AppleLink APPLE II DEVELOPMENT FORUM CONFERENCE LOG December 20, 1988 10:00 pm Eastern Topic: Apple II Assembly Language Forum Leader: James Luther (AFL Jim) AFL Jim Well, I'm ready to go here if everyone else is! AFA Gary J Sounds good to me, have the banners passed our way yet? AFL Jim No banners, but they aren't always a rule around here. AFA Gary J Right. AFA Gary J I was just wondering where everyone was. Vacation, I guess. AFL Jim Once again, Rick and GS (BTW: what's your name?), welcome to the Apple II AFL Jim Development forum. Tonight's scheduled subject is Apple II assembly language. GS 816 my real name is Jim Shapiro, I have a consulting business in Milwaukee AFL Jim Good name, Jim :) AFA Gary J Hi Marty GS 816 that is named Group Support 8/16 (i.e. GS 816) AFL Marty Hi AFL Jim Hi Marty AFA Gary J Hi Parik, Dave. AFA Parik Hi all Dave Lyons Howdy! AFL Jim I'd like to start tonight's meeting by telling a little about a book I AFL Jim reviewed last month. AFL Jim It's "Programming the Apple IIGS in Assembly Langauge" by Ron Lichty and Dave Lyons (I finished my last final a little early, so I made it on time after all.) AFA Parik :) AFL Jim David Eyes. Ron and David both work in Apple's Developer Tools group. AFA Parik . AFL Jim Their last book was "Programming the 65816" AFA Gary J (good book) AFL Jim Anyway, their new book is the firt book I've seen that shows how to build a AFL Jim desktop program from the ground up. I *do* mean the ground. They start with AFL Jim a simple program that prints "hello, world" to the text screen and then add AFL Jim code a little piece at a time to show how the tools interact with each other AFL Jim and why certain things must be done to support new additions. They also cover AFL Jim the basics of using the APW shell with assembly language (sonething that is AFL Jim lacking in most other books) - that includes macros, the MACGEN utility, AFL Jim code segments in your source code and data segments. AFA Gary J I assume it explains how the APW shell works in connection with assembling and AFL Jim It should be in print sometime in January. AFA Gary J linking the sample source code provided? Gy813 whats the name of the newest book? AFL Jim right, Gary AFA Gary J Sounds good. An actual tutorial for IIGS assembly programming. AFL Jim The title is "Programming the IIGS in Assembly Language" by Ron Litchy and AFL Jim David Eyes. Gy813 thanks AFL Jim I've already suggested that they write two more versions of this book... AFL Jim one for C and one for Pascal, maybe even one for BASIC although there doesn't AFL Jim seem to be *any* standards in the IIGS BASIC world. AFL Jim Oh yeah... they will have an optional disk with all the programs and source AFA Gary J (I can tell I need some new book shelves already...) AFL Jim code. AFA Parik (do what I do Gary, wear the books... its great) AFA Gary J :) AFL Jim What's up with everyone else tonight? RTAFT Sounds like a real good one. I enjoyed their first effort about the 65xxx. I RTAFT found it to be the first one to really make sense to me. AFL Jim It's the book I use, too, Parik AFL Jim (oops, Rick :) AFA Parik :) RTAFT :) AFL Jim <- going blind RTAFT I know the feeling! AFL Jim Is it just here on AppleLink or is everyone switching over to the ORCA/APW AFL Jim assembler? AFA Parik Orca is fun. AFA Parik But Glen did say a new 16 bit version of Merlin is coming out. AFA Gary J It's really all there is, if you want compatability with all the samples. AFA Gary J Merlin does the job, but needs to have an easier conversion method. RTAFT I am NO expert at assembly. I use MERLIN 8/16. Is there much of a difference? AFA Parik In the output, no. Getting to the final output, yes. AFL Jim I don't have Merlin 8/16 (just Merlin Pro), but I've never been one to write a AFL Jim whole program in assembly unless I have to. The ORCA/APW system lets you mix AFL Jim object files from assembly, Pascal, C, whatever just by knowing the names of AFL Jim variables, procedure and functions. AFA Parik Hi scott! ScottG25 Hi Parik! AFL Jim What would you say Merlin's greatest strength is? ScottG25 AFA Parik Speed AFL Jim Speed? AFA Gary J Speed in Assembly/linking AFL Jim GMTA AFA Parik :-) AFA Gary J (But not necessarily debugging... :( AFA Parik (Hi Bruce!) DwightW1 convertin object to source code AFA Parik What? Who wrotes buggy code? hee hee AFL Jim The disassembler that comes with it is nice to have, too. GS 816 I think that is that there are/were som many that learned on Big Mac and the GS 816 original Merlin AFA Gary J Right. The Sourcerer is a nice plus. AFL Jim Right, Jim. I learned with Merlin, too. AFA Gary J (^^^ the disassembler) AFA Parik Also the applesoft disassembler is great. AFA Gary J I learned on the OLD LISA assembler. AFA Parik ? AFL Jim I've found ORCA makes MACROs much easier to use though... the fact that it AFL Jim comes with a complete macro library makes you see how much time macros can save AFL Jim you. AFL Jim GA Parik AFA Parik Is there a utility for Orca/M & APW that allows you to set all attributes of a AFL Jim (hi Kathryn) AFA Parik file? I mean auxtype, etc. KSUTHER Hi, sorry I'm late! AFA Parik (and all accessible access bits :) AFL Jim Parik: nope AFA Parik Good. I'm almost done. :) AFA Gary J :) AFL Jim Going to donate it? :) AFA Parik Of course. :) Which bit is the invisible bit? AFA Parik Also should I display information about resource fork? Its in the OPEN AFA Parik GS/OS parameter table, but I'm not sure if I should even show it. Dave Lyons (Davex lets you fiddle with Auxtypes and access bits! :_ AFA Parik hehe Dave Lyons (or even :)... :) AFL Jim What does Davex not do, Dave? Dave Lyons It doesn't search all the disks on your desk for a given file yet. That's Dave Lyons planned for a future version. :-) DwightW1 what is davex, dave? AFL Jim Parik. check page 105 of the GS/OS reference for a table showing *all* the AFL Jim access bits. AFA Parik will do Dave Lyons Dwight, Davex is a ProDOS 8 command shell & program launcher from DAL Systems, Dave Lyons which is me, Shareware for $25. It's available in the Utilities library. Dave Lyons (And Fun Stuff is going to start happening to Davex again, now that I'm out of Dave Lyons college & have more time to implement Good Ideas of my own & that users have Dave Lyons come up with.) AFA Gary J :) AFL Jim Davex-16? AFA Parik Davex 32? :) AFA Gary J And Nifty List too? Dave Lyons That too! There'll be a Davex 16 one of these months...can't promise whether Dave Lyons it will be Shareware or not. Nifty List is already -16, but I spoze you mean Dave Lyons will interesting things start happening to it again too--Yes! I'll get around KSUTHER Sounds interesting. Nice name, Dave. Dave Lyons to putting in the pattern search everybody wants, and fixing the screen dump, Dave Lyons and Who Knows what else! AFL Jim Does everyone know what Nifty List is? AFA Parik yes AFL Jim Say no if you want Dave to explain. DwightW1 thanks for the info dave (sorry, my modem disconnected me again) RTAFT no AFL Jim That's your cue, Dave AFA Gary J :) Dave Lyons Which name is inetersting, Kathy? Davex-16, or something else? Dave Lyons Okay, Nifty List is... Dave Lyons a CDA utility for programmers, or just people who like to wander around the Dave Lyons internals of the toolbox & their machine's memory & other people's programs; AFA Parik Hi Andy Dave Lyons the original idea was to provide a command like the monitor's L(ist) cmd to AndyWells Hello Dave Lyons disassemble 65816 code, but to display the NAMES of toolbox calls and ProDOS Dave Lyons calls in the margin. From that, it grew into a more general utility that Dave Lyons can, for example, show a list of all loaded toolsets along with several useful Dave Lyons pieces of info about each; display a list of allocated memory blocks along with Dave Lyons lots of useful stuff (like the Mangler) and also showing the name of the Dave Lyons file that owns that memory. You can also use it as a quick reference for the Dave Lyons toolbox (it knows the parameters for all the toolbox calls!), and you can do AndyWells Does anyone know of any debugger that will work in the 128k enviroment?? Dave Lyons screen dumps (text only) and dump data structures like Windows, Ports, Control Dave Lyons lists, etc. That gives you a fair idea; ask if I haven't told you enough! :) Dave Lyons [It's available in the AUT library as well as the ADV library, I think.] AFL Jim I know it is. RTAFT Sounds like you put a LOT of effort into it. I think I'll try it out :) KSUTHER Dave, how can we publish information on Shareware products and protect authors. AFL Jim Rick, it is a IIGS CDA KSUTHER You know, so they still benefit from their efforts. RTAFT I know - I'll bother the dealer. :) KSUTHER Any ideas on the subject? Dave Lyons RTAFT--yes, lots of effort, but mainly for selfish reasons: I needed the thing Dave Lyons to debug my own programs! AFA Gary J InCider is doing something with that, Kathryn. Dave Lyons Kathy, I guess I don't understand the question--how is publishing info on Dave Lyons Shareware products a problem in the first place? KSUTHER If we publish the code, it is all over. Really PDS. KSUTHER You commented about this a while back. AFA Gary J (Oh. InCider doesn't publish the code!) Dave Lyons You wouldn't want to publish Nifty List code anyway...would take many Dave Lyons issues! Or am I misunderstanding you? AFA Parik Why not just ask the author? KSUTHER Yea. Perhaps I misunderstood Dave.:) DwightW1 i think kathy means downloading the code from an online service DwightW1 ..getting away with it and for FREE!.. am i right kathy? KSUTHER It would be great to be able to make the code available in that fashion, yes. AFL Jim Kathy, did you mean publishing code as shareware in a magazine? KSUTHER I would like to get information out on great Shareware products. And help KSUTHER authors make a profit at the same time. AFL Jim If so, I think the better way would be to provide information in the magazine AFA Gary J Perhaps you could just have the author do an article about programming some AFL Jim and supply the software on disk (with the author's permission) AFA Gary J aspect of the shareware program, something like Dave did with the P8CDA KSUTHER I'm hoping Dave Lyons will grace our pages again. Dave Lyons I plan to! AFA Gary J (It was useful information, without giving the program away!) Dave Lyons Well, Shareware is freely distributable--if you want to provide it on disk, Dave Lyons that's no problem as long as I keep the copyright. Nifty List is already Dave Lyons available on some cheap ($3 or so?) disk from TechAlliance, I think. Probably Dave Lyons an outdated version right now, but that'll be fixed. KSUTHER No, certainly not to my knowledge! Dave Lyons Ummm...I _ordered_ it and received it when I saw it listed! It _was_ there! If Dave Lyons you think that interferes with my rights somehow, I wanna know about it :-) It Dave Lyons seems okay to me. KSUTHER Well, then this is exactly the point we need to straighten out. Thanks Dave. AFL Jim Kathryn, I think A2-Central (Open-Apple) is going to start their disk of the AFL Jim month in February. They are planning on including shareware (with permission) AFL Jim as well as PD software. KSUTHER That's great. As long as the authors come out ahead. I'm sure with Tom they Dave Lyons Hmmm...I'll have to send Tom a disk of all the lastest versions of DAL S's stf. KSUTHER will. That's the way to do it. :) AFL Jim Oh yeah... that's A2-Central (tm) and TechAlliance (tm) :)) KSUTHER I'm sure we could work something out along that line. Plus it would be great KSUTHER to have a regular column devoted to Shareware. KSUTHER Don't all volunteer to work in that arena at once.:) AFL Jim Any assembly questions boefre we continue the general discussion? AFA Gary J Andy had a question a screen or two back about a debugger for a 128k AFA Gary J environment. Did we answer that? AndyWells Hi Floyd AFL Jim Andy, the only debuggers I can think of are either 64K (old Apple II) debuggers Dave Lyons Anybody know much about Maxwell's Demon? Will that handle tracing thorugh AFL Jim or something for the IIGS. AFL Floyd AFA Parik There is a card that will do hardware debugs... Gary told us about it. AFL Jim Oh yeah... Dave Lyons progs that do 128K bank switching? AFA Gary J Right, Parik. It ONLY works on //e type machines at the present :( AndyWells I have Bugbyter, the one that runs 65C02 code, but I need more than that.. AFA Parik Did they ever make the GS version? AFA Gary J I think it still has problems (the IIGS version, that is. Last I heard) AndyWells It can handle aux page 0/ram card area switching up to a point, but I need AndyWells something that will handle full bank switching, and haven't found anything so AndyWells far.. AFA Parik Hi Shadow AndyWells I haven't gone far enough to write my own debugger, but I'd bet that if I had SHADOW52 hi AFL Jim Andy, I think a hardware debugger is about all that could handle all the bank AndyWells the source for bugbyter, I'd be able to modify it.. AFL Jim switching on the IIe. That AFL Jim That's what Quantum used to write this software. AFA Gary J Or...develop on a IIGS for //e's. AndyWells Are there any hardware debuggers out there though? I haven't seen any.. AFA Gary J There is supposed to be one from a company called ProDev, but I'm not even AndyWells I do not have a GS, and I haven't seen a complete debugger for it either.. AFA Gary J sure if it is final for the //e machines. They're supposed to have a IIGS AFA Gary J version too, but have run into problems. I've been meaning to follow up on AFA Gary J it. I'll check into it again. AndyWells Any info I can get will be appreciated.. AndyWells I have run into problems debugging MultiPro, and have a real need for something AFL Jim Any other questions? Comments? Suggestions? AndyWells to get me going again... AndyWells I missed that worm... AFL Jim It was on the Apple Cafe, Andy AndyWells Ok.. Thanks.. AFL Jim Kathryn, what's coming up in Call-APPLE? AndyWells Well, looks like I'm out of luck here... AFL Jim Gary, what's ProDev's address and phone number? AFL Jim Oops, Andy left AFL Jim Maybe you can EMail it to him and tell him to ask Morgan Davis about it since AFL Jim Morgan was playing with one. AFL Jim and... Gary left too :) AFA Gary J Whew. Made it back. AFL Jim Welcome back, Gary. We're just sitting here. AFA Gary J :) AFL Jim If you guys don't start typing.... well I'll think of something. Dave Lyons Well, if you don't have anything better to do, you can all pat me on the back Dave Lyons for passing Diff E.Q. :) AFA Gary J :) AFL Floyd Way to go Dave! ;) AFL Jim Oh yeah, congratulations on graduating, Dave! DwightW1 I HAVE A QUESTION..... AFA Parik ***Pat*** KSUTHER We've got a follow up article on GS/OS. More BASIC coverage. CD ROM... AFL Jim GA Dwight AFA Gary J DwightW1 where is the 11/22 assembly language log? DwightW1 .... i have yet to find it Dave Lyons {stagger} (Not quite so hard, guys... :-) AFL Jim 11/22... ahh on disk somewhere around here. AFL Jim That's one I need to upload. AFL Jim hold on and I'll EMail a copy to you. DwightW1 thanks a million!