
232
INTERRUPTS
The RTC includes three separate fully automatic sources of interrupts to the processor. The alarm
interrupt may be programmed to occur at rates from one-per-second to one-a-day. The periodic
interrupt may be selected for rates from half-a-second to 122.070 us.
The update ended interrupt
may be used to indicate to the program
that an update cycle is completed. Each of these
independent interrupts are described in greater detail in other sections.
The processor program selects which interrupts, if any, it wishes to receive by writing a "1" to the
appropriate enable bits in Register B. A "0" in an enable bit prohibits the IRQB port from being
asserted due to that interrupt cause. When an interrupt event occurs a flag bit is set to a "1" in
Register C. Each of the three interrupt sources have separate flag bits in Register C, which are set
independent of the state of the corresponding enable bits in Register B. The flag bits may be used
with or without enabling the corresponding enable bits. The flag bits in Register C are cleared (record
of the interrupt event is erased) when Register C is read. Double latching is included in Register C
to ensure the bits that are set are stable throughout the read cycle. All bits which are high when
read by the program are cleared,
and new interrupts are held
until after the read cycle.
If an
interrupt flag is
already set when the interrupt becomes enabled, the IRQB port is immediately
activated, though the interrupt initiating the event may have occurred much earlier.
When an interrupt flag bit is set and the corresponding interrupt-enable bit is also set, the IRQB port
is driven low. IRQB is asserted as long as at least one of the three interrupt sources has its flag and
enable bits both set. The IRQF bit in Register C is a "1" whenever the IRQB port is being driven low.
FREQUENCY DIVIDER
The RTC has 22 binary divider stages following the clock input. The output of the divider is a 1 Hz
signal to the update-cycle logic. The divider is controlled by the three divider bits (DV3-DV0)
in
Register A. As shown in Table 68 the divider control bits can select the operating mode, or be used
to hold the divider chain reset which allows precision setting of the time. When the divider chain is
changed from reset to the operating mode, the first update cycle is one-half second later.
PERIODIC INTERRUPT SELECTION
The periodic interrupt allows the IRQB port to be triggered from once every 500 ms to once every
122.07 us. As Table 69 shows, the periodic interrupt is selected with the RS0-RS3 bits in Register A.
The periodic interrupt is enabled with the PIE bit in Register B.