Chapter 26 - Using machine code
This chapter is written for those that understand Z80 machine code, the set of instructions that the Z80
processor chip uses. If you do not, but you would like to, there are books about it; two introductory ones
are 'Programming the Z80' by Rodnay Zaks, published by Sybex at about £10 and 'Z80 and 8080
Assembly language programming' by Rathe Spracklen, published by Hayden at £5.25.
The ultimate authority is the 'Z80 Assembly Language Programming Manual' together with the 'Z80-
CPU, Z80A-CPU Technical Manual', published by Zilog at about £6 for the pair, but these could hardly be
recommended for beginners.
Machine code routines can be executed from within a BASIC program using the function
USR
. The
argument of
USR
is the starting address of the routine, and its result is a two byte unsigned integer, the
contents of the bc register pair on return. The return address to the BASIC is tacked in the usual way, so
return is by a Z80 ret instruction.
There are certain restrictions on
USR
routines:
(i) On return, the iy & i registers must have the values 4000 h & 1 Eh.
(ii) The display routine uses the a', f', ix, iy & r registers, so a
USR
routine should not use these if
compute & display is operating. (It is not even sade to read the af' pair.)
The control, data & address busses are all exposed at the back of the ZX81, so you can do almost
anything with a ZX81 that you can with a Z80. The ZX81 hardware might sometimes get in the way,
though, especially in compute and display. Here is a diagram of the exposed connections at the back.
A piece of machine code in the middle of memory runs the risk of being overwritten by the BASIC
system. Some safer places are
(i) In a
REM
statement: type in a
REM
statement with enough characters to hold your machine code,
which you then poke in. Make this the first line in the program, or it might move about. Avoid halt
instructions, since these will be recognized as the end of the
REM
statement.
(ii) In a string: set up a long enough string, and then assign a machine code byte to each character.
Strings are always liable to move about in the memory.
In appendix A, the character set, you will find the characters and Z80 instructions written down side by
side in order, & you may well find this
useful when entering code.
(iii) At the top of the memory. When the ZX81 is switched on, it tests to see how much memory there is
and puts the machine stack right at the top so that there is no space for
USR
routines there. It stores the
address of the first non-existant byte (e.g. 17K, or 17408, if you have 1K of memory) in a system variable
known as RAMTOP, in the two bytes with addresses 16388 & 16389.
NEW
on the other hand, does not do
a full memory test, but only checks up as far as just before the address in RAMTOP. Thus if you poke the
address of an existing byte into RAMTOP, for
NEW
all the memory from that byte on is outside the BASIC
system and left alone. For instance, suppose you have 1K of memory and you have just switched on the
computer.
PRINT PEEK
16388+256*
PEEK
16389
tells you the address (17408) of the first non-existant byte.
Now suppose you have a
USR
routine 20 bytes long. You want to change RAMTOP to 17388 = 236 +
256*67 (how would you work this out on the computer?), so type
POKE
16388,236
POKE
16389,67
and then
NEW
. The twenty bytes of memory from address 17388 to 17407 are now yours to do what you
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