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Banking Pic 16F877

Hi all. I'm having a strange problem here with some debugging. Got an ide that the problem is perhaps relatet to some sort of bank-switching. My qustion is :

I'm in program bank ?. Make a call to a routine in bank1. In here i recieve an INT whitch takes me to some code in programbank 0. In the INT i save PCLATH, then make several call's. When done, i restore PCLATH, then retfie. Now i'm back with the routine in bank 1, but after return it seemes like sometimes i'm not returning to the bank from where the original call was made (this could be any one).

The datasheet states that you need to set PCLATH only on the way OUT - not on return? Is that also true after servicing a INT in a nother bank, containing call's of it's own ? If not - is it "wrong" to have "common routines" like switch-reading which need to be called from different banks - out of bank 0? Or is there some other way round this?

If there's a "simple" problem here, i would really like to know - before spending even more time debugging .

Thanks Niels

Reply to
NDS
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How are you making the call to the routine in bank 1? The PIC midrange reference manual has the following:

call k where k is between 0 and 2047

It doesn't appear that you can call a routine in another bank unless you manually twiddle with the bank select bits and save pclath yourself.

Reply to
Tom

Hi Niels,

some common mistakes and errors are:

  1. PCLATH != PCH
  2. PCLATH will _only_ copyed to PCH on GOTO, CALL or a write operation to PCL. So unnecessary writing to PCLATH can make confusion on other
  3. Remember to the stack depth of the used PIC, i.e. nesting of your code. Bear in mind that the interrupt also need 1 stack level.
  4. Call statement to code that not ends with a return statement.
  5. Jump to a subroutine.
  6. Jump to an adress outside the current subroutine.

HTH Michael

Reply to
Michael Lange

Sorry, i explained myself too bad. I shift the bank with a macro before call :

pbank1 macro banksel PCLATH bcf PCLATH, 4 bsf PCLATH, 3 endm

Like this:

pbank1 call routine ...... ...... return (set correct bank in STATUS right after the call is returned)

If no INT happens in the middle of routine ( i tried killing it) i return OK no matter from where the call was made.. If INT, i _sometimes_ returns OK. AND - it seemes like when it goes wrong it takes me someplace new every time.

And - Michael - i'm not (as i see it) pushing the stack more than 8 adresses even with INT.

Niels

Reply to
NDS

Just found the bug. Just a few thousand lines above where i was looking for it.

cblock 0x20 ... ... ; cblock 0x70 status_temp pclath_temp w_temp ...

cblock 0xA0 ...

Guess what line was accidently commented out. This way, succesfull saving of PCLATH depended on the selected databank before INT.

Niels

Reply to
NDS

Glad to hear you figgered it out. The banking in PICs can be a real P.I.T.A.

NDS wrote:

Reply to
Tom

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