What assemblers are being used these days for 2600 dev?

[SmileyDude]

The last time I looked into 2600 homebrew, dasm seemed to be the assembler of choice.  But on other 6502 platforms, it seems cc65 is more popular these days.  What are people here using? I’ve used dasm quite a bit, but support for other platforms seems limited (the NES, for example).

[+Karl G]

Dasm is still the favorite by far. I know some people have used cc65, though, such as @gauauu.

[+SpiceWare]

Still using dasm.  It has a new home.

[+Gemintronic]

1 hour ago, SpiceWare said:

Still using dasm.  It has a new home.

Side question:  will SpiceC use dasm, something built from scratch or a combination of dasm and a pre-existing ARM compiler?

[+SpiceWare]

53 minutes ago, Gemintronic said:

Side question:  will SpiceC use dasm, something built from scratch or a combination of dasm and a pre-existing ARM compiler?

Dasm and Linaro 

[brfennpocock]

Personally, I use 64tass, but I came up on the Commodore 64.

[SmileyDude]

Interesting responses.  I’ll probably just stick with dasm for now, since it works.  But I’ve been dabbling with the NES and Apple II a bit and there just isn’t much support at all for either of those two platforms in dasm.  I’ve managed to make things work, but I had to do a lot of defining of registers myself that I didn’t need to do with the 2600.

[explorer]

xasm have a rich syntax.

[+Andrew Davie]

16 hours ago, SmileyDude said:

Interesting responses.  I’ll probably just stick with dasm for now, since it works.  But I’ve been dabbling with the NES and Apple II a bit and there just isn’t much support at all for either of those two platforms in dasm.  I’ve managed to make things work, but I had to do a lot of defining of registers myself that I didn’t need to do with the 2600.

So. Contribute your code to the dasm repository and help improve the assembler!
There are a few machines supported; the only way this gets added to is by people doing their own and sharing their work!

[+JAC!]

I use all of the above when required, bat I prefer MADS on all platforms and it is compatible for XASM, MAC/65 and under active development. There are samples for all platforms in the download of the zero installation version of WUDSN IDE, too.
 

 

[+SvOlli]

ca65 of cc65, which I use for C64 coding as well. I like the idea with the linker scripts very much.

All source code release so far is available at https://xayax.net/ (tarballs) and https://git.h8u.de/Atari_2600_Demos (git).

 

[gauauu]

I'm late to the party, but just now saw the mention of me above.

 

I've used dasm for one project (Anguna) and ca65 for another (Robo-Ninja Climb).  My suggestion is sticking with dasm if you're really focusing on atari (it's easy, it works well, and the majority of folks here use it so it's easier to get help when you're stuck), but ca65 if you plan to work on other 6502 systems. It's got a higher learning curve for setting up your rom output, but is really nice and configurable once you learn it.