Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!oliveb!sun!pepper!cmcmanis
From: cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: (None)
Message-ID: <55524@sun.uucp>
Date: 6 Jun 88 18:04:05 GMT
References: <276@pedro.UUCP>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 48

In article <276@pedro.UUCP> pete_ashdown@pedro.UUCP (Pete Ashdown) writes:
> Hello!  I am FINALLY posting on here.  

Welcome to anarchy.

>D.	I am sick to death of the third letter of the alphabet.  There
>	is virtually none or very little information on programming the
>	Amiga in MC68000 assembly.  I DON'T want to program in C.  I
>	know it is the language of the future, blah, blah, blah, but
>	I'm an assembly language programmer.  After buying two
>	perfectly dismal books on Amiga assembly language, I am
>	desperate for some good examples (NOT Jake Commander's
>	CALCULATOR :-[ ).  If you have some good source kicking around
>	that you would mail me, I'd be mucho-grande appreciative.
>	Tips, hints, or book suggestions would also be helpful.

What would you like to know about programming in assembly language on 
the Amiga? I don't wish to imply this is the case with you, but one
person I talked too was an ex-C64 programmer and wanted to know what
bits to poke in the Copper to get the screen to change resolution. We
talked for about two hours after that, and what we came up with was that
A. He wanted to program in Assembly because he wanted to avoid all of the
   "library call stuff" that C programs went through to make programs run.
   Basically, screw the OS and get right down to the metal. 

B. He had no idea how useful it was to *not* do this, nor how unnecessary
   it was for his applications, nor how easy it was to "do it right".

So I pose the question to you, I this how you feel? Do you understand that
the Amiga is much more complex and difficult to program than the C64, but
when you program it correctly it is an order of magnitude more powerful?
Assuming you do know both of these things, then my suggestion is that you
learn C, only so that you can use C programs as a description of how to
do something, the Assembly part is fairly trivial after that. Then write
three programs, one that runs from the CLI, one that runs from the CLI
or workbench and opens a window, and one that opens a custom screen,
gets the information it needs from the system (like where memory is located
and how big it is) and then takes over the machince for some killer
game. Then you will be thoroughly grounded in all of the basics and can
write any program you would care too without much difficulty. 

P.S. I'm still collecting "Why I want to sell my Amiga" and "Why I am thinking
about selling my Amiga" notes. These are kept in strict confidence and the
summary will have all names of contributors removed. 


--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis   BIX: cmcmanis  ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.