Motorola MVME187 User Manual

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Debugger General Information
4
Comparison with M68000-Based Firmware
If you have used one or more of Motorola's other debugging 
packages, you will find the RISC 187Bug very similar, after making 
due allowances for the architectural differences between the 
M68000 and M88000 CPU architectures. These differences are 
primarily reflected as follows:
Instruction mnemonics and addressing modes of the 
assembler/disassembler differ somewhat in 187Bug.
187Bug uses registers instead of the stack for the passing of 
arguments to or from the TRAP #496 handler. 
The interactive commands in 187Bug are more consistent. For 
example, delimiters between commands and arguments may 
now be commas or spaces interchangeably. 
187Bug Implementation
MVME187Bug is written largely in the ÒCÓ programming 
language, providing benefits of portability and maintainability. 
Where necessary, assembler has been used in the form of separately 
compiled modules containing only assembler code; no mixed 
language modules are used. 
Physically, 187Bug is contained in two of the four 44-pin 
PLCC/CLCC EPROMs, providing 512KB (128K words) of storage. 
Both EPROMs are necessary regardless of how much space is 
actually occupied by the firmware, because of the 32-bit word-
oriented M88000 memory bus architecture. 
The executable code is checksummed at every power-on or reset 
firmware entry, and the result (which includes a pre-calculated 
checksum contained in the EPROMs), is tested for an expected zero. 
Thus, users are cautioned against modification of the EPROMs 
unless re-checksum precautions are taken.