Which assembler could I possibly use ?

[kenames99]

barnacle wrote:

I wish I had, but it's over forty years since I last used it. As I recall, it was a cross-assembler running on CP/M.

Neil

yea, I understand. same thing here. I have a lot of the old Avocet assemblers but not the avmac65 one. thanks for the answer.

Ken

[barnacle]

You're welcome. Sorry I was unable to help. To be honest, it was worth it for the picture on the front of the box

Neil

edit: I note that even though Avocet Systems are listed as a supplier on the WDC page, their web page is absent (I think for at least a couple of years since I last looked) and the domain name available.

[BigDumbDinosaur]

barnacle wrote:

edit: I note that even though Avocet Systems are listed as a supplier on the WDC page, their web page is absent (I think for at least a couple of years since I last looked) and the domain name available.

WDC sometimes seems to be laggardly when it comes to maintaining their website.  Avocet closed up shop a number of years ago.

[GARTHWILSON]

Their site used to be https://www.westerndesigncenter.com/ ; but although it's still there, their attention now is on https://wdc65xx.com/ .

[BigDumbDinosaur]

GARTHWILSON wrote:

Their site used to be https://www.westerndesigncenter.com/ ; but although it's still there, their attention now is on https://wdc65xx.com/ .

I did note that they recently updated the 65C02 and 65C816 data sheets.  Both are current as of earlier this year.

[barnacle]

Y'know what I'd like? An updated version of Part 2 of Chapter 4 of Zaks' Programming the 6502, which discusses each instruction including the addressing modes and flags changed, but (obviously) for the 65c02. I don't find the equivalent part of the WDC book as simple to follow, because of the way it deals with the 16-bit variants of the parts. There's a kind of double indirection my brain has to do to work out what's doing which with whom.

Neil

[BigDumbDinosaur]

barnacle wrote:

Y'know what I'd like? An updated version of Part 2 of Chapter 4 of Zaks' Programming the 6502, which discusses each instruction including the addressing modes and flags changed, but (obviously) for the 65c02. I don't find the equivalent part of the WDC book as simple to follow, because of the way it deals with the 16-bit variants of the parts. There's a kind of double indirection my brain has to do to work out what's doing which with whom.

Are you referring to the Eyes & Lichty programming manual?  It can be confusing at times due to it covering three different MPUs in a single book.  The 65C816 really needs a manual of its own, as it has a significantly-different behavior in native-mode operation.

The second edition of Lance Leventhal’s 6502 Assembly Language Programming has some coverage of the 65C02, although that was written early in the life of the C02.  The C02 was more of a bug-fix than a radical change a la the 65C816.  Other than adding some addressing modes and the Rockwell extensions (which weren’t part of the original design), most of the differences between the C02 and the NMOS parts relate to the hardware benefits of the CMOS process, elimination of some annoying behaviors (e.g., decimal mode not clearing when an interrupt occurs), and correction of hardware errata, e.g., the JMP (<addr>) bug.  Anything said about the C02 in Leventhal’s book would apply to the modern WDC version of the C02.

[barnacle]

Yes, the Eyes and Lichty. I can't put my hand on the Leventhal at the moment but I'm pretty certain it's a first edition.

In the meantime, I enjoy the (zp) which should have been there from the first, but still miss a stack relative addressing

Neil

[BigDumbDinosaur]

barnacle wrote:

In the meantime, I enjoy the (zp) which should have been there from the first, but still miss a stack relative addressing

Executing stack shenanigans is where the 65C816 really shines, especially when direct page is relocated to the stack. 

[wayfarer]

is there an assembler for 6502, (and/or text editor) that is native to/runs on the 6502 itself?
Is there call for one?

[BigEd]

Yes, in the land of Acorn. Easy enough to implement the Acorn MOS ABI too.

[GARTHWILSON]

wayfarer wrote:

is there an assembler for 6502, (and/or text editor) that is native to/runs on the 6502 itself?
Is there call for one?

One that comes to mind is Orca/M.  Wikipedia tells a little about it, here.  I don't have any experience with it, but was made aware of it by someone at work almost 40 years ago, who was using it on the Apple II.

I have a rather extensive Forth kernel in the EPROM of my workbench computer, including an assembler that uses the regular mnemonic-operand order instead of how most Forth assemblers work, and I merge the addressing mode with the mnemonic, like LDA#, STA_ZP, etc., so it doesn't have to look ahead and parse.  It took me only an evening to write it, and after I did, I realized that because it runs in Forth, macro capability was automatic, without my having planned for it.  This assembler is not suitable for entire applications, only for writing Forth primitives, runtimes, ISRs, etc.; but as they say, you can get 90% of the performance of assembly language with only 10% of the code written in assembly, provided it's the critical 10%.  (I might not have the percentages right; but it makes the point.)

[drogon]

wayfarer wrote:

is there an assembler for 6502, (and/or text editor) that is native to/runs on the 6502 itself?

Many.

e.g. The Apple II mini-assembler built into the Integer Basic ROM. Also there is a ROM one that was part of the AIM-65 setup. I'm sure there were many other ROM ones.

Ed. has mentioned in the land of Acorn - BBC Basic has a built-in assembler and as it's Basic, then it's also an editor. It's a powerful macro assembler too - as macros are Basic procedures.

Another acorn one was the assembler that came with the Acornsoft BCPL system. Choice of 2 editors there.

There was another I used on the Apple II - TED ][+ I think it was called.

And I started writing one for my own '816 BCPL system, but gave up for many reasons - mostly because I was happy using a cross assembler under Linux.

It wouldn't surprise me if there was one for the various DOS/65 projects either.

Quote:

Is there call for one?

Not sure... I suspect if there were, then there would be a portable one out there already...

-Gordon

[GARTHWILSON]

The source-code repository page of this site, http://6502.org/source/, should not be forgotten.  There in the "Monitors, Assemblers, and Interpreters" section 3/4 of the way down the page, is Robert Ford Denison's 2KSA two-pass symbolic assembler in a 65-page .pdf.  You might get some ideas to start with from that.  Since it's from 1979, it won't have the CMOS instructions; so you'll want to add those.

[fachat]

wayfarer wrote:

is there an assembler for 6502, (and/or text editor) that is native to/runs on the 6502 itself?
Is there call for one?

Of course. Many have been written back in the days, including by me.

Mine runs on the C64 and uses the builtin (BASIC) editor to write assembly programs.