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<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN"> <HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>General Information</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY BGCOLOR="#692764" TEXT="#F5A0D8" LINK="#8AAEE6" VLINK="#2B9DA4" ALINK="#95F0DA"> <HR><CENTER> <TABLE BORDER=0 BGCOLOR="#000000" CELLPADDING=25> <TR> <TD><FONT COLOR="#FFFFFF"><H2>ASMotor General Information</H2></FONT></TD> </TR> </TABLE> </CENTER> <HR> <H2><CENTER>Table of Contents </CENTER></H2> <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><BR><A NAME="BlahBlahBlah">BlahBlahBlah</A></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><BR><A NAME="Author">The Author</A></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> <A NAME="Email">e-mail:</A><BR> <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><BR><A NAME="Introduction">Introduction</A></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><BR><A NAME="Installation">Installation</A></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><BR><A NAME="Documentation">The Documentation</A></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><BR><A NAME="History">History</A></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> </TR> <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> <BR><HR> <FONT SIZE="-1"><I><P ALIGN=RIGHT>Last updated 08 October 1997 by <A HREF="mailto:[email protected]">Carsten Sorensen</A></P></I></FONT> </BODY> </HTML>