buyse@convex.com (Russell C. Buyse) (03/15/90)
I am looking for a good assembler which will allow me to assemble 65c802 code on my Enhanced Apple IIe. I am aware of Merlin 8/16, but am not familiar with its limits or its capabilities, and would like to hear from someone who has used it or any other assembler, particularly if he/she has used it to assemble code for the 65c802. Specifically, I would like to know about memory requirements, speed, ease of use, flexibility, and cost of the assemblers available. On a different topic, I have noticed ads in Nibble and InCider magazine for American Micro Research's 800K disk drive, which is supposed to be usable on an Apple IIe with what I believe they call their "C3" controller card. Does anyone have one of these drives? What is the quality of the drive compared to the Apple and Laser offereings? Are they exactly like the Apple 3.5 in their operation, or are they more like the smart-but-not-perfectly-IIGS-compatible UniDisk 3.5's? Upward compatibilty to the IIGS is desirable. I am considering buying such a drive for the greater floppy storage and would like to make an informed purchase. Follow-ups to comp.sys.apple or to me at buyse@convex.COM. Russell C. Buyse - DV 32 CONVEX Computer Corporation P.O. Box 833851 Richardson, TX 75083-3851 buyse@convex.COM -or- convex!buyse
brianw@microsoft.UUCP (Brian WILLOUGHBY) (03/20/90)
In article <100597@convex.convex.com> buyse@convex.com (Russell C. Buyse) writes: >I am looking for a good assembler which will allow me to assemble 65c802 >code on my Enhanced Apple IIe. I am aware of Merlin 8/16, but am not >familiar with its limits or its capabilities, and would like to hear from >someone who has used it or any other assembler, particularly if he/she >has used it to assemble code for the 65c802. Specifically, I would like >to know about memory requirements, speed, ease of use, flexibility, and >cost of the assemblers available. Orca/M handles 6502, 65C02 and 65C802/816 opcodes. You can set an assembler directive to enable or disable each set of extensions even within the same file (so that error messages are given if you accidently use a special opcode in the wrong area of your code). Orca/M is ProDOS-based, and therefore requires a 64K Apple (although it performs much faster with a RAM disk). If you are a long time user of Merlin, you will probably have a bit of trouble getting used to their assembler directives (and quirks, like all accumulator implied opcodes require A as the operand instead of allowing a blank). Flexibility is optimum, because you can compile separate modules and link them. Support is even provided for linking in other languages (I have Small C). I paid $70 back when TechAlliance was APDA. >On a different topic, I have noticed ads in Nibble and InCider magazine >for American Micro Research's 800K disk drive, which is supposed to be >usable on an Apple IIe with what I believe they call their "C3" >controller card. Does anyone have one of these drives? What is the >quality of the drive compared to the Apple and Laser offereings? Are >they exactly like the Apple 3.5 in their operation, or are they more like >the smart-but-not-perfectly-IIGS-compatible UniDisk 3.5's? Upward >compatibilty to the IIGS is desirable. I am considering buying such a >drive for the greater floppy storage and would like to make an informed >purchase. According to AMR, the C3 card is a Laser UDC that has been modified to work with their drive. I was looking for a different card than the UDC, but AMR basically told me no luck - it's the same thing. The AMR 800K 3.5" drive is the only third party drive that is fully compatible with the Apple 3.5 Drive - this is according to Ohio Kache Systems who have worked with several Apple ][ drives interfaced to their Kache card. >Russell C. Buyse - DV 32 Brian Willoughby UUCP: ...!{tikal, sun, uunet, elwood}!microsoft!brianw InterNet: microsoft!brianw@uunet.UU.NET or: microsoft!brianw@Sun.COM Bitnet brianw@microsoft.UUCP