comp.sys.acorn.programmer Google Group

Re: Learning ARM assembler...

ga...@wra1th.plus.com (Gavin Wraith) — Sun, 11 Nov 2009 12:27:32 UT

In message <23f71761-f389-49be-ac9e-407b2 740b...@v25g2000yqk.googlegrou ps.com>
One of my criteria for a good programming language is to what extent it
allows the programmer a useful mental picture of what actually happens
when the program runs - the operational semantics. No picture can
be entirely accurate; it is a question of compromise. Assembly languages

Re: Learning ARM assembler...

chrisbaz...@bigfoot.com — Sun, 11 Nov 2009 11:22:42 UT

I'd like to take credit for that, but I really can't. All I did was
hack the copy protection, fix lots of bugs, rewrite the sound player
module, make the game code into a state machine, and bolt on a desktop
interface. A huge amount of work, but not really the part that people
appreciate. :-)
You make a good point, although conceivably that kind of thing could

Re: Learning ARM assembler...

tslett...@gmail.com (Terje Slettebø) — Sat, 11 Nov 2009 23:32:42 UT

On 6 Nov, 20:22, Christopher Bazley
Hi Chris.
Great to hear from one of the authors (or maybe the author) of
Starfighter 3000, my favourite Archimedes game... :)
And extASM isn't even mentioned. Hrmmmf... :)
Granted, it's understandable, as hardly anyone knows about it, not at
least because it has no (proper) homepage, and it hasn't been updated

Re: Learning ARM assembler...

christopher.baz...@blueyonder.co.uk (Christopher Bazley) — Fri, 11 Nov 2009 19:22:13 UT

In message <02083a60-2a2c-4ee1-91f7-41894 e394...@c3g2000yqd.googlegrou
ps.com>
Up a gear? I'm not sure that metaphor works: In higher gears the
wheels of a car rotate more times per revolution of the engine's
crankshaft. Likewise, a single statement in a high-level programming
language typically encapsulates more behaviour than a statement in a

Re: STDumper (Initial version released.)

use...@garethlock.com (Gazza) — Fri, 11 Nov 2009 17:23:44 UT

Made a few changes to the way that the tools initialised libraries.
Added a feature to the SWAdmin tool that allows the user to save a
dump of the brief report to the root directory of the database.
Cleaned a few other things up and included LibASH in preparation for a
re-write of the SmartWord parsing feature inside the Filter tool.

Re: Filer_OpenDir Oddity in RISC OS 6.16

pd.mill...@tiscali.co.uk (pdm) — Fri, 11 Nov 2009 00:18:30 UT

<snip>
Thanks for the reply. I was beginning to think it was just happening
my system.
I encountered the oddity a day before my Select subscription ran out,
and I hadn't
got round to joining the Select discussion group. I sent an email to
RISCOS Ltd
support but didn't get a reply.
I tried this on RISC OS 4.02, 4.39, 5.11 and 6.16 and got the same

Re: Learning ARM assembler...

j...@spamnet.junk (jl) — Thu, 11 Nov 2009 11:58:11 UT

In article
<ae63c1c0-e236-43a2-a91a-1b410 aaf1...@15g2000yqy.googlegroup s.com>,
I did that once for my program !Planets. A small machine code routine
which wrote directly to screen memory. It is a hack and only works in one
mode - but work it did.
Jochen

Re: Learning ARM assembler...

tslett...@gmail.com (Terje Slettebø) — Thu, 11 Nov 2009 10:12:49 UT

Sounds like fun. :)
I think you will find learning assembly code rewarding... I agree with
you about x86 vs ARM: I would never want to write x86 assembly code...
Then I'd rather go for a higher-level language. However, I've found
writing ARM assembly quite fun and rewarding, and as mentioned in an
earlier post, I'm currently updating the extASM ARM assembler, which

Re: Filer_OpenDir Oddity in RISC OS 6.16

b.bo...@bcs.org (BernardUK) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:32:49 UT

I noticed a similar oddity with Filer_OpenDir under 6.16 on my RiscPC,
and put the question into a post on the Select discussion group on 1
October. But it has not yet received an answer from Developer.
To demonstrate at least something wrong (by comparison with 4.39 and
5.14), try having a TestDir and making two obeyfiles:

Re: Learning ARM assembler...

use...@garethlock.com (Gazza) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:10:48 UT

On Nov 3, 4:11 pm, Theo Markettos <theom+n...@chiark.greenend.or g.uk>
wrote:
Well... I think I'll eventually end up doing what I started out
thinking about in the sense that I'll one day get that Invaders clone
you saw running at the show on the 3rd October moved from raw BASIC
to, at least, partial assembler. Once I have the speed and knowledge

Re: Is it me, or is this doing something odd?

j...@arcade.demon.co.uk (Jonathan Graham Harston) — Tue, 11 Nov 2009 13:12:04 UT

I temporarily forgot about =END, as I was paraphrasing from some
version-independant library code (eg mdfs.net/blib/ProgEnv)

Re: Learning ARM assembler...

theom+n...@chiark.greenend.org.uk (Theo Markettos) — Tue, 11 Nov 2009 16:11:52 UT

So what did you end up doing? Did we convince you that you really wanted to
learn Haskell, or .NET, or Z? ;-)
Theo

Re: Learning ARM assembler...

use...@garethlock.com (Gazza) — Tue, 11 Nov 2009 14:53:51 UT

When I started this thread a while back looking for a beginner's guide
to programming Acorn machines in BBC BASIC's built in assembler, I
never knew I'd open such a can of worms. It's been fun reading it.

Re: STDumper (Initial version released.)

use...@garethlock.com (Gazza) — Tue, 11 Nov 2009 14:47:44 UT

New release available...
This seems to have a few more bugs introduced. For some reason, the
output produced by Filter when SmartWord filtering is turned on loses
all spaces between words. I have no idea why as I haven't made any
changes to this. The main part of the update has been to expand the
dictionary to over 5000 words. Still a long way to go, but the program

Re: Is it me, or is this doing something odd?

st...@kappa.me.uk (Steve Drain) — Tue, 11 Nov 2009 14:17:38 UT

That does look dodgy. ;-)
Basalt 0.98 has the function RETURN$, which /copies/ a string from a
buffer, either terminated by a control character or with a given
length. It also has RETURN$ as a statement that inserts a CR (or any
other character if needed) directly into the buffer so that the string
can be read as $buffer%.