[ale] so im crazy

[Charles Shapiro]

Uh, hmm.. I wrote in RCA 1802 machine code (not assembler) on a
Netronics elf II for a time, similar to (but even smaller and less
featureful than) the 
one documented at
http://www.qwkslva.com/~abond/Museum/Netronics_Elf/netronics_elf.html. I
still have the machine, but last I plugged it in it din't work, alas.
It's an antique now. Writing in machine code is close to what you'd call
"writing a program in hex"; I had to calculate and track things like
destinations of jumps and data locations by hand, instead of sticking a
label into the text and letting an assembler take care of that chore. It
was grueling. I filled a lot of notebooks with hand-written columns of
numbers.

Machine code//assembler//low-level code rapidly becomes
machine-dependent. This tends to make it a good training exercise, but
the specific knowledge you gain is of limited utility for anything
except the very machine on which you're playing. Of course, writing a
significant ( over 100 lines ) assembly-language program will teach you
a lot both about how much you want to write code and how the guts of
software really works. If you're gonna write code for a living, you
should definitely write such a thing. But probably only once. I've
written in assembly code for MS-DOS, but not for anything more complex.

You might want to check out menuet (http://menuetos.org). It is an
entire windowing and  multitasking OS written in assembly language. The
OS, several really k00l sample programs, a development toolchain, all
the source, and all of the documentation fit neatly on a single
high-density boot floppy. It's somewhat sensitive about video cards, but
if you can find a PC with the correct display hardware and get the thing
to boot, it's definitely worth exploring. 

-- CHS

-----Original Message-----
From: Cadet Hacker [mailto:linux at cade.org]
To: ale at ale.org
Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2001 2:48 PM
To: Irv Mullins
Cc: ale at ale.org
Subject: Re: [ale] so im crazy


"Simple single-board micro"? what is that, sounds like a good
educational
device? got an url or a name brand or something?

--cade

On Wed, 19 Dec 2001, Irv Mullins wrote:

> A warning is in order here: since you will be working directly with
the 
> processor, it's very easy to make a misteak that can trash (not just
crash) 
> the whole computer. Better learn with an old pc, or better yet, a
simple 
> single-board micro. 
> 
> Regards,
> Irv
> 
> 
> ---
> This message has been sent through the ALE general discussion list.
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-- 
--cade
=========================
On Linux vs Windows --
Remember amateurs built the ark - professionals built the Titanic
=========================


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