[comp.edu] Assembly language teaching on Unix

don@eecs.umich.edu (Don Winsor) (05/24/91)

What kinds of software tools are available for teaching
assembly language programming in a Unix environment?
I would be interested in hearing from anyone involved
in teaching an assembly language course on Unix systems.

Two particular questions are on my mind.  First, most "old"
assemblers (mainframes, many microcomputer systems, etc.)  can
generate assembly listings which show the generated code in
hex, the source, the symbol table, etc.  None of the Unix
assemblers I have seen seem to be able to do this.  Second, some
kind of symbolic debugging capability would be very useful.

The thought has crossed my mind of taking "gas", the GNU assembler
and hacking some listing generation and "gdb" debugger symbol
generation capabilities into it, but I'd rather not reinvent the
wheel if there is a simple solution that is already available.

We can't be the only university that has moved assembly teaching from
an old mainframe to a Unix system; what is everyone out there doing?
Advice, pointers to software, etc. would be very much appreciated.

Donald Winsor, Ph.D.
Senior Systems Research Programmer
Departmental Computing Organization
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan

don@eecs.umich.edu
313-764-8543

phil@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Phil Howard KA9WGN) (05/24/91)

don@eecs.umich.edu (Don Winsor) writes:

>We can't be the only university that has moved assembly teaching from
>an old mainframe to a Unix system; what is everyone out there doing?
>Advice, pointers to software, etc. would be very much appreciated.

Around here, they moved it from mainframe to PC's.
-- 
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/ Phil Howard -- KA9WGN -- phil@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu   |  Guns don't aim guns at  \
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tja@mullauna.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Tim ARNOLD) (05/27/91)

don@eecs.umich.edu (Don Winsor) writes:

>We can't be the only university that has moved assembly teaching from
>an old mainframe to a Unix system; what is everyone out there doing?
>Advice, pointers to software, etc. would be very much appreciated.

Here at Melbourne we teach M68000 on a simulator written in C running on a 
Unix platform (ELEXSI and possibly ENCORE soon). I only tutor the subject
and don't know much about the simulator but I think it was written here, it
works and is quite robust and we've been using it for a coupke of years at 
least.

Try mab@cs.mu.oz.au for more info.

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Tim Arnold        | Law/Science (Computer Science)   |  simil iustus
tja@cs.mu.oz.AU   | The University of Melbourne      |  et peccator
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