bs@pbhye.UUCP (Bruce Skelly) (08/24/87)
As long as we're discussing assemblers, I'd like to mention the MAE Assembler. Actually a very nice package with relocatable code, macros, conditional assembly, etc. Looks like the assembler has been around a while, because it includes instructions for use on machines that pre-date the C64. The assembler is shipped with the Micromon in-RAM monitor, the assembler, an editor, a text formatter, and a relocation loader. Several pieces of the software could be resident at the same time. For example I would load the monitor, escape back to basic and load the editor/assembler. If I remember correctly one could assemble in absolute mode into memory, and then execute the code form either the monitor, or SYS from basic. The draw backs were that one had to be careful what software one loaded at which address. It was very easy to over write some code. It was not very user friendly, but then, neither are hackers, and who would be using assembler but a hacker.:-) My problem, and I hope someone out there can help me, is that I bought some assembler routines from Abacus on disk. They are in 'PAL' format and I need to get them into 'MAE' format. Let me clarify that, the problem is with actual file formats and not with the use of 'OP' codes. It appears that MAE source files contain memory location and length information in the header of the file. this is a good feature for relocation, but doesn't make it compatible with some of the more standard assemblers. And that isn't the only problem. There are no carriage return at the end of line, but they set the high-order bit on the last character on the line. These are just some of the goodies I could figure out. If someone out there could detail the MAE source file format, I'm sure I could write a utility to convert to and from PAL. Thanks-in-advance Bruce Skelly
mrr@softie.UUCP (Mark Rinfret) (08/26/87)
In article <2050@pbhye.UUCP>, bs@pbhye.UUCP (Bruce Skelly) writes: > As long as we're discussing assemblers, I'd like to mention the > MAE Assembler. ...more... > > If someone out there could detail the MAE source file format, I'm > sure I could write a utility to convert to and from PAL. > Thanks-in-advance > > Bruce Skelly Bruce, it's been a while, but I remember performing the conversion that you want to do. I converted the Punter file transfer protocol from PAL format to CBM format and then from there to MAE. As I recall, I dumped the PAL stuff as an SEQ file, then ran a program to strip the line numbers (after I had edited out line number references). I have a couple of small Basic programs, CBM-MAE and MAE-CBM which will perform the conversion from/to the SEQ format. I'm sure you wouldn't have any trouble gleaning the MAE file format from the program code. Unfortunately, the stuff is at home on my lonely C64, so, if I remember, I'll upload text versions of the two programs. If you don't see anything in a day or so, send me mail to jog my memory. Mark Rinfret