DXB132@psuvm.psu.edu (11/28/90)
I've been using the second release of Macro68 for some time now, so I can comment a bit. For those of you who tuned in late, Macro68 is a new assembler for the Amiga made by Digisoft (an Australian company). They are very aggresively enhancing Macro68. The main new features are as follows: - Accepts the old Motorola syntax. The new (and better) syntax is available at the same time (you can mix them), or have the assembler accept only the new syntax. It is now 100% compatible with ye old Metacomco without intermediate conversion. - '040 support (in addition to 68K, 68010, 68020, 68030, 68551, 68881/2, and the Amiga copper) - Frame offset directive...the one everyone else forgot about. Same as the familiar structure offset directive, but pre-decrement, for implementing C-style local variables. Much faster than using macros to do it, of course. - "nibble" directive which causes bytes to be split up into nibbles in the output file. Used, I think (not a hardware guru, Ok? :-)) to burn a byte- wide EPROM with autoconfig information (which is nibble-wide). I'm most likely wrong about this, but an interesting directive anyway! :-) - CCNOP directive that conditionally inserts NOPs ($4E71) in order to align to some boundary (almost always a longword boundary). The CNOP directive that Metacomco and everyone else has (including Macro68) inserts zeros, which is sometimes not desireable. - Now has a case-sensitivity on/off switch. My personal favorite. :-) - New version of the NewSyntax program that converts source files using the old syntax to the new syntax. Now very very fast (as fast as the assembler). Of course this only has to be done once, if at all. I like the fact that they include useful user-written software (no 'not invented here'!). This release includes a very nice copper list disassembler by John Veldthuis. Its output is suitable for reassembly with Macro68 as well as human comprehension. For example, $01800F00 becomes CMOVE $0F00,color0 ...which is a tad nicer to look at. :-) I'm very happy; I have absolutely no complaint about Macro68, and given their track record, I expect Digisoft to continue to improve it far into the future. -- Dan Babcock