| First assemble [message #316] |
Sun, 11 December 2011 12:41  |
bill
Messages: 165
Registered: December 2011
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Senior Member |
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.atari.8bit
So it wasn't until recently (inheriting someone's big collection of 8-bit
stuff) that I had an honest-to-goodness book on assembly language for
the Atari. I also inherited an Atari Assembler Editor cart.
I was a bit weepy last night. For the first time, after all these years
of hacking on my Ataris, I typed in a little assembly language program,
assembled it, and ran it.
I was a bit spoiled by BASIC, then TurboBASIC XL and Action! But now that
I'm looking at whipping up my own DLIs and VBIs, I'm finding paper + POKEing
to be a bit tedious & bug-prone. :)
With so little free time, and less coming (new baby in January!), I doubt
I'll get far, but I just wanted to share my door-opening experience.
Probably old-news to all you hackers who've been assembling stuff for 30+
years. :^)
PS - Should I bother grabbing a copy of MAC/65+DDT? I see that AtariMax
has a 'reissue' version for only $25. I also know there are many, many
disk-based assemblers out there that folks use.
PPS - Oh, and I discovered a MAC/65-based cross-assembler that can run
on Linux. Maybe between that and poking around at CC65, I could build
stuff on this newfangled laptop. Too bad the keyboard absolutely sucks,
esp. compared to my 1200XL. ;)
--
-bill!
Sent from my computer
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| Re: First assemble [message #317 is a reply to message #316] |
Mon, 12 December 2011 15:42  |
ricortes
Messages: 13
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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Junior Member |
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.atari.8bit
On Dec 11, 9:41 am, b...@newbreedsoftware.com (Bill Kendrick) wrote:
> So it wasn't until recently (inheriting someone's big collection of 8-bit
> stuff) that I had an honest-to-goodness book on assembly language for
> the Atari. I also inherited an Atari Assembler Editor cart.
>
> I was a bit weepy last night. For the first time, after all these years
> of hacking on my Ataris, I typed in a little assembly language program,
> assembled it, and ran it.
>
> I was a bit spoiled by BASIC, then TurboBASIC XL and Action! But now that
> I'm looking at whipping up my own DLIs and VBIs, I'm finding paper + POKEing
> to be a bit tedious & bug-prone. :)
>
> With so little free time, and less coming (new baby in January!), I doubt
> I'll get far, but I just wanted to share my door-opening experience.
>
> Probably old-news to all you hackers who've been assembling stuff for 30+
> years. :^)
>
> PS - Should I bother grabbing a copy of MAC/65+DDT? I see that AtariMax
> has a 'reissue' version for only $25. I also know there are many, many
> disk-based assemblers out there that folks use.
>
> PPS - Oh, and I discovered a MAC/65-based cross-assembler that can run
> on Linux. Maybe between that and poking around at CC65, I could build
> stuff on this newfangled laptop. Too bad the keyboard absolutely sucks,
> esp. compared to my 1200XL. ;)
>
> --
> -bill!
> Sent from my computer
$.02
It is a fine assembler for getting your feet wet. At some future date
you may want to change.
The other options for assembler are stylistic: It is subjective based
on how you like to work. Some people go macro crazy and others such as
myself just don't use the feature.
A macro example from Mapping
.MACRO MOVEWORD
LDA %1
STA %2
LDA %1+1
STA %2+1
.ENDM
.MACRO MOVEBYTE
LDA %1
STA %2
.ENDM
If you are really into BASIC or Action! keywords you could name the
above PokeC and Poke respectively. In use you would have a file with
your predefined macros and include it in your assembly program. There
are problems in that you have to essentially write your own keywords,
remember the exact syntax, and have the files on your work disk.
Heck, I got used to the Atari ED/ASM. It takes so freaking long to
compile, I would write code for an hour or so between compiles then
make myself a sandwich while it chugged away on the compile. The
debugger on it isn't so hot so I would use OMNIMON instead. SOP, write
a ton of code, save to disk, compile from disk, go eat a sandwich,
come back, fix errors, compile from disk, bathroom break, run program,
crash, use OMNIMON to figure out what I did wrong, rinse and repeat.
I was probably among the first to defect to cross assemblers. I had a
Tandy 1000tx which was an 8 mHz '286 and TASM was my compiler of
choice. You've probably already run into the problem with Action!: As
your programs get bigger there isn't enough room to have them and
your compiled code resident in memory at the same time so you compile
from disk. Once you get to that stage with assembly it makes sense to
go with good editor and cross compiler. That is the time when you will
be forced to switch to something more sophisticated.
****As long as you are just writing a couple of lines of code to
change the left margin or background colors you are fine.****
It's a tough call because you will eventually want to chose the
environment that is most suited to your style. You've been on Linux
for a while so you are used to multitasking and fault tolerant
systems. I wonder if you can go back! :)
I like to have my code in a word processor/editor on the
Intel side, Atari running either in emulation or connected via SIO2PC,
then compile and test from there. Atari crashes, you still have your
code safe in the Intel box. Sheesh! TASM would compile a 30k assembly
files in 2 seconds. If I was doing that on an Atari with an ED/ASM
cart I would still be waiting.
Rick
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