A micro-debugger for Eclipse computers

Abstract

A micro-debugger for a Data General Eclipse S/200 computer is described. The Eclipse computer is a microprogrammable device with 56 bits/control word. No software for the WCS option is provided by the manufacturer. Since many microprograms contain errors which announce themselves only by causing the system to crash, and since the microprogrammer can access registers which are invisible to AL programmers, it is difficult to locate errors in microprograms. The micro-debugger is a set of ALGOL, Assembly Language and microcode routines which can ease the task of testing microprograms. It is a major modification of the MSU microassembler which allows setting of micro-breakpoints, display of all registers which are available to the microprogrammer, and interactive modification of these registers and core memory locations. It can be used with the standard symbolic debugger supplied by Data General to provide a powerful tool for checking and testing microprograms.