MAJ Tom skipped off the upper atmosphere [too shallow of an angle] but
he managed to get off a cryptic message...
History: a few years back, I got the idea from somewhere [Evil Dave?
WBST?] that there was a console in the IBM MCA SCSI firmware. MAJ Tom
was trying to mollify me by pretending he was going to look into it...
There are three versions, my SWAG is all have roughly the same layout
and registers. The versions are ver 1.x 80C32 based, ver 2.x 80C188
based, and ver 3.x 80C186 based.
Fzzt! Crackle! Bzzt! -------->
Ok I have located the console code and figured out how it uses the
various strings. Here is a more accurate description of the commands
supported in version 3.1:
Single-character DEBUG-like Commands: (
https://montcs.bloomu.edu/Information/LowLevel/DOS-Debug.html)
B - Dump memory (B [address]; address = offset | segment:offset)
D - Dump memory (D [address]; address = offset | segment:offset)
E - Enter to memory (E address; address = offset | segment:offset) [input]
F - Fill memory [input > segment_word offset_word count_word
pattern_byte (0: FF, 1: 00, 2: AA55, 3: FF00)]
G - ? ("Go" in DOS DEBUG) [terminates?]
T - ? ("Trace" in DOS DEBUG) [terminates?]
I - Input (I port)
O - Output (O port byte)
Q - Quit [terminates]
R - Register(s); (R [reg_name]) sets value of the specified reg. or
displays value of all x86 regs+flags [input*]
Proprietary Commands:
@ - ?
PSCB - Set SCB channel registers? [input]
RSCB - Display SCB channel registers
RESET
REV - Print uCode, Malibu & Cutlass revisions
RLTB - Display LTB channel registers
STAT - Prints ISR ESRI ESRII status (?)
FI - Failure info - prints Failure ID & Test Number
LED - Diag. LED control? [input > 0: LED OFF, !=0: LED ON?]
Notes:
[input] - the command requires additional input from the user
[terminates] - the command terminates the console environment
Now the elephant in the room... how to enter and interact with the
console? I'm still not quite sure.
It uses B000:4Ah for input and output and the I/O is serial. So,
possibly the J7 header? TX/RX may be all that is needed.
The console may not be accessible by default. It activates on hw int. 1
- single step and hw int. 2 - breakpoint instruction. There are also 3
calls to it in the main microcode loop - something that is rather hard
to decode (nested jump loops, unknown memory locations everywhere...).
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