I wrote assembler on the BBC micro which was a 6502 based machine like the C64. Your assembler was coded within a BASIC program, with the code was imbedded within a REPEAT/UNTIL that looped twice making it a manual two pass assembler. With no forward references, you could forgo the second pass! I wrote a printer driver for the Epson FX80 printer that had to fit in a 256-byte area assigned to printer drivers.
Robert Ngan DXC Luxoft -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Assembler List <ASSEMBLER-LIST@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> On Behalf Of Rob van der Heij Sent: Monday, December 30, 2024 13:11 To: ASSEMBLER-LIST@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU Subject: Re: Assembler vs. assembly vs. machine code On those small machines you often lacked an assembler and coded in hex On Mon, Dec 30, 2024, 19:43 Phil Smith III <li...@akphs.com> wrote: > (Cross-posted to IBM-MAIN, IBMVM, and the IBM assembler list) > > I just finished a book, The Impossible Fortress by Jason Rekulak, > which I quite enjoyed. Part of the plot involves characters writing > code on a Commodore 64, including some "machine code". It seemed clear > from the description that they meant what I'd call assembler; some > Googling quickly found > https://project64.c64.org/Software/mlcom.pdf, a guide to such programming for > the C64 which definitely seems to blur the terms. > > I wrote the author, who cheerfully confirmed that yes, they're used > interchangeably in that world. > > Which led me to wonder several things: > 1. Which platforms call it assembler and which call it assembly? (And > why?) 2. Am I odd in thinking that in our world, "machine code" is the > hex that the hardware expects, and assembler is the opcodes/mnemonics > that we mostly use? > 3. What are we "assembling"? > > On #1, I suspect that we call it assemblER because that's what ASMXF > and H and HL call themselves as much as any other reason. > https://en.w/ > ikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FAssembly_language&data=05%7C02%7Crobert.ngan%40d > xc.com%7C1ebebdacc5fd4a8c73e708dd2905ba49%7C93f33571550f43cfb09fcd331338d086%7C0%7C0%7C638711826773082741%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=5Y3kADqbdE%2Fq77dzKxWATBK7tKAszfZMGrrLDQ8vDSw%3D&reserved=0 > says in part "assembly language (alternatively assembler language...or > symbolic machine code)", which confirms that it's blurry but doesn't > otherwise clarify. > > It also answers, kinda, #3: > > The term "assembler" is generally attributed to Wilkes, Wheeler and > Gill in their 1951 book The Preparation of Programs for an Electronic > Digital Computer,... who, however, used the term to mean "a program > that assembles another program consisting of several sections into a single > program". > > So perhaps the two a-words aren't even really appropriate! Too late > now, of course... > > What say ye? Does any of this conflict with your usage/thoughts? > > ...phsiii >
