Real mode, also called real address mode, is an operating mode of 80286 and later x86-

compatible CPUs. Real mode is characterized by a 20 bit segmented memory address

space (giving just over 1 MB of addressable memory) and unlimited direct software
access to all memory and I/O addresses and peripheral hardware. Real mode provides no
support for memory protection, multitasking, or code privilege levels. 80186 CPUs and
earlier, back to the original 8086, have only one operational mode, which is equivalent to
real mode in later chips. All x86 CPUs in the 80286 series and later start in real mode
when reset.

Contents [hide]

• 1 History
• 2 Addressing capacity
• 3 A20 line
• 4 Switching to real mode

• 5 See also

History
The 286 architecture introduced protected mode, allowing for (among other things)
hardware-level memory protection. Using these new features, however, required a new
operating system that was specifically designed for it. Since a primary design
specification of x86 microprocessors is that they be fully backwards compatible with
software written for all x86 chips before them, the 286 chip was made to start in 'real
mode' — that is, in a mode which turned off the new memory protection features, so that
it could run operating systems written for the 8086 and the 80186. To this day, even the
newest x86 CPUs (including x86-64 CPUs) start in real mode at power-on and can run
software written for any previous chip (with a few exceptions due to slight instruction set
differences).

The PC BIOS which IBM introduced operates in real mode, as do the DOS operating
systems (MS-DOS, DR-DOS, etc.). Early versions of Microsoft Windows ran in real
mode, until Windows 386, which ran in protected mode, and the more fully realized
Windows 3.0, which could run in either real or protected mode. Windows 3.0 could
actually run in two "flavours" of protected mode: "standard mode", which ran using
protected mode, and "386-enhanced mode", which is a virtualized version of standard
mode and thus would not run on a 286. Windows 3.1 removed support for real mode, and
it was the first mainstream operating environment which required at least an 80286
processor. Almost all modern x86 operating systems (Unix, Linux, OS/2, Windows 95
and later, etc.) switch the CPU into protected mode at startup. It is worth noting that the
protected mode of the 80286 is considerably more primitive than the improved protected
mode introduced with the 80386; the latter is sometimes called 386 protected mode, and
is the mode most modern x86 operating systems run in.
Addressing capacity
The 8086, 8088, and 80186 have a 20-bit address bus, but the unusual segmented
addressing scheme Intel chose for these processors actually produces effective addresses
which can have 21 significant bits. This scheme shifts a 16-bit segment number left four
bits (making a 20-bit number with four least-significant zeros) before adding to it a 16-bit
address offset; the maximum sum occurs when both the segment and offset are
hexadecimal FFFF, yielding FFFF0h + FFFFh = 10FFEFh. (The small "h" on the end of
each number denotes hexadecimal notation.) On the 8086, 8088, and 80186, the result of
an effective address that overflows 20 bits is that the address "wraps around" to the zero
end of the address range, i.e. it is taken modulo 2^20 (2^20 = 1048576 = 100000h).
However, the 80286 has 24 address bits and computes effective addresses to 24 bits even
in real mode. Therefore, for the segment FFFFh and offset greater than 000Fh, the 80286
would actually make an access into the beginning of the second binary megabyte of
memory, whereas the 80186 and earlier would access an address equal to [offset]-10h ( =
[offset]-16 decimal), which is at the beginning of the first megabyte. (Note that on the
80186 and earlier, the first 1 KB of the address space, starting at address 0, is the
permanent, immovable location of the interrupt vector table.) So the actual amount of
memory addressable by the 80286 and later x86 CPUs in real mode is 1 MB + 64 KB -
16B = 1114095 Bytes.

A20 line
Main article: A20 line

Some programs predating the 80286 were designed to take advantage of the wrap-around
(modulo) memory addressing behavior, so the 80286 presented a problem for backward
compatibility. Forcing the 21st address line (the actual logic signal wire coming out of the
chip) to a logic low, representing a zero, results in a modulo-2^20 effect to match the
earlier processors' address arithmetic, but the 80286 has no internal capability to perform
this function. When IBM used the 80286 in their IBM Personal Computer AT, they
solved this problem by including a software-settable gate to enable or disable (force to
zero) the A20 address line, between the A20 pin on the 80286 and the system bus; this is
known as Gate-A20 (the A20 gate), and it is still implemented in PC chipsets to this day.
Most versions of the HIMEM.SYS extended memory driver for IBM-/MS-DOS famously
displayed upon loading a message that they had installed an "A20 handler", a piece of
software to control Gate-A20 and coordinate it to the needs of programs. Obviously, in
protected mode the A20 line needs to be enabled, or else physical addressing errors will
occur, likely leading to a system crash.

Switching to real mode

Intel introduced protected mode into the x86 family with the intention that operating
systems which used it would run entirely in the new mode and that all programs running
under a protected mode operating system would run in protected mode as well. Because
of the substantial differences between real mode and even the rather limited 286
protected mode, programs written for real mode cannot run in protected mode without
being rewritten. Therefore, with a wide base of existing real mode applications which
users depended on, abandoning real mode posed problems for the industry, and
programmers sought a way to switch between the modes at will. However, Intel,
consistent with their intentions for the processor's usage, provided an easy way to switch
into protected mode on the 80286 but no easy way to switch back to real mode. Before
the 386 the only way to switch from protected mode back to real mode was to reset the
processor; after a reset it always starts up in real mode to be compatible with earlier x86
CPUs back to the 8086. Resetting the processor does not clear the system's RAM, so this,
while awkward and inefficient, is actually feasible. From protected mode, the processor's
state is saved in memory, then the processor is reset, restarts in real mode, and executes
some real mode code to restore the saved state from memory. It can then run other real
mode code until the program is ready to switch back to protected mode. The switch to
real mode is costly in terms of time, but this technique allows protected mode programs
to use services such as BIOS, which runs entirely in real mode (having been designed
originally for the 8088-based IBM Personal Computer model (machine type) 5150). This
mode-switching technique is also the one used by DPMI (under real, not emulated, DOS)
and DOS extenders like DOS/4GW to allow protected mode programs to run under DOS;
the DPMI system or DOS extender switches to real mode to invoke DOS or BIOS calls,
then switches back to return to the application program which runs in protected mode.
This is probably the reason why until Windows ME it was possible to restart the
computer to MS DOS mode from within the operating system. The changing towards the
NT kernel resulted in the operating system not needing DOS to boot the computer as well
as unable to use it. The need to restart the computer in Real Mode MS DOS declined after
Windows 3.1x until it was no longer needed. The only way of currently running DOS
applications in Real Mode from within newer versions of Windows is by using emulators
such as DOSBox.