+hloberg Posted January 28, 2020 Share Posted January 28, 2020 Long ago, on this very forum, I posted a need for Atari Editor/Assembler on disk. Well, the smart and wise folk on this site supplied me with such. it was so long ago I re-post the disk to my blog for others. OK, I know Atari E/A isn't as powerful as the Atari Macro Assembler or OSS MAC65 (which are also on disk) but it's a good place to start for a Assembler newbee. and being on disk you don't have to go through the torture of trying to find a good E/A cart on eBay. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nezgar Posted January 31, 2020 Share Posted January 31, 2020 Will check out your site! Maybe you mentioned it there already - I learned the problem with using a "disk based" version of E/A (or any cart converted to RAM such as even BASIC) s that for it to work reliably on a 400/800 OSB, RAMTOP needs to be moved to the next 4KB boundary below the normal cartridge area or the E: handler may write into the 8KB where the E/A code is,which is normally ROM, but now RAM where it can be overwritten. So you will have 4KB less working RAM compared to using a cart. This was interesting for me to learn in the past. Now there exists loader segments that check if the machine is 400/800 or XL/XE and adjusts accordingly depending on system, as XL/XE OS's fixed the E: editor bug, and you dont have to waste 4K. Take a look at this thread: If you cant find an E/A cart easily, they're easy enough to construct with either original parts from B&C or BEST (Brown cart shell, EPROM PCB, and a 2764 EPROM) or a modern multicart emulator such as the Ultimate cart / avgcart. Atarimax carts can probably do it too. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+hloberg Posted January 31, 2020 Author Share Posted January 31, 2020 2 hours ago, Nezgar said: Will check out your site! Maybe you mentioned it there already - I learned the problem with using a "disk based" version of E/A (or any cart converted to RAM such as even BASIC) s that for it to work reliably on a 400/800 OSB, RAMTOP needs to be moved to the next 4KB boundary below the normal cartridge area or the E: handler may write into the 8KB where the E/A code is,which is normally ROM, but now RAM where it can be overwritten. So you will have 4KB less working RAM compared to using a cart. This was interesting for me to learn in the past. Now there exists loader segments that check if the machine is 400/800 or XL/XE and adjusts accordingly depending on system, as XL/XE OS's fixed the E: editor bug, and you dont have to waste 4K. Take a look at this thread: If you cant find an E/A cart easily, they're easy enough to construct with either original parts from B&C or BEST (Brown cart shell, EPROM PCB, and a 2764 EPROM) or a modern multicart emulator such as the Ultimate cart / avgcart. Atarimax carts can probably do it too. the XL version of E/A on disk does adjust for that difference and gives a little bit more memory. it's still a little short due to space lost for the loader. One thing I like about the Atari 8-bit is that almost everything can be found on disk. only a few things that use bank switching (like OSS BASIC XL) can run off disk. I did once have an AtariMax that had E/A (among other things) on it but sold it as I found I rarely used it since most stuff was on disk. An Atari 8-bit with a virtual disk drive is about all you need if limited on space like me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
milpool^tired Posted January 31, 2020 Share Posted January 31, 2020 I was also looking for a good assembler with editor for the 8bit and so far i found MAE ( https://atariwiki.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=MAE Assembler ) to be very good! It's made for the 130XE, but it can be configured to run on 64k machines. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
calfranklin0598 Posted October 28, 2023 Share Posted October 28, 2023 How difficult is it to load a commercial machine language program into Atari Assembler Editor and revise it into a similar program? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrathchild Posted October 28, 2023 Share Posted October 28, 2023 You'd be much better off cross-assembling it with MADS/ca65 etc. Check out tools like dis6502 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TGB1718 Posted October 28, 2023 Share Posted October 28, 2023 16 minutes ago, calfranklin0598 said: How difficult is it to load a commercial machine language program into Atari Assembler Editor and revise it into a similar program? I'm assuming you mean the source code for a program, if you mean the actual executable then no, you can't do that. You would need to disassemble the code first as stated above using something like dis6502. You would get too many errors as the source code is loaded making it extremely difficult to edit, as @Wrathchild says, MADS or ca65 will allow you to import the code with no error checking allowing you to edit as required. You only see errors when you compile the code. Also are you talking about source code written for other systems ? again this could be a difficult task due to other systems differences. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
invisible kid Posted October 28, 2023 Share Posted October 28, 2023 Personally I never liked the assembler/editor cart. Even Atari Macro Assembler is leagues better than it in terms of generating an executable. The cart might be great for testing small blocks of code, but too user unfriendly for me even for that. Just IMHO. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Larry Posted October 28, 2023 Share Posted October 28, 2023 I started my (limited) exploration of assembly language with the EA Cartridge + "The Atari Assembler" by Don and Kurt Inman (at Archive.org). Really good place to start. Probably not a good place to end if you're going to write the next great game or application, but for most folks, it will provide good basic knowledge/skills. And naturally, the EA cartridge works great in a multi-cart (or as a homebrew in a 27128 eprom + switch). The EA cart is very similar to to the enhanced EASMD (The Atari Assembler Editor), but EASMD from OSS was designed to be run from disk. If you are going to run it from disk, this is likely a better choice. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted October 28, 2023 Share Posted October 28, 2023 AsmEd cart is OK for playing around or small projects. In the day it was the only option for a lot of us for a long time. Mac 65 is a quantum leap above it. Cross-platform and emulation is another leap after that. What used to be a 20 minute wait - assemble, create your loadable file then load and test then reboot to get back to source editing (with all the media swaps) now can be well under 20 seconds. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TGB1718 Posted October 28, 2023 Share Posted October 28, 2023 With cc65/ca65 and using a batch file, after successful build, it copies the new .XEX file to a folder I have mounted in Altirra as a virtual Spartados drive and it's there in 250 ms So almost instantly there ready to run 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClausB Posted October 30, 2023 Share Posted October 30, 2023 EASMD with OS/A+ was my development system in the day. ACE80 was the largest project I did with with it. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
luckybuck Posted November 2, 2023 Share Posted November 2, 2023 @hloberg: for years everything is already here: https://atariwiki.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=Atari Assembler Editor 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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