Picking an Assembler.

[tschak909]

At the risk of starting an all out holy war......

 

I have been looking around at assemblers for doing Atari 800 Development, and have pretty much narrowed my choices to:

 

* OSS MAC/65 Cartridge (I can't use DDT though within Atari800 emulator! the keys don't work!)

* XASM (I've heard lots of current development is done in this assembler.)

* MADS (This one too.)

* MAE (is this still being maintained by John Harris? i am absolutely surprised it has lasted!)

* KASM (does anyone besides Ken Siders use this?)

 

I am needing something to learn on, while I get my chops in shape again... I have no problem switching to another assembler once i've become proficient.

 

What are the pro's/con's of these assemblers?

 

Thanks,

-Thom

[Rybags]

DDT in Mac65 works OK in A800Win+, but the main pain is that the cursor keys aren't read properly. If you have CTRL-arrow mapped (which is convenient so that the cursor keys then work without CTRL) then you have to press CTRL so that the normal keystroke is passed.

 

I tried XASM for a while but changed to ATASM since it seems to be closest to Mac65 in syntax.

 

One big downside of Mac65 IMO is the annoying phase errors which always seem to crop up. Plus, it's slower and it's best used with a second emulator instance to run the program you're developing.

 

The downside I've found with ATASM and XASM is that they tend to terminate the assembly at the first error - I prefer full assemblies so that you can determine which lines you have to fix - and in most cases with me, it's undefined labels.

 

By far the best way to use the Win based assemblers is to use a special editor like EditPlus, and use the facilities within the editors to do syntax highlighting and to call the assembler and trap the listing output.

[tschak909]

ah ok, well..for the record, I am using UNIX

 

-Thom

[Gury]

I always wondered what is major difference between XASM and MADS besides that MADS can use macros and the manual is not yet translated to Enlgish. Are they in anyway compatible with MAC/65 (or/and with Atari Assembler)? If not, is ATASM good choice to begin with? I want to use one for reusing good old MAC/65 routines, too.

[Plastron]

I assume you do not have a real Atari but if you do get a MAC 65 this was a very good tool in its day. I wrote all my games using the MAC 65

[Gury]

I assume you do not have a real Atari but if you do get a MAC 65 this was a very good tool in its day. I wrote all my games using the MAC 65

Hi Plastron, glad to hear from you again!

 

I do have real Atari as well, but don't own any original programming language (for now). I agree, MAC65 is great tool, but if I decide to do all my work on PC with cross-assemblers, I have to choose between TASM, MADS and XASM. Please, don't be offended anyone, if I didn't mention your favourite tool.

 

Of course I would use MAC/65 on real hardware indeed. So game Plastron was made with it. I still say it's cute and fun game

[Gury]

I assume you do not have a real Atari but if you do get a MAC 65 this was a very good tool in its day. I wrote all my games using the MAC 65

Hi Plastron, glad to hear from you again!

 

I do have real Atari as well, but don't own any original programming language (for now). I agree, MAC65 is great tool, but if I decide to do all my work on PC with cross-assemblers, I have to choose between TASM, MADS and XASM. Please, don't be offended anyone, if I didn't mention your favourite tool.

 

Of course I would use MAC/65 on real hardware indeed. So game Plastron was made with it. I still say it's cute and fun game

[Plastron]

I assume you do not have a real Atari but if you do get a MAC 65 this was a very good tool in its day. I wrote all my games using the MAC 65

Hi Plastron, glad to hear from you again!

 

I do have real Atari as well, but don't own any original programming language (for now). I agree, MAC65 is great tool, but if I decide to do all my work on PC with cross-assemblers, I have to choose between TASM, MADS and XASM. Please, don't be offended anyone, if I didn't mention your favourite tool.

 

Of course I would use MAC/65 on real hardware indeed. So game Plastron was made with it. I still say it's cute and fun game

 

 

Hi,

 

The note was for the orginal poster

 

Yes Plastron was done with the MAC 65 without that i do not think i would have written any games had the orginal Atari assembly editor at first. I think it would take it several days to assemble a game it was so slow.

[HiassofT]

ah ok, well..for the record, I am using UNIX

Then I'd recommend having a look at ATasm.

 

I'm using ATasm for quite a while now under Linux and really like it a lot. I always create a Makefile so that the whole build process is fully automated and then use AtariSIO to do the tests on a real Atari. I extended AtariSIO so that I'm able to directly access the files on my PC and/or create a bootable ATR file from a directory (I haven't officially released this version yet, but if you are interested just drop me a line). Another thing I'm also doing quite often is creating a bootable ATR file directly with ATasm: invoke ATasm with the '-r' option so that it outputs a raw binary file and include the ATR header at the very beginning of the assembler source. At the end of the source, just add some code to pad the code to the end of the sector. It looks like this:

 

START   = $2000

	* = START-16

;************************************
; ATR file header

	.WORD $0296; magic
	.WORD (END-START+15)/16
	.WORD 128
	.WORD 0,0,0,0,0


;************************************
; boot header complete file

	.BYTE 0
	.BYTE (END-START+127)/128
	.WORD START
	.WORD XRTS

; now the code....
... snipped ...
XRTS	RTS

; and now padding to a full sector
	.IF (*&127)<>0
	.DC (128-(*&127)) 0
	.ENDIF

END	 = *

 

so long,

 

Hias

[tschak909]

awesome, thanks for the tips! Yeah, I once had stacks of real atari hardware, the only things I have left are an 800XL with a RAMBO upgrade, a 1200XL, and an 800...but they are in storage and are very hard to get to these days, so I am just doing all my stuff inside an emulator.

 

I will definitely check out atasm as well

 

-Thom

[Plastron]

awesome, thanks for the tips! Yeah, I once had stacks of real atari hardware, the only things I have left are an 800XL with a RAMBO upgrade, a 1200XL, and an 800...but they are in storage and are very hard to get to these days, so I am just doing all my stuff inside an emulator.

 

I will definitely check out atasm as well

 

-Thom

 

If you want some files to play with take a look at

 

http://www.jetbootjack.com/JBJ_oldgamesdownloads.html

 

Andy

[tschak909]

I am blogging my efforts on this site in the blog section titled "Memoirs of an X Register" .. I am proud of myself being able to cycle between a set of colours.

 

-Thom

[kenfused]

At the risk of starting an all out holy war......

 

I have been looking around at assemblers for doing Atari 800 Development, and have pretty much narrowed my choices to:

* KASM (does anyone besides Ken Siders use this?)

I don't even use it anymore since I almost never compile on a real atari machine. It was mostly designed to replace the Atari Macro Assembler and the assembler (RA65) used with the original cc65 that ran natively on an atari. I mostly now use the assember that goes with the new CC65 and cross compile usually on windows xp.

[tschak909]

I have decided to use the monitor built into the Atari800 emulator, and so far it has proven to be very powerful, especially since I can easily dump all the registers, and cause any BRK instructions to fall through to the monitor outside of the editor, it's fantastic.

 

-Thom