john13@garfield.MUN.EDU (John Russell) (12/27/88)
I am looking for opinions as to the best development environment for someone programming in assembler, as I have recently started to experiment with 68000 asm for writing Amiga programs. The options I know of so far are -- MetaComCo assembler: is this an actual product, or just a syntax spec? Manx as: not as bad as I expected after a few initial problems; still lacking some options that I would like and some flexibility. Gurus occasionally. Assempro: read bad reviews, not interested ASM68k: on Fish disk #81, by Wesley Howe. I can't remember seeing any discussion of this on the net, but it has extensive and good documentation and a number of features I was hoping to find in my assembler-of-choice. Don't know about possible bugs, the docs indicate it should be reliable. ASM: on Fish disk #46, by Doug Leavitt Jr. Handles 68010 opcodes, and some of the same optimizations as ASM68k. Missing some opcode variants and many directives. Documentation provided is basically a listing of differences with the AmigaDOS manual. GCC assembler: don't know if anyone has ported it to the Amiga. I've worked with it a bit on the Atari ST, but the syntax is very different from any of the others mentioned here so portability would be almost nil (unless a macro package was used to translate from one format to the other). Right now I'm leaning towards ASM68k. The only BLink I have listed in my disk catalog is the one included with the Draco distribution. Is there a newer one? If so, what improvements are there? All opinions are welcome. If you wish to post your views on any of these assemblers, or on utilities you may know of which make assembly programming more efficient, please also drop me a note via e-mail as our newsfeed is very flakey. John -- "If you steal all money, kids not be able to BUY TOYS!" -- Saturday morning cartoon character explaining why theft is bad
jax@well.UUCP (Jack J. Woehr) (12/28/88)
The inquirer about assemblers forgot to mention C.A.P.E. from
Innovatronics, Dallas, TX ( BBS is 214-241-4225).
Just took my Channukah gelt and bought myself CAPE 2.0 and am
very pleased. Compact, inexpensive, Intuition front end, standard includes,
superset of Metacomco syntax ( though local labels have more scope and
there are other minor differences ), nice docs.
CAPE is basically Wes Howe's update to his A68K, comes with Blink6.7
and, as I mentioned, the Intuition front end, some cute examples. Easy to
use. Assemblers are assemblers, I wish Howe had chosen to put 020/030
support in this version, but CAPE is very nice.
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In article <5051@garfield.MUN.EDU> john13@garfield.MUN.EDU (John Russell) writes:
%%I am looking for opinions as to the best development environment for
%%someone programming in assembler, as I have recently started to experiment
%%with 68000 asm for writing Amiga programs.
%%
%%The options I know of so far are --
%%
[stuff deleted]
%%
%%ASM68k: on Fish disk #81, by Wesley Howe. I can't remember seeing any
%% discussion of this on the net, but it has extensive and good
%% documentation and a number of features I was hoping to find
%% in my assembler-of-choice. Don't know about possible bugs, the
%% docs indicate it should be reliable.
I've seen one or two minor bug fixes to this one fly by somewhere (on a bbs or
usenet, I can't remember). Played with it some, seems good. Source is a big
plus.
%%ASM: on Fish disk #46, by Doug Leavitt Jr. Handles 68010 opcodes, and
%% some of the same optimizations as ASM68k. Missing some opcode
%% variants and many directives. Documentation provided is basically
%% a listing of differences with the AmigaDOS manual.
Utter trash. Doesn't properly assemble several opcodes (I seem to recall addq ?
being one). The next version or two is the same. Blech.
%%Right now I'm leaning towards ASM68k. The only BLink I have listed in my
%%disk catalog is the one included with the Draco distribution. Is there a
%%newer one? If so, what improvements are there?
The latest version comes with Lattice and is copyrighted and you can't
distribute it.
I don't recall which was the latest freely redistributable version.
fredphil@titan.rice.edu (William LeFebvre) (01/18/89)
Don't forget A68K by Charlie Gibbs! It is an assembler based on Brian Anderson's 68000 cross assembler published in Dr. Dobbs Journal back in 1986. I can only find source for version 1.2, but I have a binary for 2.3, and it is much better and faster! I understand that he wants to do a few more things to it before releasing the latest version of the source (I hope he puts an ARexx port in it!). I've been using one version or another of this assembler for months now, and am very content with it. And it's free, too! William LeFebvre Department of Computer Science Rice University <phil@Rice.edu>
karl@sugar.uu.net (Karl Lehenbauer) (01/18/89)
In article <2449@kalliope.rice.edu>, phil@titan.rice.edu (William LeFebvre) writes: > Don't forget A68K by Charlie Gibbs! It is an assembler based on Brian > Anderson's 68000 cross assembler published in Dr. Dobbs Journal back in > 1986. I can only find source for version 1.2, but I have a binary for > 2.3, and it is much better and faster! I understand that he wants to do a > few more things to it before releasing the latest version of the source (I > hope he puts an ARexx port in it!). Greg M. Garner (gmg@hcx.uucp) recently posted the following about the Motorola BBS: ...Anyway, they also have a 68000 assembler there, although I haven't downloaded it. It is a rather large file, about 102K. Here is the line describing it from the BBS: X68000 ARC 102912 05-09-87 DDJ PD MS-DOS 68K xasm w/ source ... The phone number for the motorola BBS is 1-512-440-3733. -- -- uunet!sugar!karl | "We've been following your progress with considerable -- karl@sugar.uu.net | interest, not to say contempt." -- Zaphod Beeblebrox IV -- Usenet BBS (713) 438-5018