hookah@ucscb.ucsc.edu (Jeffori Arnold) (08/30/90)
I am on the seemingly neverending quest for the aforementioned book and I have yet to find anything that will teach a total novice to assembly assembly! I plan on getting motorola's 68030 book but apparently that's not much more than tech stuff. SO can somebody recommend a book that I can use to learn 68030 assembly? I have think C but I have yet to drag it out of the box and figure out its C-Assembly interface and i wouldn't know what I'm doing even if I did! so, help! -- lp-mud sucks.
jmunkki@hila.hut.fi (Juri Munkki) (08/30/90)
In article <1990Aug29.170815.10788@terminator.cc.umich.edu> hookah@ucscb.ucsc.edu (Jeffori Arnold) writes: >I am on the seemingly neverending quest for the aforementioned book and I have >yet to find anything that will teach a total novice to assembly assembly! >I plan on getting motorola's 68030 book but apparently that's not much more >than tech stuff. SO can somebody recommend a book that I can use to learn >68030 assembly? I have think C but I have yet to drag it out of the box and >figure out its C-Assembly interface and i wouldn't know what I'm doing even >if I did! so, help! Trying to go directly to assembly language on the Macintosh is almost like to trying suicide (at least for normal human beings and lesser hackers). I recommend that you start out by writing a skeleton application in Think C. If you decide that you like their object library or find some other skeleton useful, go ahead and use them, but if you plan on eventually writing everything in assembly language, you might just as well write your own skeleton. When you have the stuff written in C, write a program that does something. It doesn't matter what it does, in fact, writing an application that just calculates Mandelbrot sets or something equally boring is a good idea. When you have that done in C, convert you calculation routine (or whatever) to assembly language. Doing this should be relatively easy if you have a good 68000 (or 68020/030) book like 68000 Assembly Language Programming from Osborne/McGraw-Hill. You should also read the assembly language chapter from the Think C manual. Most programmers stop here and this is the stage that I recommend. You know how to recode time-critical portions of your code in assembly language. If your program calls the toolbox, it is usually easier to write and debug in C and most of the time doesn't give you any significant time savings. If you really insist on writing in assembly language, go ahead and read the assembly language programming chapter from Inside Macintosh. You have to read it really well and understand every aspect of how to transmit parameters from your program to the toolbox. Once you know how, it's pretty easy to convert your program from C to assembly language. I know how to call the toolbox from assembly language, but I do it only when I have to and that's not too often. Believe me, the savings are minimal and it makes things very hard to debug. It takes more time to learn how to debug these things than it takes to learn to write them. [Crash/Boot/Crash/Boot/...] Assembly is fun, but it's rarely productive. ___________________________________________________________________________ / Juri Munkki / Helsinki University of Technology / Wind / HP S / / jmunkki@hut.fi / Computing Center Macintosh Support / Surf / 48 X / ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~