please God, someone help me with the DASM assembler

[TatBou]

backstory:

I've been trying to make an Atari 2600 game using Andrew Davie's Atari 2600 Programing for Newbies tutorial when I tried to use the assembler DASM for his Kernel_01 demo. After writing out the code he used, I tried installing DASM and that's where my problems begin.

 

my problem:

my problem started a bit before DASM was even a thing I knew about, when I had the thought "Atari games seem pretty simple, I've messed around with NES and MegaDrive games before so it shouldn't be that hard, I could make a game for it." The Atari was a bit of a learning curve for my primary C++ & html5 brain with its cut-throat resource management and all that. but I did start to understand how scanlines worked, some necessary timings, and all that TIA chip stuff. after a bit we got to the actual coding part of the tutorial and that's when I found out about DASM.

 

as I'm guessing most of you know what DASM is and what it does, and as equal amount of you should know it doesn't have a traditional installation process. (From what I've heard) in order to install DASM you have to use the Command Prompt (for windows) to do some Hacker man stuff (I learned that piece of info from the YouTube video: (1) Code. Compile. Play. Setting up our ATARI 2600 Dev Tools | 8Blit - YouTube by 8blit. at around 6:22 in the video)

 

but Instead of the Command Prompt prompting me to(this a text version of 8Blit's prompt in his tutorial with what I would assum would be what I would see?

 

? \Users\tatbo>\Downloads\ATARI>dir

Volume in drive C is SSD
Volume Serial Number is 8041-628B

 

Directory of ? \Users\tatbo>\Downloads\ATARI

 

01/30/2021 82:28 PM   <DIR>                   .
01/30/2021 02:28 PM   <DIR>                   . .
01/30/2021 02:29 PM                       1,646 Kernel.asm
01/30/2021 12:19 PM                   227,150 dasm.exe
01/30/2021 12:19 PM   <DIR>                   machines

                       2 File(s)               228,796 bytes

                       3 Dir(s)     15,100,145,664 bytes free

 

it said:

 

C:\Users\tatbo>\Downloads\ATARI>dir
The system cannot find the path specified.

 

What I'd like to know:

first off, why is it doing this?

second, what can be done to fix it?

third, why is there a ">" symbol by "tatbo" in Command Prompt when it's not there in File Explorer?

what File Explorer looks like:

             ________________________________

<  >  ^ | C:\Users\                                           

                | |

                | |   ? defaultuser100000

                | |   ? fuckit

                | |   ? public

                | |   ? tatbo

 

fourth, am I going to the right directory?

Where the files would be in File Explorer:

             ________________________________

<  >  ^ | C:\Users\tatbo\Downloads\ATARI         

                | |

                | |   ? machines

                | |        dasm.exe

                | |        Kernel.asm

 

 

 

Thanks in advance

[Thomas Jentzsch]

These '>' are really weird. I have never seen them. No clue how you got there.

[TatBou]

1 hour ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

These '>' are really weird. I have never seen them. No clue how you got there.

so, it's probably a windows thing?

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Maybe. You should try a different directory, without a '>' in the path.

[+Andrew Davie]

Sorry I don't do windows, but what you're showing looks really weird to me too.

It's not exactly clear to me if you have the paths correct, but try this...

 

Firstly, I read that windows home directory for a user is at C:\Users\yourusername

So I would expect if you open up a terminal window (by running cmd I believe)... and type...

 

dir

 

What do you see?

I would expect it would be something like C:\Users\tatbou

Let us know if that's the case.

 

If you do, then you can go...

cd Downloads

 

Now you should be able to dir from there and you should see what you've downloaded.

Assuming you downloaded dasm from the github page, it's a compressed zip file, right?

 

The current version is dasm-2.20.14.1-win-x64.zip

That's available for download from https://dasm-assembler.github.io/

 

Assuming you did everything right, then when you dir you should see the above zip file listed.

You will need to "unzip" the contents of that file you downloaded to where you want dasm to live.

 

Once you unzip it, then you can cd to the directory where you unzipped it to, and try running dasm.exe from there.

Let us know how things work out.

[TatBou]

20 minutes ago, Andrew Davie said:

Sorry I don't do windows, but what you're showing looks really weird to me too.

It's not exactly clear to me if you have the paths correct, but try this...

 

Firstly, I read that windows home directory for a user is at C:\Users\yourusername

So I would expect if you open up a terminal window (by running cmd I believe)... and type...

 

dir

 

What do you see?

I would expect it would be something like C:\Users\tatbou

Let us know if that's the case.

 

If you do, then you can go...

cd Downloads

 

Now you should be able to dir from there and you should see what you've downloaded.

Assuming you downloaded dasm from the github page, it's a compressed zip file, right?

 

The current version is dasm-2.20.14.1-win-x64.zip

That's available for download from https://dasm-assembler.github.io/

 

Assuming you did everything right, then when you dir you should see the above zip file listed.

You will need to "unzip" the contents of that file you downloaded to where you want dasm to live.

 

Once you unzip it, then you can cd to the directory where you unzipped it to, and try running dasm.exe from there.

Let us know how things work out.

it all works now. cd downloads allowed me to progress through the other subfolders needed to get to Dasm and assemble the program.

 

thank you

[+Andrew Davie]

8 hours ago, TatBou said:

it all works now. cd downloads allowed me to progress through the other subfolders needed to get to Dasm and assemble the program.

 

thank you

If you set things up properly, you don't need to do this manual navigation.

dasm.exe can be copied/moved to the directory where you have your source code.

Or, better yet, somewhere in your system's search path.  Look up the "PATH" environment variable to understand/configure that.

Basically you shouldn't be doing this sort of manual cd navigation to build stuff.

Also, I highly recommend installing Atari Developer Studio (ADS) and using that. It will make your life so much easier.

[Just Jeff]

Another option is to get Microsoft VS Code and then install Atari Development Studio.  All free.  Compiling and running is just clicking one button after that.

[+Andrew Davie]

2 minutes ago, Just Jeff said:

Another option is to get Microsoft VS Code and then install Atari Development Studio.  All free.  Compiling and running is just clicking one button after that.

Yes, it's a good suggestion. That's what I was trying to say in the last line of my message

 

 

Edited July 16, 2022 by Andrew Davie

[Just Jeff]

Ah yes.. I missed that.  Did you forget to mention VS Code or is there something I don't know?

[+Andrew Davie]

Just now, Just Jeff said:

Ah yes.. I missed that.  Did you forget to mention VS Code or is there something I don't know?

Yes, I did... but it was implicit because AFAIK, Atari Developer Studio is a plugin to VS Code. So if you have one, you have the other.

But, you were clearer and that's all that matters.