Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tektronix!orca!frip!andrew
From: andrew@frip.WV.TEK.COM (Andrew Klossner)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Register usage
Message-ID: <3355@orca.WV.TEK.COM>
Date: 17 May 89 20:17:20 GMT
References: <259@mindlink.UUCP> <8104@killer.Dallas.TX.US> <25633@amdcad.AMD.COM> <25635@amdcad.AMD.COM>
Sender: nobody@orca.WV.TEK.COM
Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville, Oregon
Lines: 17

[On the original 29k chips, which had no byte load/store:]

	"Anyway, the compilers have always handled 29k byte-load and
	byte-store on word-only memory just fine [LOAD/EXTRACT or
	LOAD/INSERT/STORE].  And Unix doesn't care ..."

My Unix kernel device drivers sure care!  I have to talk to peripheral
chips, some of whose registers require word-wide load/store and some of
which require byte-wide.  I can't implement byte-wide with word-wide
because of the side effects.  The extra logic to solve this problem is
not pretty.

The 29k looks like a nice chip, though, if you deal only with
well-behaved peripheral interfaces.

  -=- Andrew Klossner   (uunet!tektronix!orca!frip!andrew)      [UUCP]
                        (andrew%frip.wv.tek.com@relay.cs.net)   [ARPA]