Re: HELP!!!! TI-86 Owner is Lost!!!!
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Re: HELP!!!! TI-86 Owner is Lost!!!!
On Tue, 2 Sep 1997 14:59:26 -0400, Matthew Johnson <matt514@GTE.NET>
wrote:
>
>In fact, I'm sure everyone would agree with me that Z80 assembly is easier
>to learn then IBM/PC assembly
Actually, it isn't really. I program both (no, that's a misnomer. I
can make some simple zshell stuff.. I have written about 7000 pages of
intel asm code, including sound blaster routines, etc.).
x86/16 (x86-16bit) is quite close to the Z80 because it's the same
type of idea. They are both Soft (and hard) CISCy*. However, the x86
is more soft CISCy than the Z80. This means that running through the
command set of the Z80 is simpler than for the x86 (because the x86
has more commands..), actual applied programming requires all sorts of
tricks for the Z80, and not so for the x86. I still remember when
writing my first zshell program having to reference the allowed
references table A LOT. This isn't nearly as 'enforced' on the x86.
And of course, z-shell is much more complicated in operation. ie:
program_addr stuff is hard to grasp if you aren't familiar with
intricate assembler programming. I have done some binary additive
external library research, which involves literally sticking code at
some dynamically (ie: different everytime) allocated space and
executing that, so I didn't have a problem grasping that. To asm
beginners, it only makes things even more confusing.
and, I have to say, TASM took me a looooong time to figure out.
(like wasting 2 hours on figuring out why the heck TASM complained
about a .end directive. (Needed an enter after the .end).
Is anyone writing something better and simpler like NASM*? I am
thinking of recoding the instruction table of NASM and recompile it. I
don't know if the nasm crew will agree though, and it's all written in
ansi C (you mac people should really like this. NASM compiles to
everything. it only makes intel (or, if i port the inst table, Z80)
code, but it will run on the weirdest system. it's written in ansi C
and doesn't even assume little-endianness. Anyway, I don't like C much
myself, but porting the instruction table just can't be hard. But
before I go do that, has anyone done this earlier.
(I'm about to d/l HAL and see if HAL using only asm works well..)
* CISC stands for Complex Instruction Set (forgot).versus RISC. the
idea is to either have a complex set of instructions, which will
reduce the actual amount of instructions needed to do something, and
thus speed up (thats CISCy), or you could have very few 'commands',
all sized the same, etc, so that you can dedicate a ton of transistors
per instruction, and thus make em faster. HardRISCyness refers to the
processor working risc like internally (ie: MUL will work by sending a
loop of adds to the ADD portion of the processor: 3*5 becomes 5+5+5.)
SoftC/RISCyness refers to the actual instruction set. both the intel
and Z80 are very CISCy, but the intel is more softCISCy than the Z80.
*NASM, Netwide Assembler, is better than masm and tasm, it's freeware,
and it's just plain good, and has very extensive easy of programming
(you can pretty much program in it's macro language ;-P). and it sure
doesn't require all this annoying stuff like TASM :-).
References: