DEC Digital Alpha VME 4/224 User Manual page 296

The examine and deposit commands manipulate devices to get access to data
within the system. The default device is physical memory. When another device
is specified, that device becomes the default. A default device is sticky, that is,
all subsequent commands affect that device until another device is explicitly
specified and becomes the new default.
The console uses drivers as the mechanism for referring to various devices. The
console provides drivers for the following Alpha devices:
Device Description
pmem: Physical memory
vmem: Virtual memory
gpr: General-purpose registers
fpr: Floating-point registers
ipr: Internal processor registers
Because Digital Alpha VME 4 is treating address space as a device, the address
argument of an OpenVMS console command becomes a byte offset within a device
in a Digital Alpha VME 4 console command.
For example, pmem:0 refers to the location in physical memory at offset zero,
that is, physical address 0. If no device name is supplied, the offset applies to the
last device referenced (pmem by default). However, in the remaining discussions,
the terms address and offset are used synonymously.
The examine and deposit commands act on a physical address. You can specify
the actual address or use the following symbols to point to the address:
Symbols Description
+ Next address
* Current address
- Previous address
These symbols work because the console keeps track of the last referenced
address. If you issue an examine or a deposit command without an address, the
console firmware uses the next address. The console computes the next address
as the last referenced address plus the current data size.
The options for specifying the size of the accessed data are analogous to those
used for OpenVMS qualifiers, that is, options -b, -w, -l, and -q indicate byte,
word, longword, and quadword, respectively.
12–8 Console Primer