National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, Lahore Campus

Course Name: Computer Organization and

Assembly Language Course Code: EE213
Program: BS(Computer Science) Semester: Spring 2018
Duration: 3 hours Total Marks: 80
Paper Date: 28-5-2018 Weight 45%
Section: ALL Page(s): 10
Exam Type: FINAL EXAM

Student : Name:_____________________________ Roll No.________________ Section:_______

Instruction/Notes: 1. Exam is Open book, Open notes.

2. Properly comment your code.
3. Write your answer in the space provided. You can take extra sheets BUT they
WONT BE ATTACHED WITH THE QUESTION PAPER OR MARKED.
4. No need to copy code from book. If you need any code/part of code, just
mention the line numbers and page no.

Question1. [2x10 Marks] Tick the correct answer. No cutting/over-writing. Cutting and over-writing will give you
zero marks. Any answer not clear will also give you zero marks.

i. What will be the value of overflow flag after the following arithmetic statements?
mov ax, 0xD18A
sub ax, 0xFFFF
a. 0
b. 1

ii. While calculating the physical address by adding segment and effective addresses, a 21-bit result (or a
carry-out) would mean which of the following while the logical address was only of 16-bit?
a. There is a segment wraparound but no memory wraparound
b. There is a memory wraparound but no segment wraparound
c. There is a memory and a segment wraparound
d. There is no wraparound at all

iii. Which of the following will result in a syntax error?

a. mov ax, [cs:si]
b. mov ax, [cs:di]
c. mov ax, [cs:sp]
d. mov ax, [cs:bx]

iv. Which of the following is a true statement about Far jump?

a. Far jump has a relative address of 20-bits
b. Far jump has a relative address of 16-bits
c. Far jump is an intra-segment jump
d. Far jump is an absolute jump and not position relative

v. Ascii values of all the lower case letters have a difference of 0x20 with the ascii of their respective upper
case letter. For example ascii of small ‘a’ is 0x61 and capital ‘A’ is 0x41. Which of the following codes is
converting lower case ascii value to upper case?

Department of Computer Science Page 1 of 10

 a. mov al, 'a'
and al, 11011111b
b. mov al, 'a'
or al, 11111110b
c. mov al, 'a'
xor al, 11001111b
d. none of the above

vi. The programmable interrupt controller is required to:

a. handle one interrupt request
b. Handle one or more interrupt requests at a time
c. handle one or more interrupt requests with a delay
d. handle no interrupt request

vii. Which of the following is not a true statement about multi-tasking?

a. The EOI signal that timer sends cannot be removed
b. After all 32 tasks are created task 0 will always get twice as much time as any other task
c. The line number parameter is necessary for my task to execute properly
d. Timer does not know about total tasks in the list

viii. Lds si, [bp-2] will load the following values in registers:
a. si will contain [bp+2] and DS will have value of [bp]
b. si will contain [bp-2] and DS will have value of [bp-4]
c. si will contain [bp+2] and DS will have value of [bp-2]
d. si will contain [bp-2] and DS will have value of [bp]

ix. Which of the following statement has the same effect as these two valid instructions?
dec cx
jnz l3
a. rep stosb
b. retf
c. loop l3
d. iret

x. Which interrupt is generated as a result of divide overflow error?

a. Int 0
b. Int 1
c. Int 2
d. Int 3

Question2. [20 Marks] Write an assembly program to find the minimum length of a string in an array of 20 strings
given in DS. All strings are null terminated. The program places the minimum length found in dx register. You have
to do this question using string instructions only but you cannot use cmpsb or cmpsw.
For example:
arraystr: db 'hello',0,'class room',0, 'is',0,'language',0
For this array dx will have value 2 at the end of program.

Department of Computer Science Page 2 of 10

[org 0x0100]

mov al, 0
push ds
pop es

mov di, arraystr

mov cx, 0xffff
mov dx, 0xffff
mov si, 21 ;size is 20 strings

l1:
dec si
cmp si, 0
je exit

mov bx, cx
repne scasb
sub bx, cx
dec bx
cmp bx, dx
jae l1
mov dx, bx
jmp l1
exit:

mov ax, 0x4c00

int 21h
arraystr: db 'hello',0,'class room',0, 'is',0,'language',0

Department of Computer Science Page 3 of 10

Question3. [20 Marks] In this question, you will write the keyboard and timer interrupt service routines to enable
a simple game. The game uses a 1D board with six slots on the screen. These slots are numbered 0, 1, 2, …5 and
occupy the six left-most cells of the top line of the screen. Therefore, slot 0 is at 0xB800:0, slot 1 is at 0xB800:2,
slot 2 is at 0xB800:4, and so on. The game is played between two players, represented by symbols X and Y, who
take alternate turns. Player 1 always goes first. You may assume that, initially, the board contains empty spaces.

The program at all times keeps track of a current_slot_number (between 0 and 5) to know which slot is currently
selected.

The keyboard ISR enables the following functionality:

 If the current player (Player 1 or Player 2) presses the L key the current_slot_number is decremented by 1,
and if he presses the R key the current_slot_number is incremented by 1. However, the
current_slot_number is never allowed to go below 0 or above 5.
 If it is Player 1’s turn and he presses enter, his symbol X is printed at the current slot (stored in
current_slot_number) on the screen, and the turn switches to Player 2. If the current slot already contains
a symbol it is simply overwritten.
 If it is Player 2’s turn and he presses enter, his symbol Y is printed at the current slot (stored in
current_slot_number) on the screen, and the turn switches to Player 1. If the current slot already contains
a symbol it is simply overwritten.
 At the end of the ISR send EOI and IRET.

Note: the Scan Codes of L and R keys are: 0x46 and 0x33 respectively.

The Timer ISR performs the following task:

 Check if any three consecutive slots on the board contain the same symbol (i.e. either all three are X or all
three are Y). If yes, print the winner and terminate the program. In this case, it should print either ‘Player 1
wins’ or ‘Player 2 wins’.
 If no three consecutive slots on the board contain the same symbol, simply chain to the original timer ISR.
Assume that the IP and CS of the original timer ISR are already stored at oldISR and oldISR+2 in your
program respectively.

You are only required to write the timer and keyboard ISRs, and declare the necessary variables in your program.
You do not need to write the code to hook the interrupts or create TSR etc. We will not mark any redundant code.

Turn: dw 1
Position: dw 0xb800
Name: db ‘player’
Win: db ‘wins’

Department of Computer Science Page 4 of 10

Department of Computer Science Page 5 of 10
Department of Computer Science Page 6 of 10
Question4. [10+ 10 Marks] Consider elaborate multitasking example 10.2 for the following two questions.
Remember these questions are ‘independent’ of each other.

Part A) The current scheduling algorithm implemented in example 10.2 executes each process for a fixed period of
time, suspends it and then starts next process in the list. Your task is to change the scheduling algorithm to
“priority based scheduling”. Whenever a task is created it is assigned a priority number between 1 and 4 (4
meaning highest priority). The scheduler works such that it allows every next task to run for thrice as much timer
ticks as its priority. So for example, if a task has priority 4, the scheduler allows it to run for 4x3=12 timer ticks.
When the task has run for its assigned number of timer ticks the scheduler suspends the task (just like in example
10.2) and moves on to the next task. The scheduler keeps doing this for all tasks infinitely.
For task 0, its execution time is 1 timer tick only and has no priority.
For this part you can assume that a function “generate_random_priority” is already defined and given to you
which returns a priority number in ax register.
Note: Do not copy the whole multitasking code. This will earn you zero marks. Just modify the changes required in
the code. Your code should be well-commented and it should explain the changes made to the code.

Tickcount: dw 0

In initpcb:
After line 118:

Call generate_random_priority
Mov cl, 3
Mul cl
Mov [pcb+bx+30], ax

In Timer:
Push ds
Push bx
Push cx
Pop ds

Mov bx, [current]

Cmp bx, 0
Je skip1

Inc word[tickcount]
Shl bx, 5
Push ax
Mov ax, [tickcount]
Cmp ax, [pcb+bx+30]
Je skip2

Department of Computer Science Page 7 of 10

Mov al, 0x20
Out 0x20, al
Pop ax
Pop bx
Pop ds
Iret

Skip2:
pop ax
Skip1:

mov word [tickcount], 0

Shl bx, 5
Continue from line 140 till end

Department of Computer Science Page 8 of 10

Part B) i) In example 10.2 whenever a new task is created its PCB is inserted at head of list i.e. after PCB 0. Change
the insertion process in the code such that whenever initpcb wants to insert a new pcb in the list, it calls another
sub-routine “insert_after”. This sub-routine takes as parameter a pcb number and inserts the new pcb created
after this pcb. So for example initpcb has created a pcb number 4. It calls insert_after and passes it as parameter
pcb number 2. The sub-routine insert_after will insert pcb number 4 after pcb number 2 in the list. Note that
parameter passed is via stack and is a valid pcb number already in the list. Make appropriate changes to the links
connecting pcbs. All pcbs and tasks are created sequentially just like in book.
Do not copy code from book. Write complete insert_after subroutine and mention clearly from where it will be
called from initpcb.

After line 118 in initpcb

Push ax ;suppose ax has the pcb number after which to insert
Call insert_after
(omit line 119 to 122)

Insert_after:
Push bp
Mov bp, sp
Push a
Mov si, [bp+4] ;the pcb number
Shl si, 5
Mov di, [pcb+si+28] ;next of that pcb
Mov ax, [nextpcb] ;the new inserted
Mov [pcb+si+28], ax ;setting it as next
Mov si, [nextpcb]
Shl si, 5
Mov [pcb+si+28], di ;newpcb’s next is now set

Pop a
Pop bp
Ret 2

Department of Computer Science Page 9 of 10

Part B) ii) The tasks in example 10.2 run for an infinite number of time. Suppose that our scheduler wants to
forcefully end a task by calling a sub-routine “delete_next_pcb”. This sub-routine takes as parameter a task/pcb
number and removes the next of that pcb from the list. So for example, if delete_next_pcb is passed as parameter
pcb 3, it removes the pcb number 2 (the next of pcb 3) from list and makes necessary adjustments to the links to
update the list. You only need to write the sub-routine. The parameter is passed via stack.

Delete_next_pcb:

Push bp
Mov bp, sp
Push a

Mov si, [bp+4]

Shl si, 5
Mov di, [pcb+si+28] ;the next of pcb passed as parameter
Cmp di, 0
Je exit
Shl di, 5
Mov ax, [pcb+di+28] ;the next of pcb to be deleted

Mov [pcb+si+28], ax ;updating links

Exit:
Pop bp
Pop a
Ret 2

 GOOD LUCK! 

Department of Computer Science Page 10 of 10