Questions tagged [segmentation]
Segment-based memory addressing and management. Far pointers, allocation, normalisation, etc.
11 questions
-3votes
2answers
392views
How much trouble was it to program segmented memory (8086)? [closed]
50 years ago, segmented memory allowed short instruction words to address high memory (above 64K) by saving the high bits of the memory address in something called the segment register. Then the short ...
11votes
5answers
6kviews
How did 16-bit MS-DOS programs use a large (> 64KB) stack?
The "large" memory model of x86 allowed a program to have multiple code segments and multiple data segment, using far calls to jump across code segments, and far pointers to access data from ...
- 1,372
3votes
0answers
189views
What does OpenWatcom put to the CONST segment? [closed]
According to the documentation of OpenWatcom, CONST and CONST2 are read-only non-executable segments, string literals are put to CONST, and user-defined const global variables are put to CONST2. My ...
- 4,095
25votes
4answers
4kviews
How can a 32-bit x86 CPU start with reset vector 0xFFFFFFF0 even though it starts in 16-bit real mode?
As far as I know, x86 CPUs start up in 16-bit 'real' mode (maybe some don't). The reset vector is 0xFFFFFFF0 (in most CPUs and in this context) In this 16-bit real mode, we can only access 16 bit ...
14votes
1answer
2kviews
What happens when the segment plus offset overflows 20 bits?
What happens if a segment register plus offset overflows the 20-bit address space of the 8086? I assume it wraps around to 00000h, but want to confirm. For example, say DS is F001h and the offset is ...
- 2,339
1vote
1answer
494views
Why doesn't the Intel 8086 CPU use real memory addresses? [duplicate]
The address bus of the Intel 8086 CPU is 20-bits, and when you want to specify a memory address to read from or write to, you would form the memory address using a segment register and an offset ...
- 151
14votes
7answers
5kviews
Does the Intel 8085 CPU use real memory addresses?
The Intel 8086 CPU uses memory segmentation, which means that when, for example, you write the value 123 to the memory address 1001, the memory address 1001 will actually get converted first into ...
- 151
11votes
1answer
2kviews
Which operating systems for 80286 computers allowed a process to use more than 128k data?
Out of all the operating systems for the 80286 processor I found, only two make use of the protected mode's ability to load more than one segment for text and one for data. These are MS-DOS (through ...
- 1,604
56votes
8answers
12kviews
Why didn't the 8086 use linear addressing?
The 8086 used a segmented memory architecture where the linear address was computed from a 16-bit segment number and a 16-bit offset. This greatly complicated things from a programming perspective. ...
- 9,500
3votes
4answers
1kviews
Was there ever a compiler type that was just large enough to contain a memory segment?
From this answer, Hark back to the days of segmented 16-bit architectures for example: an array might be limited to a single segment (so a 16-bit size_t would do) BUT you could have multiple ...
- 3,478
17votes
1answer
7kviews
How to write directly to video memory using "debug.exe" in MS-DOS?
The base address for the video memory in MS-DOS is 0xB8000. I am trying to write to this address using debug.exe, but I am getting an error: 1165:0103 mov [b8000],ax ^ Error
- 501
