Editing atari bin files2/24/2024 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() History Īssembler Editor was written by Kathleen O'Brien of Shepardson Microsystems. The debugger allows the viewing and changing of registers and memory locations, code tracing, single-step and disassembly. The debugger, really a monitor, is entered with the BUG command. Oddly, it also meant that 1E2 was a legal line number. This meant that all numbers, even line numbers, had to be converted to BCD. Atari BASIC was notorious for the very slow routines used to convert numerical constants in code into an internal representation, which used binary-coded decimal (BCD) routines in the Atari's operating system. Much of this was due to it sharing much of the editor code with Atari BASIC, which had also been written by Shepardson Microsystems. Īssembler Editor was widely derided as the slowest assembler on the platform. Assemble Ĭode can be assembled at any time by typing the ASM command into the editor. Įrrors are reported with numeric codes that can be looked up in the manual, with about 50 such codes in total. Indirect addressing is supported using parentheses LDA ($600) uses the values in location $600,$601 to produce a 16-bit address, and then loads the accumulator with the value found at that location. Hexadecimal is indicated with a dollar sign, LDA #$12 loads the accumulator with 12 hex, or 18 decimal. Values following instructions are normally interpreted as "the value at this memory address", but an actual numeric value can be provided as an "immediate operand" by appending it with a hash, like LDA #12, which loads the accumulator with the decimal value 12. Variable names can be assigned to specific addresses, and this was often combined with an increment *= *+1 to directly encode offsets into tables. The starting point for instructions is specified with the *= directive, so, for instance, code intended to be placed in the special "page six" would be prefixed with the line *= $0600. Instructions are listed in the order they will be placed in memory. A FIND command is useful when working with labels. Unlike Atari BASIC, Assembler Editor includes commands for automatically creating spaced-out line numbers, as well as renumbering lines and deleting them en masse. Like Atari BASIC, Assembler Editor included an ENTER command that could be used to combine files together into a single larger program listing. Source text must be prefixed with a line number, or it is interpreted as a command. The programmer enters lines of assembly source into the Atari BASIC-like editor. Both source and object code can be in memory simultaneously, allowing repeated editing, assembly, and running of the resulting code without accessing a disk or tape drive. The Assembler Editor is two-pass 6502 assembler in an 8 KB cartridge. The source code to the original Assembler Editor was licensed to Optimized Systems Software who shipped EASMD based on it. Despite the recommendation, commercial software was written using the Assembler Editor, such as the games Eastern Front (1941), Caverns of Mars, Galahad and the Holy Grail, and Kid Grid. The Atari Macro Assembler was offered as an alternative with better performance and more features, such as macros, but it was disk-based, copy-protected, and did not include an editor or debugger. In the manual, Atari recommended the Assembler Editor as a tool for writing subroutines to speed up Atari BASIC, which would be much smaller than full applications. It was programmed by Kathleen O'Brien of Shepardson Microsystems, the company which wrote Atari BASIC, and Assembler Editor shares many design concepts with that language implementation.Īssembly times are slow, making the cartridge challenging to use for larger programs. It is used to edit, assemble, and debug 6502 programs for the Atari 8-bit family of home computers without the need for additional tools. Atari Assembler Editor Original author(s)Ītari Assembler Editor (sometimes written as Atari Assembler/Editor) is a ROM cartridge-based development system released by Atari, Inc. ![]()
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