stu@allegra.UUCP (12/09/83)
Since most people in this group seem to asking more questions that answering, I thought I would make a few comments. I purchased a C64 with the intention of writing games on it. I am very pleased with the hardware configuration and the built in ROM monitor. Right off I knew that BASIC was too slow for writing anything serious. I bought the HES assembler/editor on a recommendation. First I was astounded that it was written in BASIC. As an assembler, the speed was about one line per second...incredibly slow. The editor isn't too bad but it is also slow. One benefit of BASIC source is that since I only have a disk drive and I was able to convert the cassette version for disk (after reading it in with a borrowed Datasette). I went to a computer software store and they had the Commodore assembler/editor/monitor which comes on disk. After hearing my complaint about the BASIC assembler, they were willing to open the Commodore disk and try it out on their C46. First thing I realized is that it was written in machine code. I bought it without a second thought. I have been using it for several days and the slowest part of the assembly process is reading the assembler in from disk. Otherwise it flies. The editor is just like the BASIC line editor, but with a few enhancements. I also bought the HES monitor cartridge (Hesmon). I like that program. The Commodore disk has a monitor on it with most of the same commands, but Hesmon has one extra command that is very helpful. When single stepping through a program, a 'J' will start running the program until the next 'ret' (return from subroutine) instruction. That is really nice. The bad part about Hesmon is that it cannot be used if you are using RS232 communications (I guess it uses some of the page zero locations). Both monitors have line disasemblers and assemblers. These are very helpful. I have been trying to write some routines to talk to my serial RS232 printer since I don't have the Commodore printer. The documentation on the Kernal routines is very poor and only by single stepping through the Kernal subroutines can I find my errors. My life would be much easier if I could by a C64 serial port to RS232 interface. I have seen ads for many parallel interfaces for printers but no serial ones. When I finally get my routines working I will have to change the assembler to use them instead of the serial port it defaults to for listings. I am also looking to buy the Commodore monitor. It seems to produce the best picture for the computer. I have seen a BMC monitor on a C64 and the picture is not much better that going through RF. I'd like to see a better price for it. Hope this information helps someone. Stu Brown allegra!stu