in EAX, and integer-remainder is in EDX

 ‘Time-Of-Day’ Format

HH:MM:SS am/pm

hours seconds morning or

minutes afternoon

So we need to compute four numerical values from the ‘total_seconds’ integer

 Our four time-parameters
We use these arithmetical ideas:

– total_minutes = ( total_seconds / 60 );
ss = ( total_seconds % 60 );
– total_hours = (total_minutes / 60 );
mm = ( total_minutes % 60 );
– total_halfdays = (total_hours / 12 );
hh = (total_hours % 12 );
– Total_days = ( total_halfdays / 2 );
xm = total_halfdays % 2;
 A subtle refinement
• Our ‘total_seconds’ value was gotten with
an integer-division operation, so there’s
likely to be some ‘round-off’ error
• How can we be sure we use the ‘closest’
integer to the actual quotient?
• We should remember the ‘rounding’ rule!
• When ‘remainder’ is equal or greater than
1/2 of ‘divisor’, ‘quotient’ gets incremented
 How to implement rounding?
• There is more than one way to do it – i.e.,
the “amateur’s” way or the “expert’s” way
• Knowledge of the Pentium’s architecture
and instruction-set can assist
• The ‘obvious’ method:
• if ( 2 * remainder >= divisor ) ++quotient;
• But this uses a multiply and a conditional
jump-instruction (inefficient!)
 Avoiding inefficiency…
• Replace the ‘multiply’ with an ‘addition’
• Use ‘subtract’ and ‘add-with-carry’ instead
of using ‘compare’ and ‘conditionally-jump’
# Recall: quotient was in EAX, remainder was in EDX, divisor was in ECX

add %edx, %edx # doubles the remainder

sub %ecx, %edx # computes: 2*quotient – divisor
# now carry-flag is clear in case 2*quotient >= divisor
cmc # complement the carry-flag bit
# now carry-flag is set in case 2*quotient >= divisor
adc $0, %eax # add the carry-flag to the quotient

# So this achieves the same effect as the ‘rounding rule’, but wit no jump!
 In-class exercise
• Can you enhance our ‘timeoday.s’ demo
to make it more dramatic (and later useful)
by creating a loop within its ‘main’ routine,
so it continues to read and display the time
(until the user presses a key)
• HINTS: Use an INT-0x16 keyboard service
to ‘peek’ into the keyboard-queue, and
omit the ‘\n’ (newline) control-code from
the ‘report’ message-string