Hey,

I have come to realize that most of you have attained your information from the Pentium IA-32 Architecture manuals, whereas my knowledge has many gaps from the fact that I have hardly ever used them at all, and have turned to other sources for information (OSDever.net, OSDev.org, doorknobsoft.com) and though these are great websites, I've found that I am often turning to others for help.

However, I have found the Pentium manuals to be mind-boggling in the fact that they're so big and I don't really know where to start with them!

Does anyone have any certain plans/methods that I could use to go through them without having to read every page of each one?

Thanks for your time.

-Ryan "Rhyno" Lloyd


P.S. - I hope I don't sound like I'm whining or complaining in here about this, far from it. Moreso trying to find a way I can cope with them.

Volume two (OMG it's broke into two parts now!) is the real meat and potatoes. I slept with it for a few years - we are kind of close.

Seriously, it's difficult to say without knowing your background. Volume one can be scanned quickly if you're really familiar with data types and such - it's an introduction which the other volumes expand on. Oh, looks like volume three is two parts now as well! Maybe just start by just reading sections that covered your interests.

Thanks! I've already started in the first one with the second chapter (Basic Inf), and it gave me an idea where to go via references to other parts, and you're right about where the real meat is! That's what I was mainly looking for, so thanks! However, I still don't quite understand where it talks about the A20 line and how to set up port 20h for interrupts.

I wrote a guide to recent Intel manuals concerning x64 architecture. It can help you to get an outline perhaps.

http://x86asm.net/articles/x86-64-tour-of-intel-manuals

Thanks! I think that's what we should have out there in a sticky in the Main Subforum are outlines for how to approach the Intel manuals.

rhyno: post it to feedback so we can discuss it. it is not so simple...

Although there are a couple references to it, the A20 line isn't really covered in the Intel manuals. It's an external processor that controls the meaning of the line (maybe, handled differently in modern designs).

http://heim.ifi.uio.no/~stanisls/helppc/8042.html

Besides vol3 there are plenty of good resources through google on the APIC.

Hmm. I don't share this opinion. Here is my view of the A20 line:
http://dictionary.zdnet.com/definition/A20+line.html
In brief, another, yet another, anachronism, due to poor design of the original cpu.....

Vol3 is nice, but it's become pretty damn large after the introduction of VMX

A20 line control used to be handled by the keyboard controller, iirc...