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<TD><FONT COLOR="#FFFFFF"><H2>ASMotor General Information</H2></FONT></TD>
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<H2><CENTER>Table of Contents
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<UL>
<LI><A HREF="#BlahBlahBlah">BlahBlahBlah</A>
<LI><A HREF="#Author">The Author</A>
<LI><A HREF="#Introduction">Introduction</A>
<LI><A HREF="#Installation">Installation</A>
<LI><A HREF="#Documentation">The Documentation</A>
<LI><A HREF="#History">History</A>
</UL>
<BR><HR><H3 id="BlahBlahBlah">BlahBlahBlah</H3>
<P>The <B>ASMotor</B> package (<A HREF="asm.htm">xAsm</A>, <A HREF="link.htm">xLink</A>, <A HREF="fix.htm">RGBFix</A>, examples and <A HREF="#Documentation">documentation</A>) is freeware and distributed as is. The
author retains his copyright and right to modify the specifications and operation of the software without notice.
<P>In other words this means I encourage you to...
<UL>
<LI>use it for whatever purpose even professional work without me charging you a penny
<LI>copy it to another person (wholly or in part, though I'm sure he'd appreciate the whole package) in
whatever form you find suitable
<LI>mass-distribute the <B>ASMotor</B> package if it is complete (<A HREF="asm.htm">xAsm</A>, <A HREF="link.htm">xLink</A>, <A HREF="fix.htm">RGBFix</A> and documentation).
<LI>contact me if you have any problems
</UL>
<P>This also means you can't...
<UL>
<LI>blame me for loss of profit, data, sleep, food or other nasty things through the use or distribution of <B>ASMotor</B>. If
you choose to use <B>ASMotor</B> you do so at your own risk.
<LI>expect me to be able to help you should you have a problem related or not to <B>ASMotor</B>.
</UL>
<P>I am happy to say that xAsm and xLink use PMODE/W as DOS-extender for the MS-DOS port! This means fast assembling of your sourcecodes. A lot faster. PMODE/W is a drop-in replacement for the bulky DOS4GW. If you are a programmer you should check out <A HREF="http://www.di.net/pmw">http://www.di.net/pmw</A><BR>
"PMODE/W is Copyright (c) 1994-1997, Charles Scheffold and Thomas Pytel. All rights reserved."<BR>
<BR><HR><H3 id="Author">The Author</H3>
<P>Any questions? Write me!<BR>
<BR>
Carsten Sorensen<BR>
1 Spring Court<BR>
Guildford<BR>
Surrey GU2 6QW<BR>
United Kingdom<BR>
<BR>
<h4 id="Email">e-mail:</h4>
<A HREF="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</A> (private)<BR>
<A HREF="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</A> (work)<BR>
<BR>
Get the latest version from my web page at <A HREF="http://www.matilde.demon.co.uk">http://www.matilde.demon.co.uk</A>
<BR><HR><H3 id="Introduction">Introduction</H3>
<P><B>ASMotor</B> is a package currently consisting of three programs (<A HREF="asm.htm">xAsm</A>, <A HREF="link.htm">xLink</A> and <A HREF="fix.htm">RGBFix</A>) originally designed for development on the Gameboy hand-held
video-game console by Nintendo but recently it has moved towards being a target independent shell for making development of new
assemblers for different processors easier.<BR>
<A HREF="asm.htm">xAsm</A> is a decently fast assembler (up to <I>800000 lines/minute</I> (hrm well actually that's for 16384 lines of NOP's ;) on a P-120). It converts an assembler source into the <A HREF="rgb0.htm">RGB object-fileformat</A>.<BR>
<A HREF="link.htm">xLink</A> is used to link multiple (one or more) object files together into one target file eg. a Gameboy ROM or Psion2 relocatable module.<BR>
<A HREF="fix.htm">RGBFix</A> is used to apply some final cosmetic details to a Gameboy ROM-image.<BR>
<P>This document does not try to teach you how to program in assembler, how to program a specifix processor or the Gameboy.
It does just briefly explain the features of <A HREF="asm.htm">xAsm</A> and <A HREF="link.htm">xLink</A>. Sometimes I will assume that you have actually worked with assemblers before and that you are familiar with the target processor.
<P>Why another assembler? There seems to be millions out there! This project started out as a Gameboy assembler because none of the available assemblers had the features I wanted. Now the reason is I want to make the most powerful assembler. Ever ;) And I want to be able to re-use it easily whenever I encounter a new system with another processor.
Don't like it? Something you'd like to see added? <A HREF="#Email">Mail me</A> and I'll see what I can do.
<P>The <A HREF="asm.htm">assembler</A> and <A HREF="link.htm">linker</A> are written entirely in ANSI C using Bison for the parser. I try to maintain two pre-compiled ports of <B>ASMotor</B>, one for the MS-DOS environment and one for Linux. Bison
is a GNU tool (compiler-compiler) tailored to aid in the development of compilers which you will need if you want to compile it afresh.<BR>
<BR><HR><H3 id="Installation">Installation</H3>
<P>Anywhere on your HD will do. For maximum enjoyment I recommend adding the directory to your path.
Alternatively you can run it from a floppy.<BR>
<BR><HR><H3 id="Documentation">The Documentation</H3>
<P>The documentation only comes in one flavour. HTML. This has several advantages for me
<UL>
<LI>It's a more "portable" format.
<LI>Not everybody has the nice fonts I used in the Word file.
<LI>Hypertext r00lz. (Typesetting for programmers ;)
<LI>I can put it "as is" on <A HREF="http://www.matilde.demon.co.uk">my web page</A>.
</UL>
<BR><HR><H3 id="History">History</H3>
<TABLE BORDER=1>
<CAPTION><I>The history of ASMotor</I></CAPTION>
<TR>
<TD ALIGN="Center"><B><I>Version</I></B></TD>
<TD ALIGN="Center"><I><B>Dated</B></I></TD>
<TD><B><I>Release notes</I></B></TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD ALIGN="Center">1.0</TD>
<TD ALIGN="Center">03 July 1997</TD>
<TD>First release</TD>
</TR>
<TR>
<TD ALIGN="Center">1.01</TD>
<TD ALIGN="Center">20 July 1997</TD>
<TD><B>RGBDS fixes:</B><BR>
RGBFix can now also truncate the ROM-images to a valid size.<BR>
RGBAsm supports the LDD and LDI syntax plus [HLD] and [HLI]. LDH is
synonymous with LDIO.<BR>
Example filenames have been changed to adhere to Jeff Frohweins proposed
standard.<BR>
<B>General fixes:</B><BR>
RGBLink knows about big and little endian. Plus it can do range checking
on intermediate results in an expression. This is necessary to support
different types of CPUs.<BR>
RGBLink DIDN'T know about the special PC symbol "@" so if you used it
more than once per sourcefile in an expression the linker had to
resolve, things would go horribly wrong.<BR>
There was a bug in the macro parameter passing. Any whitespace after the
last parameter would be appended to the last parameter. Reported by Jeff Frohwein.<BR>
A section stack has been implemented. Look up POPS and PUSHS in the
manual. Jeff Frohweins doing again.<BR>
OPT command added for defining and changing some options while assembling.<BR>
You can now define which characters are used for the Gameboy graphics
integer (`) using the commandline or the new OPT command. Cool idea by (surprise surprise) Jeff Frohwein.<BR>
Also, an option stack has been added. Look up POPO and PUSHO in the
manual.<BR>
Fixed yet another line number bug reported by Jeff Frohwein (when will this guy leave me alone? ;)<BR>
</TD>
<TR>
<TD ALIGN="Center">1.02</TD>
<TD ALIGN="Center">22 July 1997</TD>
<TD><B>General fixes:</B><BR>
The lamest typo bug of all time has been fixed. RGBAsm would output a word defined with DW as 4 bytes instead of 2. Jeff Frohwein reported this.<BR>
The first line of an included file didn't assemble correctly.<BR>
-b option added for setting the characters used for binary constants.<BR>
</TD>
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<TR>
<TD ALIGN="Center">1.10</TD>
<TD ALIGN="Center">21 Sep 1997</TD>
<TD><B>General fixes:</B><BR>
The assembler would crash if you tried to use a macro symbol in an expression.
(Jeff Frohwein)<BR>
You couldn't use STRCMP, STRLEN and STRIN in relocatable expressions. (Harry
P. Mulder)<BR>
Relocatable symbols are no longer allowed as arguments to the DEF function.<BR>
Finally! A librarian and smart linking has been added.<BR>
Bug fixed in the assembler where it would sometimes write out too many bytes
for HRAM section definitions.<BR>
-z options (set fill value used for uninitialised data) added to the
assembler and linker.<BR>
The assembler will now read in any type of ASCII file on any type of OS.
</TABLE>
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<FONT SIZE="-1"><I><P ALIGN=RIGHT>Last updated 08 October 1997 by <A HREF="mailto:[email protected]">Carsten Sorensen</A></P></I></FONT>
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