The 6526/8520 Complex Interface Adapter (CIA) was an integrated circuit made by MOS Technology. It served as a I/O port controller for the 6502 family of microprocessors, providing for parallel and serial I/O capabilities as well as timers and a Time-of-Day (TOD) clock. The device's most prominent use was in the Commodore 64, Commodore 128(D), and Amiga home computers, each of which included two CIA chips.

Parallel I/O

The CIA had two 8-bit bidirectional parallel I/O ports. Each port had a corresponding Data Direction Register, which allowed each data line to be individually set to input or output mode. A read of these ports always returned the status of the individual lines, regardless of the data direction that had been set.

Serial I/O

An internal bidirectional 8-bit shift register enabled the CIA to handle serial I/O. The chip could accept serial input clocked from an external source, and could send serial output clocked with one of the built-in programmable timers. An interrupt was generated whenever an 8-bit serial transfer had completed. It was possible to implement a simple "network" by connecting the shift register and clock outputs of several computers together.

Handshaking

Two dedicated control lines (/FLAG and /PC) were implemented to allow coordination between multiple CIA chips. These lines, along with 8 of the 16 available parallel port data lines, made it possible to use the CIA as a simple, Centronics-compatible line driver.

Interval timers

Two programmable interval timers were available, each with sub-microsecond precision. Each timer consisted of a 16-bit read-only presettable down counter and a corresponding 16-bit write-only latch. Whenever a timer was started, the timer's latch was automatically copied into its counter, and the counter would then decrement with each clock cycle until underflow, at which an interrupt would be generated.

The timer could run in either "one-shot" mode, halting after the first interrupt, or "continuous" mode, reloading the latch value again and starting the timer cycle anew. In addition to generating interrupts, the timer output could also be gated to the second I/O port.

As configured in the Commodore 64 and Commodore 128, the CIA's timing was controlled by the phase two system clock, nominally one MHz. This meant that the timers decremented at approximately one microsecond intervals, the exact time period being determined by whether the system used the NTSC or PAL video standard. In the C-128, clock stretching was employed so the CIA's timing was unaffected by whether the system was running in SLOW or FAST mode.

It was possible to generate relatively long timing intervals by programming timer B to count timer A underflows. If both timers were loaded with the maximum interval value of 65,535, a timing interval of one hour, 11 minutes, 34 seconds would result.

Time-of-Day (TOD) Clock

A real-time clock is incorporated in the CIA, providing a timekeeping device more conducive to human needs than the microsecond precision of the interval timers. The TOD clock consists of four read/write registers: hours (with bit 7 acting as the AM/PM flag), minutes, seconds and tenths of a second. All registers read out in BCD format, thus simplifying the encoding/decoding process.

Reading from the registers will always return the time of day. In order to avoid a carry error while fetching the time, reading the hours register will immediately halt register updating, with no effect on internal timekeeping accuracy. Once the tenths register has been read, updating will resume. It is possible to read any register other than the hours register "on the fly," making the use of a running TOD clock as a timer a practical application. If the hours register is read, however, it is essential to subsequently read the tenths register. Otherwise, all TOD registers will remain "frozen."

Setting the time involves writing the appropriate BCD values into the registers. A write access to the hours register will completely halt the clock. The clock will not start again until a value has been written into the tenths register. Owing to the order in which the registers appear in the system's memory map, a simple loop is all that is required to write the registers in the correct order. It should be noted that it is permissible to write to only the tenths register to "nudge" the clock into action, in which following a hardware reset, the clock will start at 1:00:00.0.

In addition to its timekeeping features, the TOD can be configured to act as an alarm clock, by arranging for it to generate an interrupt request at any desired time. Due to a bug in many 6526s (see also errata below), the alarm IRQ would not always occur when the seconds component of the alarm time is exactly zero. The workaround is to set the alarm's tenths value to 0.1 seconds.

The TOD clock's internal circuitry is designed to be driven by an AC input signal, either 50 or 60 Hz, as would be derived from the mains power source, resulting in a stable timekeeper with little long-term drift. The ability to work with both power line frequencies allowed a single version of the 6526 to be used in computers using either the NTSC or PAL video standards.

The 8520 revision of the CIA, used in the Amiga, modified the time-of-day clock to be a 24-bit binary counter, replacing the BCD format of the 6526. Other behavior was similar, however.

Versions

The CIA was available in 1 MHz (6526) and 2 MHz (6526A) versions. The form factor was a JEDEC-standard 40-pin ceramic or plastic DIP. The 8520 CIA, with its modified time-of-day clock, was used in the Amiga computers.

Commodore made a reduced (just 4 registers) CIA for the 1571CR called 5710.

Errata

In addition to the aforementioned alarm clock interrupt bug, many CIAs exhibited a defect in which the part would fail to generate a timer B hardware interrupt if the interrupt control register (ICR) was read one or two clock cycles before the time when the interrupt should have actually occurred. This defect, as well as logic errors in the kernel, caused frequent pseudo-RS-232 errors in the Commodore 64 and Commodore 128 computers when running at higher baud rates.

External links

• MOS 6526 CIA datasheet (GIF format, zipped)
• MOS 6526 CIA datasheet (PDF format)