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APPLE II DEVELOPMENT FORUM CONFERENCE LOG
October 10, 1989 10:00 pm eastern time
Topic: Assembly Langauge Programming
Forum Leader: Dave Sugar (AFL Dyfet)
AFL Dyfet Well, this looks like a very unusual group here tonight :)
AFA Gary J Unusual?
AFA Parik we all have humpbacks?
AFL Dyfet Hey, I think that worm is for us :)
Doctor Why Did I forget to zip up? :)
AFL Jack unusual? Do we all snore?
RosenNeil Hey...Developers ARE unusual!
Doctor Why (and proud of it)
AFL Dyfet This is true, Neil :)....Hello KingsX :)
AFL Marty I resemble that remark!
AFA Gary J unusually usual.
AFL Marty as usual
RosenNeil Is this a usual meeting of the unusual usuals?
AFL Dyfet Tonight, as the banner says, we will be focusing on Assembly
Language
AFL Marty It usually is :)
AFL Dyfet Programming...I think, for the moment, we will dispense with
protocol :)
RosenNeil Which assembler to most people here usually use? Just curious
AFA Parik clc? adc? wdc? xba! pei. whoops, data overflow
AFA Gary J Oh no. Usually? :)
AFL Dyfet I am kinda fond of Merlin 16+ for small projects myself :)...Fast
to get in,
Doctor Why someone grab the bit bucket!
AFL Dyfet fast to code, and fast to get it out the door :)
Coach101 Myself, ASM65816 Apw
AFL Dyfet Or call for Fortran Man's sidekick, Billy Bit :)
AFA Parik orca/m forever.
AFA Gary J ORCA/M and Merlin here.
TimY2 I usualllly Orca/M.
JDavies1 Orca kicks!
Doctor Why What little I do, I use ORCA/M.
AFA Parik has anyone checked out lisa? Its pretty cool. VERY VERY VERY
fast. But its
AFA Parik interface is a bit awkward. :(
AFL Dyfet Orca I feel is supperior for LARGE projects :), but for quick and
dirty things,
AFA Gary J Merlin's fast too.
AFL Dyfet I do like Merlin :)
JDavies1 Is it the same as the old LISA (2.5?) for 6502?
AFA Parik Lisa is faster. ;)
AFA Parik Its been improved tremendously JDavies. Its a mousetext based
editor, desktop
RosenNeil Hi Phil
AFL Marty Why do you feel ORCA is superior?
AFA Parik sorta thing (text though), mouse support, etc.
AFL Dyfet Lisa is a little combersome to use, and I can't list out their
source files
AFL Dyfet with my nifty listing utility :)
AE PhilM Hi Niel
AFA Parik It uses less memory and is faster than APW Marty. Its not menu
based like
JDavies1 ORCA's desktop is pretty cool.
AE PhilM (Neil)
AFA Parik merlin.
AFA Gary J ORCA or APW is the only way to go if you want to combine multiple
languages.
AFL Marty Assuming you don't need to combine multiple languages, is there
much advantage
AFL Marty in one over the others?
RosenNeil Thats what I like about ORCA since I love (ducking) Pascal!
Coach101 The expandable shell of Orca/Apw are really useful also...
AFA Gary J I love ducking Pascal too.
AE PhilM The enviroment.....and partial assemblies are a BIG time saver!
AFA Parik there are a ton of utilities for apw/orca also.
AFL Dyfet And you can script and batch assemble/link/everything :)
Coach101 PASCAL? Is that the "pseudo" language used to train
programmers?
AE PhilM With partials I can turn over an 80000 line program in under 2
minutes.
RosenNeil Hey...If Pascal is used properly (like I use it), It is a good
language
AFA Parik are you using the new linker Phil?
TimY2 But APW takes up a lot of space in bank 01. Correct?
AE PhilM Yes
Coach101 How do you edit an 80,000 line program (it has comments doesn't
it)?
AFA Parik Tim - I use orca/m and it doesn't use up any of bank $01, as long
as my program
AFA Parik is not a shell base. You must make it s16.
AE PhilM You need memory and a hard disk to run APW or ORCA effectively.
TimY2 Ahhhhhh..I see.
AFA Parik (otherwise the orca/m prodos intercept gets in the way)
RosenNeil memory is an UNDERSTATEMENT!
AFA Parik Phil, is the new linker faster or slower for you?
AE PhilM The program source takes up 3 3.5inch disks and is spread over 60
files
AFA Gary J wow
A GibberFC )bak(
AE PhilM Faster....If you do basic stuff and dont have a lot of segments.
AE PhilM MPW/GS is also VERY nice...that is if you dont mind using a MAC
:))
Coach101 Howdy Dave...
RosenNeil Phil......no dirty language in here :)
Coach101 Phil, do you prefer partial assemblies/compiles (Orca) or
individual
Coach101 files (MPW)?
AE PhilM Im used to both now. I like partials a lot...and I also like
files. I used
AE PhilM UNIX in college it's a different way of structuring your source
code but its
AE PhilM just that (different) not bad.
DavidD117 What is out for System v5.0?
RosenNeil or is 5.0.2 out yet for that matter?
AFL Dyfet What do you mean, David? In terms of utilities/tools?
DavidD117 Yes
Coach101 :)
AE PhilM We recieved 5.0.2 today....tomorrow we will re-master Vulcans and
all our
AE PhilM other stuff and start shipping 5.0.2 !!!
AFA Parik what? you're not gonna wait for 5.0.3? ;) (just kidding)
AFL Dyfet Well, there is APW 2.0, with express and Rez edit, Dave :)
JDavies1 What exactly was wrong woith 5.0?
AFL Dyfet (I should say Rez compiler and de-compiler, not edit :)
Coach101 Apw 2.0 is out????
RosenNeil When will 5.0.2 be available to us?
AFA Parik will both disks have to be put online, or can it be just the indiv
files?
AFL Dyfet Neil, I have not seen the terms of electronic distribution for
5.0.2 yet, so
Dave Lyons BTW, Express and Rez are just part of "APW Tools and Interfaces
Update" or
AFL Dyfet I do not know myself how soon we can put it up :)
DavidD117 <--- has problems with downloading for four hours
Dave Lyons something like that...they work fine with APW 1.0.
AFL Dyfet OIC, he asked 'OUT' :)
Coach101 Dave Lyons, to your knowledge is Apw 2.0 available from Apda
now?
JDavies1 The disk for Tools and Interfaces cost $50.
AE PhilM Yes Dave, WHEN CAN WE GET APW 2.0???
Dave Lyons Nope, APW 2.0 is not available yet.
AE PhilM Has anyone seen the new disassembler from the Byte Works?
AFA Parik i've got it. pretty neat!
AFA Gary J I'd like to see it, it sound pretty neat!
Coach101 BTW, there are some disagreements between the new tools the Orca
shell
Coach101 and compilers....
AFA Parik It disassembled appleworks GS. LOL
JDavies1 What's the new disassembler?
AE PhilM Yeah....its really nice.
AFA Gary J How is it being marketed? Is it an add-on utility to ORCA/M?
AFA Parik Its a seperate program for $49.95 (ouch)
AFA Parik Its written by Paul Elseth.
AFA Gary J $49.99 list?
AFA Parik yes.
AFA Parik the new disassembler is a add on for apw/orca that will
disassemble any program
DavidD117 what about copy protection?
AFA Parik that is a BIN, S16, EXE, and a few others I believe. It works
great, it has
JDavies1 Where can it be found?
RosenNeil They were selling it at AFest....but it had to be mail to you :(
AFA Parik abilities for scripts, etc. It even has a script for
disassembling the GS
AFA Parik roms! I bought it at Applefest (the DOCS had to be mailed to me)
and it works
AFA Parik like a charm. david - yes, you can disassemble a copy protected
program and
AFA Parik then break the protection using the source.
AE PhilM Its not copy protected. Any one thought of writting scripts that
would
AFA Gary J What
DavidD117 :)
AE PhilM disassemble the Apple ROMS :))
AFA Gary J Oops... what was the going price for it at AppleFest?
AFL Dyfet Assuming you can bring it into memory and save it as a file, David
:)
AFA Gary J (not list, I hope :)
RosenNeil can you disassemble the disassebler?
RosenNeil no gary...50% off $25.00
AE PhilM No the scrip that comes with it for disassembling the ROM is
pretty lame....I
AFA Gary J That's what I figured.
AE PhilM mean REALLY disassemble the ROMS...comments and all :)
JDavies1 Do you get it from ByteWorks? Or where.
DavidD117 Does anyone know much about using assembly and the Apple Video
Overlay Card?
AFA Parik $25.00. It comes as a desktop version and a shell version. True
Phil. It
AFA Parik did put in a lot of garbage. :(
AFA Gary J each version is $49.95, or do you get both versions?
AFA Parik I bought it at the byteworks booth at AppleFest Jdavies.
AFA Parik You get both versions.
RosenNeil Parik...Do you know if it can disassemble DAs?
AFA Parik yes it can.
JDavies1 Thanks Parik
AFA Gary J Sounds neat.
AFA Gary J How do you proceed through a disassembly? What steps do you
take, and
Doctor Why Parik, when did you get the docs?
AFA Parik it requires 5.0 by the way.
AFL Dyfet Dissasembly of 16 bit applications could be very tricky,
considering all the
AFA Gary J can you back up the disassembly if you find your getting into
data?
Coach101 Did any of the RezEditors make it to market yet?
AFA Parik I still haven't gotten then Wayne. :( You load a file, and then
it'll dis it.
AFL Dyfet ways and places one can switch modes...I would be impressed by a
product that
AFL Dyfet could even attempt to handle that well :)
Doctor Why I'm waiting for them also. :(
AFA Gary J Merlin's dissasembler can handle the changes as it comes to them,
but of course
DavidD117 Has anyone used the Apple Video Overlay Card?
AFA Gary J there's problems if any modes are switched in a subroutine.
AFL Dyfet Merlin's dissasembler can handle simple 'linear' situations, but,
as you just
Dave Lyons Yup, I have a video overlay & have used it some.
AFL Dyfet pointed out, it can get lost with a switch in a subroutine :)
AFA Parik Its also difficult to tell where text areas are as it doesn't
print ascii eqivs
JDavies1 To create a game like Dragon SLayer? If anyone remembers that.
AFL Dyfet The ultimate test of any smart dissasembler is to use it on a long
file, re-
AFA Parik very possible JDavies. Expensive though. ;)
AFL Dyfet assemble the source it produces, and see if it really runs :)
AFA Parik APDA now sells some video toolkit tools, look in forumlink
(keyword forumlink)
AFA Parik for more information.
AE PhilM Dyfet, the disassmebler is an interactive tool not magic. It just
makes your
JDavies1 Well the Game would come with a player (Apple of course) @$1249
each.
AE PhilM job easier of interpreting the code...thats all.
AFL Dyfet That was the point I was trying to bring accross, Phil...I have
seen some
AFL Dyfet very sufisticated dissasemblers for other CPU's, but those have
been done for
AE PhilM In the 68000 (especially the Mac) where DATA and CODE are
seperated that is
AFL Dyfet hardware that does not have opcodes which change state and mode
:)
AE PhilM much easier to do...that is not the case with the 65816 and thus
impossible.
AE PhilM Unless the disassembler is "smart" enought to distinguish code
from data...that
AE PhilM would require super AI capabilities.
AFL Dyfet That is also true, Phil :)...If good consistant programming
practices are used,
RosenNeil as opposed to super AE capabilities? :)
Dave Lyons (It would require more than super AI...you could write code where
some stuff
Dave Lyons is *both* code and data. :-)
JDavies1 I have a real problem doing that. And that's with RI.
AFA Gary J Parik, I missed if you answered about "backing up" the program
counter during
AFL Dyfet the product should be able to provide a very reliable source :)
AE PhilM True Dave
AFA Parik In the past two minutes I just disassembled shrinkit. hehehe
AFA Gary J a disassembly. Can the ORCA disassembler do that?
AFA Parik what do you mean backing up pc? you mean between jsls?
AE PhilM True Dyfet...but there are times that I purposely mix data and
code just to
AE PhilM make it a little tougher for the hacker to take apart the code.
:))
AFA Gary J No, like if you are disassemling along, and find yourself into
data, or
JDavies1 Doesn't Merlin16's Sourceror do the same things?
AFL Dyfet With a suitable bit of recursion and some deduction and a little
smarts, you
Dave Lyons Gary, Mike W demo'd it to me briefly at AFest...you just select
part of the
AFL Dyfet can find MANY instances of mixed code and data...
AFA Gary J ASCII stuff. Can you re-position your program counter to back-up
to where
AFA Gary J you were still getting good code?
AFA Parik It disassembles the WHOLE thing Gary.
AFA Parik You then run through it afterwords.
Dave Lyons disassembly and choose a menu item to re-disassemble that part in
a different
Dave Lyons way.
AFA Gary J Ugh.
AFA Gary J Oh.
AFA Gary J That's not too bad, then.
AFA Parik thats right - you can make str's, etc. But it has no text display
(ascii chars
DavidD117 Does anyone know what GSOS is written in?
AFA Parik so its a bit difficult unless you print out the file.
AFL Dyfet An easy and interactive tool is what is often needed :)...the
results may not
AE PhilM GS/OS is written in Assemble (I hope)
AFL Dyfet be perfect, but it can be very useful and usable, especially when
studying
JDavies1 GSOS is hopefully
AFA Gary J AppleSoft basic
AFL Dyfet other programs to learn from them :)
JDavies1 written in assembly
Dave Lyons Yes, GS/OS is all written in assembly.
AFA Parik prodos 16 was written in logo I hear... ;)
AFA Gary J :)
AE PhilM :)
JDavies1 No Parik thats GSWorks.
AFL Dyfet No, Parik, in Pilot :)
RosenNeil maybe BASIC
Doctor Why I heard that it was written on July FORTH.
Dave Lyons (Next topic, anyone? :)
DavidD117 Copy protection
AFA Parik whats apple's new IIe/c tools for development? (new assembler or
something
AFA Gary J What about it?
AFA Parik announced at KC?)
AFL Dyfet Let's cover David's question first, people :)
AFA Gary J It's probably part of MPW, Parik :)
AFL Dyfet Now, what precisely is your question, David?
JDavies1 Do you mean cracking it or protecting your own stuff?
DavidD117 cracking so it can be used with a hard disk
DavidD117 Is there any programs out there like copy plus but for the Apple
DavidD117 .
JDavies1 I agree with that especially If Brian Greenstone is on.
AFL Dyfet There are a number of programs for COPYING protected software, but
none of
JDavies1 Why ask for the master disk every level?
AFL Dyfet those packages allow you to do more than that; You cannot use it
to install
AFL Dyfet protected software onto a harddisk, for example.
AFA Parik Copy II+ exists for the Apple II david.
JDavies1 Kill the ServiceMgr
AFA Gary J Didn't Copy II+ have some patches or something like that?
AFA Parik Copy II+ does indeed allow hard drive installation.
AFA Gary J I thought so.
DavidD117 on the gs?
AFA Gary J Yes.
AFL Dyfet They have added patch files? I was not aware of that :)...but
then, I have
AFA Parik I'd hold off on purchasing it as v9.0 is due for release real
soon. Yes, there
JDavies1 Well didn'y Copy II+ just break the protection?
AFA Parik is a GS section on it with deprotects for over 200 GS programs.
Many allow you
AFL Dyfet not had need for that feature of Copy II+ :)
AFA Parik to install it on the hard drive (not all).
AFA Parik With a little practice, you can do it yourself though. I suggest
dling the
AFA Parik deprotects in the games forum software lib / information center /
deprotects.
JDavies1 Every Parameter with the '(HD)' was suppose to allow you to
install it on a HD.
JDavies1 Are we off the subject, or is it me?????
Dave Lyons Okay...now for the Apple II development tools that were introduced
at KC?
AFL Dyfet Yes, we are, Davies, and I think we should move to that second
question, as
AFL Dyfet Dave has just done :)
JDavies1 OK
Dave Lyons The stuff that was introduced is a compact run-time library of
assembly
Dave Lyons routines, and a set of macros to go with it. The result is an
environment
Dave Lyons that you can program in really quickly, for some kinds of Apple II
programming.
Dave Lyons There are routines & macros for dealing with 2-byte integer
variables,
AFA Gary J Neat. What kind of routines?
Dave Lyons strings up to 256 bytes, and arrays up to 4 dimensions.
Dave Lyons Now for the semi-bad news: so far, the macros are only for the
MPW IIgs
Dave Lyons cross assembler. We would like to release a version for APW, too,
but so
Dave Lyons far we haven't found a way to do it that makes it easy to use (the
macros
JDavies1 Dave, we should do something bad for bring us on like that.
Dave Lyons are pretty complex, using lots of conditional tests that can't be
done the
Dave Lyons same way in APW).
Dave Lyons BTW, the author of the routines is Eric Soldan of Apple II
Developer Technical
Dave Lyons Support.
DavidD117 Can APW be used in ORCA/C's GUI?
Dave Lyons GUI?
Dave Lyons (Graphical User Interface?)
AFL Dyfet I think he means 'Prizm' :)
DavidD117 Graphical User Interface
Dave Lyons The ORCA shell and the APW shell are very similar; the assemblers
are
Dave Lyons identical.
DavidD117 Let's say desktop:)
AFL Dyfet You can use most of the utilities that run under APW with ORCA.
Many of the
AFL Dyfet same utilities provided with APW itself are also already present
in the ORCA
AFL Dyfet system.
AFL Dyfet As DL pointed out, some (many) utilities are in fact identical
:)
DavidD117 OK I 've got a question
AFL Dyfet Okay, go ahead, David...
Dave Lyons I've got an answer...let's see if they match. :)
JDavies1 Dave BTW thanks for all help.
DavidD117 Is there any talking software for the //gs that can be developed
with
DavidD117 Assembly?
DavidD117 ie. speech tools?
AFL Dyfet TML used to provide a toolset you could install that would
synthesise speach
AFL Dyfet (a speach tool, as you put it) :). I have never used it myself,
but I believe
AFL Dyfet it is still available.
Dave Lyons TML's speech toolkit is still available...but there's a hefty
license fee
Dave Lyons from First Byte if you want to distribute it with your product.
Dave Lyons (It's also written as a three System toolsets, which bugs me.
User toolsets
AFL Dyfet First Byte, in that case, has an interesting connotation :)
Dave Lyons are provided & ought to be used; there will be a November
Technical Note from
Dave Lyons me on that subject.)
DavidD117 Can SmoothTalker just be patched into a regular program?
AFL Dyfet Yes, I was wondering about their use of system toolsets also,
Dave, and at
AFL Dyfet one point had the impression that assignment of toolsets may be
sanctioned by
AFL Dyfet Apple. A tech note would be very good for future clearification
on this.
Dave Lyons My technical note, in its current form (going out for review
inside Apple)
Dave Lyons says that all 255 System toolset numbers are reserved for
Apple--as far as I
Dave Lyons know that's true, and we haven't ever assigned a system toolset #
to a third
JDavies1 Speaking of Tech Notes does anyone what note discusses CDevices
Dave Lyons party.
Dave Lyons (Actually, somebody stole #30, which was a Bad Move, because now
it's the
Dave Lyons Resource Manager!)
Dave Lyons (Those programs don't work too hot under 5.0.x.)
DavidD117 But First Byte is the only option?
AFL Dyfet Somebody was being very bad, I see :)...David, I am not familiar
with the
AFL Dyfet smoothtalker, but there are many external speach senthesysers that
can be
AFL Dyfet hooked up to a serial port. Making those talk is as easy as
writing text to
AFL Dyfet them :). A few of the older internal cards that were once made
for the Appe
DavidD117 Let's let the gs show its INTERNAL gifts I say.:)
DavidD117 I know RC makes double talk
AFL Dyfet could also be easily adapted, if one is profient enough to write a
driver :).
AFL Dyfet Also, there is somewhere the 'old' SAM software, which provided an
all software
AFL Dyfet speach senthesyser.
DavidD117 for what systems?
AFL Dyfet (SAM = 'Software Automated Mouth', I believe...the versions I
recall were all
AFL Dyfet 8 bit, but it is possible that SAM was converted...)
DavidD117 couldn't be very understandable then
AFL Dyfet It was not, David. I do not know how understandable the TML
toolkit is,
AFL Dyfet but I suspect it suffers from the same limitations.
DavidD117 I have heard it, I'll give it about a 6 out of ten.