WinUAE Debugger - Address Register Watchpoints

[SparkyNZ]

Is it possible to watch for the contents of an address or address range being put into a specific address register?

Say for example, that I have some data that lies within address range $70000-$71000 and I want to add a break point when $70200 is moved into A1. Is this possible with the WinUAE debugger?

Its the actual move of the address into the register that I'm interested in, not the access of the address itself.

[SparkyNZ]

I'll answer my own question: No, it's not possible with the current version of WinUAE.

OK, so I've been doing some digging within the WinUAE source myself and I have found that what I'm interested in are changes in state of regs.regs[ 8 thru 15 ] which are the values of A0-A7. I can put some trigger/breakpoints of my own in to look for what I'm interested in.

[Toni Wilen]

Sorry, forgot to answer.

It can be done if it is acceptable that "register breakpoints" are only checked when CPU does memory accesses. Immediate check would make whole emulation slower which is not acceptable.

I guess something like "if ((register[x] & mask) == value) then break" where x = reg num, mask and value are breakpoint parameters would work?

[SparkyNZ]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

I guess something like "if ((register[x] & mask) == value) then break" where x = reg num, mask and value are breakpoint parameters would work?

Thanks Toni. It all depends on what you're using WinUAE for really. As you say it's not really necessary for 99% of use cases. What you suggested would work well but its probably not worth the effort if there's only 1 person such as myself wanting to do this. No doubt I will have other "nice to have" ideas as I progress through my little project but I don't mind hacking my copy of WinUAE for various debugging needs. Its actually quite fun anyway. I wouldn't have been able to accomplish any of this 20 years ago.