11/3/12 Helm PCB - 8088 Computer

1/9 helmpcb.com/electronics/8088-computer
Home Electronics Software Miscellaneous Contact
8088 Computer
Published on 29 November, 2010
Note
Unfortunately, this article is not complete and has been so for several years. However, I hope you can still
get some use out of whats there.
The project
This project aims to develop an Intel 8088 based single board computer (SBC) and to add various different
peripherals to it.
The project started out when someone was selling some 8088 processors on eBay, and so just out of
interest, I bought them and then started to search online to see what I could do with them. From these
searches, I found out a book called Build your own Computer based on the 8088 by Walter Fuller
(ISBN 0827370695). This book got me started, but I also found another book: The 8088 Project Book by
Robert Grossblatt (ISBN 0830631712). In my opinion, this second book is better because the author explains
a lot more about whats going on whereas the first book was meant as a lab supplement for a college course,
and so doesnt go in depth. Regardless, theyre both good books and probably worth purchasing if you plan on
doing this project yourself.
When I set out to make this SBC the aim I had in mind was to build a basic SBC but have the functionality to
expand it by plugging other boards into it. Why would I want to build something using an old 8088 instead of
using some shiny new microcontrollers? Well, Ive found that designing and building a microprocessor system
is quite different from building a microcontroller based circuit. This is because with a microprocessor you have
complete access to the chips address, data and control lines and you add the systems RAM, ROM and I/O
yourself, meaning you have complete control on the specifications of your system, whereas with a
microcontroller, youre pretty much limited to what youve bought. Also, its fun!
Where to buy the components?
The Intel 8088 was first released on 1
st
July 1979, so as you can see, its a pretty old chip, and one of my
earlier worries was whether Id still be able to buy the 8088 and its support chips. Well, to my surprise, I
found that I could get most of the support chips from Farnell, and I also found that Intersil Semiconductor are
still making and selling the 8088 (and also the 8086) and its support chips, so I dont think theres any
worries there.
General outline
The very basic microprocessor circuit is going to consist of the following: clock, processor, ROM, RAM and the
ability to read and write from I/O and so thats what I aimed for first.
First things first the clock.
Clock circuit
All microprocessors need a clock source in order to run and for the 8088 (and related processors), this is
provided by the 8284 clock chip. This chip supplies the 8088 with a compatible clock signal (the 8088 needs
its clock to have a 33% duty cycle) and also supplies it with 2 of its control lines RESET and READY. The
RESET signal does what it says on the tin and resets the 8088. This line can also be used by other
peripherals on the computer so that they reset when the 8088 resets. The READY line is useful if you have
some slow I/O interfacing to the processor. If your I/O needs to some extra time to deal with the processors
request, it can take the READY line low. The processor will the wait for READY to go high again before
resuming. Instead of connecting your peripheral to the 8088s READY line directly, the 8284 provides 2 READY
lines for your I/O (RDY1 and RDY2) which are synchronised the the system clock, and so youd connect your
I/O READY signal to one of them. Pins AEN1, AEN2 and ASYNC control the operation of RDY1 and RDY2.
However, since the 8088s peripheral chips are designed to work with it, they dont need READY signals, so
AEN1 and AEN2 are tied low and ASYNC is left floating.
The 8284 can take its clock source from either a crystal, or an oscillator, and you tell it which one via the F/C
pin. If using an oscillator, the output of the oscillator is connected to EFI and F/C is tied high. If youre using
crystal (like me), then the crystal is connected across X1 and X2 and F/C is tied low. The oscillator is divided
11/3/12 Helm PCB - 8088 Computer
2/9 helmpcb.com/electronics/8088-computer
crystal (like me), then the crystal is connected across X1 and X2 and F/C is tied low. The oscillator is divided
by 3 and given a 33% duty cycle and then output on CLK. Because the 8088 I have runs at 5MHz, I have used
a 15MHz crystal.
The 8284 also provides a clock for peripheral devices on PCLK. This clock is at half the frequency of CLK and
has a 50% duty cycle. The 8284 also provides a buffered output of the full oscillator frequency on the OSC
pin.
The RES pin is an active low signal. Bringing this pin low tells the 8284 to output a reset signal. Ive used a
simple resistor and capacitor circuit to hold the system in reset for a short while after you switch on the
power, to give time for the power supply and anything else in the circuit to stabilise. When the power is first
switched on, the capacitor is discharged and so RES = 0V and the system is held in reset until the capacitor
charges up and then the system is allowed to run. In my circuit, Ive used a 10k resistor and 4.7uF capacitor,
giving a power-on-reset time of 47us. The button then allows you to reset the system at any time.
The circuit diagram is shown below:
Testing the clock circuit
Testing the 8284 circuit is straightforward. With no chip and the power on, first check that the reset circuit
works as expected. When the power is turned on, the output of the reset circuit should rise to 5V then stay
there. Pressing the reset button should bring it down to 0V and when the button is released, the output
should go back to 5V.
Once thats done, plug in the chip and apply power then take a scope and check out the output pins. The
RESET line should normally be low until the button is pressed. It should then remain high until the button is
released, where it goes back low. The following photo shows my scope output of the RESET and RES lines
(NOTE: Im using 10x probes which is why the scope says 0.5V/div 10*0.5=5 and so in actual fact its
5V/div)
Next check the PCLK and CLK outputs. The CLK output should be a 5MHz square wave with 33% duty cycle,
and the PCLK output should be a 2.5MHz square wave with a 50% duty cycle. The following photo shows my
scope output of CLK and PCLK:
11/3/12 Helm PCB - 8088 Computer
3/9 helmpcb.com/electronics/8088-computer
That wraps it up for the 8284 the CLK, RESET and READY lines will be connected to the 8088 in the next
step.
Adding the 8088 Processor
Now that the clock circuit is up and running, we need to prepare the 8088 for the next step, which is adding
memory. This stage involves connecting the 8088 to the power supply and the 8284, and hard wiring some of
its inputs.
The 8284s READY, RESET and CLK outputs should go to the 8088s READY, RESET and CLK inputs. Next, the
following pins should be tied to ground:
NMI: Non-maskable interrupt. Taking this pin high will force the 8088 to call interrupt number 2
(interrupts will be handled later). The reason why this is called a non-maskable interrupt is because
unlike all the other interrupts on the 8088, you cant disable this one. For now, this pin is tied low until
we play around with interrupts.
INTR: Interrupt request. This pin is taken high if a device wants to trigger a particular interrupt on the
8088. For now, this is tied low.
TEST: This pin is used as a debug tool. Basically, the 8088 has a command called WAIT. When the 8088
runs this command, it checks the status of TEST. If TEST is high, then the 8088 will wait and do nothing
else (apart from respond to interrupts) until TEST goes low. In effect, TEST and WAIT can be used to add
breakpoints in your code you can pause execution at a particular point, then maybe have a snoop
around the circuitry and see that everything is working as expected.
HOLD: This pin is used if another part of the circuit needs to take control over the address and data
buses and control lines. If HOLD is taken high, the 8088 tristates its address, data and control lines so
that another device can use them. For this SBC, I dont plan to use this, so its tied low.
GND1, GND2: The 8088 has two ground lines, so be sure to wire them both.
The following 2 pins are tied high:
MN/MX: Minimum/Maximum mode. The 8088 is designed to operate as a standalone processor or as one
of a multiprocessing team. If MN/MX is tied high, the 8088 operates in minimum mode, where its got
the whole computer to itself. If MN/MX is pulled low, the 8088 can chum up with other processors and
share the workload. MN/MX changes how some of the control lines behave. This SBC is going to have
just one processor and anyway, its simpler to work in minimum mode, so MN/MX is tied high.
Vcc: Without power, the 8088 is just a cold, useless piece of silicon.
Below is a circuit diagram of the setup so far:
11/3/12 Helm PCB - 8088 Computer
4/9 helmpcb.com/electronics/8088-computer
Theres nothing much to test here, apart from checking your wiring and making sure the correct voltage levels
and signals are present on the pins connected.
Memory
As mentioned previously, one of the things which makes microprocessors so flexible is that you have
complete control over how much memory you add and how its mapped. You can have as little or as much as
you want (within limit of course) and arrange it how you see fit. Memory in the 8088 circuit will contain code,
data, the stack and the 8088s interrupt table. The memory is compromised of ROM and RAM. We need the
RAM because we need space to store data and code which we can change while the processor is running. ROM
is necessary because when the 8088 starts up, it has to have something to run, and so this is preprogrammed
into ROM.
The 8088 has 20 address lines, which means it can address a whopping 1MB (!) of memory from 00000 to
FFFFF. When the 8088 first powers up, it starts executing code from address FFFF0. This means there are 16
bytes of space to place our boot code. This is rather small, so what usually happens is that at FFFF0, we tell
the 8088 to jump to somewhere lower down in memory where weve got a bit more breathing room.
Because well be using two memory chips, we need some way to disable one chip and enable the other. We
cant have them both working at the same time imagine whatd happen if the 8088 came to read from
memory and both RAM and ROM dumped their outputs at the same time! Choosing which chip to enable is
called address decoding. The memory configuration Ive used is the same as the one described in Fullers
book. This method is much simpler than the one used by Grossblatt because only a single NOT gate is
needed to decode the address.
This configuration places 32K of RAM at the bottom of the address space (00000 07FFF) and 32K of ROM
directly above it (08000 0FFFF).
Lets have a look at the addresses in binary:
0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000 0000 0000 0000 0001
0000 0000 0000 0000 0010
. RAM
.
0000 0111 1111 1111 1101
0000 0111 1111 1111 1110
11/3/12 Helm PCB - 8088 Computer
5/9 helmpcb.com/electronics/8088-computer
0000 0111 1111 1111 1110
0000 0111 1111 1111 1111
-
0000 1000 0000 0000 0000
0000 1000 0000 0000 0001
0000 1000 0000 0000 0010
. ROM
.
0000 1111 1111 1111 1101
0000 1111 1111 1111 1110
0000 1111 1111 1111 1111
As we can see from this table, the only difference between a ROM address and a RAM address is address bit
15 its 1 when its ROM and 0 when its RAM. This makes decoding very simple, because A15 can be
connected directly to the RAMs CS pin and connected to the ROMs CS pin via one NOT gate.
The RAM and ROM chips themselves are relatively simple to work with. Both have a set of address and data
lines which will connect to the address and data buses respectively. Both chips have a CS and RD pin. The CS
pin is an active low signal. If CS is high, the chip is disabled and its outputs are tristated. When CS is low,
the chip is enabled. RD is also an active low signal. If RD is taken low, the chip places the data present at
the address specified. The RAM has an extra control pin which the 8088 will use: WR. As you can probably
guess, this is an active low signal and used when you want to write a byte to RAM.
Decoding the address, data and control lines
Youll find that the 8088 doesnt have separate address and data pins. In fact, the 8 data pins are
multiplexed with the lower 8 address pins, and so there needs to be a way to separate the data from the
address and indeed there is. When the 8088 places the address on the pins, it takes ALE high. We can use
ALE to trigger a latch, which will then output the address and hold it there until a new address is present. A
good candidate for this is the 74373 Octal latch. In this circuit the address bus is 15 bits wide, so we need 2
octal latches, and one of the inputs will be left unused.
Just as we can latch the address bus, the 8088 provides us with 2 output to tell us it wants to read or write
data. These are DEN and DT/R. DEN is an active low signal indicating that the 8088 wants to manipulate data
and DT/R tells us what it wants to do with the data. If DT/R is high, the 8088 is writing data and if its low,
its reading data. A good chip to use for this case is the 74245 octal bus transceiver.
We can connect DEN to the chips E pin and the DT/R pin can go straight to the transceivers DIR pin. Now,
when the 8088 want to read data, it places a low on DEN which enabled the 245 and also on DT/R, so data
goes from B to A. If its writing data, DEN goes low again and DT/R goes high so data goes from A to B. It
would therefore make sense for us to connect the A side to the 8088 and the B side to the rest of the circuit.
The circuit diagram of the address latches and data transceiver is shown below.
The OC pins for the 373s are tied low so that theyre outputs are always enabled.
11/3/12 Helm PCB - 8088 Computer
6/9 helmpcb.com/electronics/8088-computer
The last bit of decoding to do is the 8088s control lines. There are three we need to deal with: IO/M, RD and
WR. IO/M tells us if the 8088 is talking to I/O or memory. If its a high then its I/O and if its low its
memory. RD and WR are active low outputs which tell us if the 8088 want so read or write data. Basically, we
want to decode these to get IORD, IOWR, MEMRD and MEMWR. These should all be active low signals,
because all the peripheral and memory chips need and active low signal to enable them.
IO/M RD WR
0 0 1 MEMRD
0 1 0 MEMWR
1 0 1 IORD
1 1 0 IOWR
In this circuit, the 74138 1-of-8 decoder is used. With RD connected to A, WR to B and IO/M to C, we get the
following outputs from the 138:
MEMRD O2
MEMWR O1
IORD O6
IOWR O5
MEMRD and MEMWR will be connected to the RAM and ROM RD and WR pins, respectively and likewise, IORD
and IOWR will be connected to the RD and WR pins on I/O devices.
The following circuit diagram shows the 8088 with all its control lines decoded and everything ready and
waiting for the memory:
Testing
As with before, there isnt really an amazing amount to test ere, apart from checking wiring and voltage
levels. There is one test we can now do though. Now that weve got the 8088 all wired up, we power it up
and scope the output of ALE. Pulses present on the ALE pin indicate that the 8088 has successfully powered
up and is trying to read the code stored in address FFFF0. If you can see those on the scope, then thats a
good sign. The real testing comes when weve installed the memory and written some test code.
11/3/12 Helm PCB - 8088 Computer
7/9 helmpcb.com/electronics/8088-computer
good sign. The real testing comes when weve installed the memory and written some test code.
Now that all that looks like its working, its time to add ROM and RAM. For RAM, I have used a Winbond
W24257A RAM chip, which is a 32Kx8. From ROM, I decided to use an Atmel AT28C256 32Kx8 EEPROM chip
because I figured itd be quicker to modify my programs, because unlike a UV Erasable EPROM, I dont need to
wait 15 minutes to erase the chip every time I want to modify my program.
For both chips, the address and data lines connect to the corresponding pins on the address and data latches.
The MEMR signal goes to the chips OE pins and the MEMW goes to the RAMs WE, because the ROM is read
only. Finally, the ROMs CS pin is connected to the output of the inverter in the above circuit diagram, while
the RAMs CS pin connects to the input of that inverter (i.e. Directly to A15). Below is the circuit diagram of
the setup.
Writing software for the computer
The SBC is now at the stage where we can write software for it to test out its functionality. Because the
processor is an Intel 8088, there are a lot of resources on the web that describe x86 assembly language.
Robert Grossblatts book, The 8088 Project Book, which I recommended at the start has a chapter dedicated
to 8088 assembly and is a good start. I also found 8086/8088/80286 Assembly Language by Leo J Scanlon
(0132469197) on eBay and it has been a good reference.
In order to write software for the SBC, were going to need an x86 assembler that is capable of simply
assembling the code and giving us a raw binary file. In Walter Fullers book, he suggests Borlands Turbo
assembler, TASM, and as I have a copy, I decided to use that. Now TASM is really old and in fact, I dont
think Borland support it any more, so Ive uploaded my copy of TASM and TLINK so anyone interested in the
11/3/12 Helm PCB - 8088 Computer
8/9 helmpcb.com/electronics/8088-computer
think Borland support it any more, so Ive uploaded my copy of TASM and TLINK so anyone interested in the
project can write their own software.
The first piece of software I wrote for the 8088 was a RAM testing program. The program ran through each
cell in RAM, wrote a unique value to it and then went back and read it again to check all was working.
6 Responses to 8088 Computer
1. Pavel says:
1 February, 2011 at 9:48 pm
marvellous page. Im dreaming of building
an 8086 or 80186 computer that is different
from PC XT architecture. Its my hobby to
collect info about everything connected with
retro comps.
Reply
2. Jose says:
16 February, 2011 at 3:04 pm
I would like to thank you for the work being done here and the reference to great books which brought so
much clear understanding to the 8088 and architecture. I built a similar circuit. My final desiring goal is
to develope in the circuit an 8-bit ISA bus so that I can add the original IBM monitor adapter and write
the INT 10H ISR. I have browsed the web and havent found hardware details as clear as the Grossblatt
book.
Reply
Amr Bekhit says:
16 February, 2011 at 5:16 pm
Sounds very cool when you finish your project, let me know! I agree, Robert Grossblatts book is
great.
Reply
3. Sean says:
27 March, 2012 at 12:02 am
very nice page sir
i am actually doing this as hobby and bought the books they are really good
i am doing a more complex design more memory and fully buffered
i am not using DMA chip but i am using the logic design in the book also its in minimum mode it has two
8259
Reply
4. Rowan Crowe says:
29 May, 2012 at 2:55 pm
Great article, even if unfinished. Ive recently purchased several Z80 (10MHz) and 80C186XL (25MHz)
CPUs, with a view to first making a simple SBC, then something more complex with multiple processors,
memory mapping and protection. I think with 10-15ns static RAM and some 373s for buffering reads over
multiple clock cycles I could have 3 or 4 Z80 CPUs sharing the same memory, at full speed, without any
contention (30 or 40MHz clock, 10MHz per CPU) effectively creating a triple or quad port RAM. Would be
more complicated with the 80186, but Im looking forward to trying.
Ive built a few Z80 SBCs from scratch, but this is the first time Ill be doing it with an X86 proc. Thank
you for the inspiration.
Reply
Amr Bekhit says:
29 May, 2012 at 2:59 pm
Glad you found the article useful, even in its unfinished state. Your project sounds very interesting:
if you decide to publish it online, Id love to hear about it.
Reply
Leave a Reply
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
Name *
Email *
Website
11/3/12 Helm PCB - 8088 Computer
9/9 helmpcb.com/electronics/8088-computer
CAPTCHA Code *
Comment
You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b>
<blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Post Comment
(c)2010 Amr Bekhit