Servicing Personal Computers, 3rd Edition

8 Servicing Personal Computers

whereby interrupts can be disabled under hardware or software control. In such cases that

interrupts are called 'maskable', whereas, where disabling is not possible, they are referred to

an 'non-maskable'. A classic example of the use of an interrupt is the reset button. This not

only causes any operation in progress to cease and zeroes the program counter but also

automatically disables any interrupts.

Microprocessor families

Before we take a more detailed look at some representative microprocessors, it is worth

making some brief mention of the development of the various currently available

microprocessor families ...