Best book for learning assembler?

[Aces123]

I downloaded most of the assembler books from Atari Mania. Which one is best to start with? It is more important for me that the book is easy to understand than that it covers everything. I have access to mads and the cartridge assembler.

 

Where can I find small sniplets of assembler source code to look at?

[+slx]

https://atariwiki.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=6502%20Assembly%20CodeI downloaded most of the assembler books from Atari Mania. Which one is best to start with? It is more important for me that the book is easy to understand than that it covers everything. I have access to mads and the cartridge assembler.

Atari Roots has a good reputation for Atari specific programming. The 6502 book by Lance A. Leventhal and the Rodney Zaks book is good as well, but more generic. There was also a serialized assembly course in ANALOG magazine (which I did not read).

 

Where can I find small sniplets of assembler source code to look at?

Atari Wiki has some

[VladR]

Where can I find small sniplets of assembler source code to look at?

I sure as hell wish I had a book like "6502 Assembly Language subroutines" by Leventhal&Saville available quarter century ago (and not just a 6502 instruction reference sheet without any examples whatsoever).

 

That book shows you snippets for literally all (and more) things you'll possibly need in the beginning - arrays, strings, tables, math (mul/div) with nicely explained multi-page examples, stacks, all addressing modes in really nice detail, then goes on to examples with 16-bit math/arrays, even sorting / searching.

 

I still keep it open all the time and use for a reference, when needed.

[+David_P]

There's also source code available at 6502.org.

[Aces123]

Thanks ffor the suggestions so far. What would be the best alternative to Atari Roots? I tried it once and failed

[Kylev]

Aces123,

I used Machine Language for Beginners as my introduction to 6502 on an Atari. I don't claim to be more than a novice, but the examples provided in that book helped my understanding of the basics.

Edited October 2, 2017 by Kylev

[Aces123]

Do you mean this one http://www.atarimania.com/documents/Atari-130XE-Machine-Language-for-the-Absolute-Beginner.pdf

 

I used that one the last time I tried to learn assembler and I liked it. Or is it another book?

 

NVM: I think I found the book you meant, looks interesting. Thanks for the sugestion.

Edited October 3, 2017 by Aces123

[Bryan]

For me, the big hurdle to learning assembly was figuring out that you need to know a lot about the environment you'll be writing for. Sure, you can write some mnemonics and figure out what they'll produce, but you can't just start laying code down with abandon like you can in BASIC. You have to know how to play nice within the system as a whole, so you really have two things to learn.

[flashjazzcat]

Grab "SpeedScript" by Charles Brannon, type the assembly source listing into your assembler and compile it. Coupled with a good 6502 reference, this is how I learned 6502 assembler. A couple of years later, I was writing "The Last Word".

[+slx]

Some more suggestions here.

 

Bryan really has a good point. Getting Input and Output is a lot harder in assembly than in BASIC (although the joysticks aren't too bad and you could e.g. use them to manipulate color registers or sprites).

 

There's a 6502 online simulator which allows for easy trying out of code.

 

These days it's easier to try assembly on an emulator where you can step through code and see how registers and memory locations are changing.

Edited October 4, 2017 by slx

[Aces123]

Thanks for the link. A lot to dig through there