saylor@uiucdcs.UUCP (05/30/84)
#N:uiucdcs:36100080:000:245 uiucdcs!saylor May 29 16:49:00 1984 Has anyone had any experiance with assemblers for the c-64 like the pro-line pal-64 or the panther assembler? I have been thinking about getting a assembler for a few weeks but have not read any reviews about any. please respond to the net.
wjb@burl.UUCP (Bill Buie) (05/30/84)
-- It seems that this newsgroup goes through this discussion periodically. Well, I don't mind. As the last person to restart it, I'll open up the followups with a summary of what I've learned. First, and least, there is an assembler you can buy from HES written by Jay Balankrishnan (or something like that). I strongly urge you to stay away from it. Before I got around to asking this august body for advice, I went out and paid $25 for it. I still burn whenever I think about it. Anybody wanting a smoking condemnation can respond to me via mail; I don't want to toast the newsgroup. Somebody recommended an assembler to me called MERLIN. It sounded good, but when I tried to get in touch with the address posted, I never got a response. On the net, somebody said it sold for ~$40, but that's assuming you can find it. Several people liked the one Commodore puts out. At $20, I doubt you can beat the price. Someone has *given* me an assembler and a monitor. I haven't even looked at it yet. If you're interested, and if there are no copyright notices on it, I'll be glad to make arrange to send you a copy. Price free. Lastly, I bought an assembler from Eastern House Software (send me mail for the address) called MAE that I am overwhelmingly pleased with. Basically, it does everything that I've ever known any assembler to do on any machine (including the ones here at work). It is fast (machine language, of course). The version that they send for the C64 includes MICROMON, a very decent monitor which, contrary to what I'd heard on the net, DOES have a dissassembler. Again, mail me for more detailed info. It is not copy-protected and comes with a single-user liscense. Price $59.95 ... and heavily worth it. -- --Bill Buie
rwh@aesat.UUCP (Russell Herman) (06/04/84)
I'm a very satisfied user of PAL64 (which is sold both separately and in
combination with POWER64 as TOOLBOX64). It's reasonably fast, compiles
to disk or core, save/loads symbol tables, provides symbolic links
(SYS "LABEL") between your basic programs and assembled subroutines
(REALLY NICE), works with tape-only systems, is extensible, and is
well-documented in an 80 page manual of 5-1/2" square pages. It doesn't
have the macro capability of MAE, and its conditional assembly is
primitive (.IF expr1:.GOTO expr2, where expr1 evaluates to 0 (false) or
non-0 (true), and expr2 evaluates to a line number). You simply type
in your program under the BASIC line editor.
Before that, I bought HESBAL. A total waste of money as far as I was
concerned.
I'd recommend getting it as the TOOLBOX package; the wedge and supplement
in POWER are worth having.
--
______ Russ Herman
/ \ {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!aesat!rwh
@( ? ? )@
( || ) The opinions above are strictly personal, and
( \__/ ) do not reflect those of my employer (or even
\____/ possibly myself an hour from now.)dave@zinfandel.UUCP (06/06/84)
#R:burl:-47500:zinfandel:19800008:000:1021
zinfandel!dave May 31 11:13:00 1984
First of all, I agree 1000% about the assembler from HES. Stay away from
it!
It's too bad you never got a response from the MERLIN 64 people. I have
both that one and MAE. I prefer MERLIN because it's a little more user
friendly. Additionally, I have been able to crash MAE repeatably when
I have the scrolling program loaded (a utility that allows you to scroll
through your source -- very handy!).
I should also point out that the MERLIN documentation is excellent and
well organized. Documentation for MAE is marginally adequate.
I don't think you could really go wrong with either MAE or MERLIN 64 --
both are blazing fast, both have many useful features. Again, I think
MERLIN has a bit of an edge (80 columns in software, better string handling,
better regular expression handling). To be fair, MAE has a better monitor
and a better editor.
Dave Funk
Zehntel, Inc.
2625 Shadelands Drive
Walnut Creek, CA 92598
(415) 932-6900 x309
....!decvax!sytek!zehntel!dave
...."zehntel!dave"@BERKELEY