assembler woes

[2600problems]

it seems that all assembly is either based off of X86 or x64 development. what frustrates me is 2 things:

 

1: i STILL can't find the merlin assembler for the commodre 64, the one i have (TASM) will not load at all

2. and this really pisses me off, command line programming appears to be taking off. what's the use of a programming language that requires the use of the windows command line. I tried using TASM (again) and even replaced the file with the suggested end title (.asm). what happened? the typical "file does not exist Bull****! I just want to do development for the commodore 64 and 128 series. is that so hard to fucking ask?

 

i wish we were still in the days of BASIC. it was easier back then. sure it took longer but at least you didn't have to deal with the command lines or some other shit.

 

by the way, the whole "real programmers don't use pascal" thing that people say? you guys can suck a dick, because REAL programmers don't use Perl/ C# whatever, seriously, fuck off

[7800fan]

Some of the assembler doesn't work under 64-bits OS. I ran into this when I tried asm for 2600, need older OS or DOSBox with older WIndows installed inside that.

[carlsson]

If you want to get serious about programming, cross development is the way to go. I don't know about Merlin or TASM, but the other assemblers like DASM, CA65, XA (does it still exist?) and others appear to exist either as precompiled binaries for your X86 or X64 system, or as source so you can compile them yourself if you're on a different system.

 

It is kind of optional to use the command line prompt to execute the assembler. Several environments have hooks to run the assembler from within the editor, whether it is CBM Prg Studio, Emacs, Notepad++ (I believe) or other editors. The actual code you write is saved in the editor anyway, so at worst you'll only issue a build command to assemble it.

 

Good luck!

[JamesD]

TASM has issues finding the table for each CPU if you don't set up a path for where to locate the table, etc... which is a bit annoying.
The easy/temporary solution is just to copy the appropriate table to the directory your source code is in.

[2600problems]

JamesD in English. and if anyone has a copy of the merlin rom, please send it to me

[+sm3]

In this link you can find a .d64 of Merlin64 plus a PDF of the manual I think.

 

www.vex.net/~falco/lemon/Merlin64.zip

 

Is this what you are looking? There is no ROM as far as I'm aware.

[JamesD]

JamesD in English. and if anyone has a copy of the merlin rom, please send it to me

That was English, it's not going to get any easier. You are going to have to do some research for yourself.

 

If you are referring to the Telmark Assembler rather than some other TASM, it uses different tables to tell it how to support different CPUs.

These tables are normally installed in the same directory as TASM itself.

The table for the 6502 is called TASM65.TAB.

If you copy that to the same directory as your assembly source files, the assembler will find it.

To make the assembler find the tables in their existing directory, lsearch for TASMTABS in the docs.

http://www.cpcalive.com/docs/TASMMAN.HTM

I'm not going to explain where to put that setting, you'll need to look for Environment Variables.

Microsoft did not make it easy to find in recent versions of Windows.

 

Also, if you create a batch file similar to this and place it in the directory as your source file, you can type the name of the

batch file to assemble your program. I also add any commands required to convert the object file to an executable

and put it on a disk or tape image. It makes things simple.

Just change file.asm to whatever the name of your program source file is.

c:\tasm\tasm -65 -b file.asm

 

[2600problems]

sm3 thank you

[+sm3]

sm3 thank you

 

You're welcome. If you don't already have it, this book may be of use to you with the Merlin 64 assembler:

 

http://commodore.bombjack.org/books/commodore/books/Assembly_Language_for_Kids_Commodore_with_Addendum_64.zip

 

DLH has a lot of good Commodore books on his site: http://www.bombjack.org/commodore/index-c64.htm

[2600problems]

sm3, the books lead back here for some reason. dead link?

[+sm3]

sm3, the books lead back here for some reason. dead link?

 

It works for me. Unfortunately, it does take a while to download a book after you click the link for it, so you just have to wait. He probably has some limits on the bandwidth for the website or something.

 

http://www.bombjack.org/commodore/books.htm

 

The book I linked was "Assembly Language for Kids Commodore 64". It covers the Merlin assembler, as well as 2 others. I have a real copy of this book myself, although the updated version for the 128.

 

Here is another link to it at archive.org: https://archive.org/details/Assembly_Language_for_Kids_1985_Microcomscribe

 

You should be able to download it as a PDF there as well.

[2600problems]

thank you. much appreciated