Perry, The documentation refers to the B stepping of the IXP1200. You probably have the A step of the processor and there are differences in handling the UART. In the A stepping, bit 6 of the IRQ register is really the UART interrupt (not the RTC). You do need to clear the UART interrupts on the A step, so the mystery bit 9 of the UART_SR is what you need to set before exiting your handler. There is a specification update on the Version 1.0 developers CD that details the changes for the A step. Arul -----Original Message----- From: Perry Wagle [mailto:wagle@cse.ogi.edu] Sent: Monday, July 10, 2000 5:22 PM To: ixp1200@CS.Princeton.EDU Subject: UART interupts Has anyone gotten the UART interupts to work right? I can read and write the UART just fine with polled i/o, but interupts seem all messed up. I suspect the March 2000 IXP1200 Network Processor Programmer's Reference is either false or I wasn't given the board that it corresponds to. Section 4.6.10 UART_CR (page 4-78): The UART generates a IRQ interupt regardless of what I set set bit 9 (UIS, select IRQ or FIQ) to. Setting bit 4 (RIE) is necessary to get IRQ interupts to fire, but once I get them to fire, they won't stop firing. My IRQ handler will be entered even if there are no characters ready to read from the UART after I've left it for the first time. It won't enter my IRQ_handler the first time until I've send a character. If I read the UART_CR register, I get what I set it to except for UIS is always zero; ie, 0x001700f0 (9600baud, the mystery bit 9 (UIS) is clear, transmit interupts disabled, uart enabled, 8 bits data size, recieve interupts enabled, 1 stop bit, no parity). What is the mystery bit 9? Section 4.6.9 UART_SR (page 4-77): This register address is always [?] equal to "RXD pin set, transmit fifo full, ... , transmit fifo empty, ..." (0x00000180) when my IRQ_handler is entered (except the first time, when the "receive fifo ready" bit is also set (0x00000190)). It would seem impossible that the transmit fifo is both full and empty at the same time, what's going on? Section 4.6.17 IRQ (page 4-86): When my IRQ_handler is entered, this register is always equal to "IRQ interupt generated by RTC" (bit 6 = 0x00000040), and no matter what I do to the UART status, control, and data registers, its still set when my IRQ_handler is ready to leave (ie, after its read one character after waiting for it to become available). I suspect that since I'm not succeeding in clearing the interupt condition, that its being reissued just as soon as I leave the interupt handler. I'm thinking that bit 6 corresponds to the UART, and not the RTC, since my IRQ handler is only entered for the first time when I send a character to the IXP1200 serial port. I have apparently not succeeded (yet) in getting the RTC to generate an interupt. What is the correct layout of the IRQ register? My foreground job (spin the led with an ever-incrementing unsigned char counter in a tight infinite loop) usually doesn't make progress after my IRQ_handler is entered for the first time. But when it does, it has only 2-3 "favorite" values that the led ends up displaying. It seems odd that I've got such a good phase lock on 2-3 out of 256 possible values, but I can't imagine what this information is telling me. -- Perry