Using the 65816 Processor

The Western Design Center 65816 is a 6502 family processor. It is backwards software compatible with the 6502 and 65C02 and was used on a number of computers including the Apple IIGS.

I've been playing with one using the CPU adaptor board I built for my Replica 1.

The 65816 comes up in "emulation mode" where it is software compatible with the 6502 and 65C02. It also implements a number of new instructions, some of which are in the 65C02 and some are new ones.

You can switch the 65816 to "native mode" at any time under software control. Native mode offers 16-bit X and Y registers and accumulator, a 24-bit address space (16 megabytes), new instructions and new addressing modes. In native mode you independently configure whether the accumulator and index registers are 8 or 16-bit. Zero page (now called direct page) and the stack can be relocated anywhere in memory.

The chip is not electrically compatible with the 6502 or 65C02. The 65802 was plug-in compatible with the 6502 but is no longer being made. The 65816 is almost compatible. The adaptor I constructed makes it compatible, or at least compatible enough for the Replica 1.

There are some limitations of the adaptor: the system still only has 16 address lines so 16MB addressing is not possible. The extra 8 high order address lines are ignored. Some hardware pins are also not supported, such as SO and SYNC, but these are not used on the Replica 1.

The only compatibility issue I have run onto is with the CFFA1 compact flash adaptor. It gives an "I/O" error. I suspect it is either due to instruction timing differences or more likely the timing of the clock signals generated by the adaptor is not quite right. I need to investigate further.

Having 16-bit registers is a nice luxury and you can still use 8-bits when you need it, by switching modes, which can save speed and code size.

There are even two new memory copy instructions which can copy a range of memory, up to the full address space, in a single instruction.

I wrote three small demo programs, available here. They compile with the CA65 assembler which fully supports the 65816 instruction set. It even has a "smart" mode where the assembler tracks whether the CPU is in 8 or 16-bit accumulator and index registers modes and generates the code accordingly.

Demo 1 uses some of the new instructions in emulation mode and then switches to native mode, first with 8-bit accumulator and index registers, and then switches to 16-bit. What can be confusing is that an instruction like PHA can push 1 or 2 bytes on the stack depending on the mode selected. An instruction like LDA #$1234 is only valid in 16-bit accumulator mode. As you can imagine, existing 8-bit 6502 machine code will soon break if run in 16-bit mode.

Demo 2 uses the MVP (MOve Positive) instruction. First it copies an overlapping range of memory, demonstrating how it can be used to fill a range of memory, in this case with zeroes. Then it does the more commonly uses copy of a range of memory from one area to another. With this single instruction you can move any amount of memory up to the full 24MB address space, taking 7 cycles per byte copied.

Demo 3 is an example taken from the Western Design Center manual which determines the CPU type: 6502, 65C02, or 65816. I extended it to be a complete program which displays the result on the Replica 1.

Links

Here are some useful links related to the 65816:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WDC_65816/65802
2. http://www.zophar.net/fileuploads/2/10538ivwiu/65816info.txt
3. http://www.defence-force.org/computing/oric/coding/annexe_2/
4. http://www.smwiki.net/wiki/65c816
5. http://www.zophar.net/documents/65816.html

The definitive manual is Programming the 65816 Including the 6502, 65C02 and 65802 and is available as a free download from Western Design Center's web site, as is the data sheet.