Understanding 8259 Master-Slave Configuration
The 8259 Programmable Interrupt Controller (PIC) is a chip used to manage hardware interrupts. A single 8259 PIC can handle up to 8 distinct interrupt requests (IR lines).
When two 8259 PICs are used with the 8086 microprocessor in a master-slave configuration, one PIC acts as the master and the other as the slave. This setup allows for cascading interrupts.
Calculating Total Available Interrupts
The master 8259 PIC has 8 interrupt request lines. The slave 8259 PIC also has 8 interrupt request lines.
In the master-slave configuration, the total number of interrupts is the sum of interrupts handled directly by the master and those handled by the slave.
The calculation is as follows:
$ \text{Total Interrupts} = (\text{Interrupts on Master}) + (\text{Interrupts on Slave}) $ $ \text{Total Interrupts} = 8 + 8 $ $ \text{Total Interrupts} = 16 $
Therefore, with two 8259s in a master-slave configuration, the 8086 microprocessor can handle a total of 16 interrupts.
This corresponds to Option B.
Important Questions from Microprocessors
Register which is used to store values of arithmetic and logical operations is termed:
How many bytes of bit addressable memory is present in 8051 based microcontrollers?
A single instruction to clear the lower four bits of the accumulator in 8085 assembly language is-
In Microprocessor 8085 Address/Data buffer is a/an _______ buffer.
Microprocessor 8085 operates on a clock cycle with ______ duty cycle.
