Interrupts in 65xx Processors - Interrupt Anomalies

Interrupt Anomalies

In the NMOS 6502 and derivatives (e.g., 6510), the simultaneous assertion of a hardware interrupt line and execution of BRK was not accounted for in the design—the BRK instruction will be ignored in such a case. Also, the status of the decimal mode flag in the processor status register is unchanged following an interrupt of any kind. This behavior can potentially result in a difficult to locate bug in the interrupt handler if decimal mode happens to be enabled at the time of an interrupt. These anomalies were corrected in all CMOS versions of the processor.