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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : CMM2 Assembler
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| joker Newbie  Joined: 06/02/2024 Location: GermanyPosts: 18 |
Hi everybody, Approximately two years ago there were some discussions in the forum about an assembler for the CMM2 which should be able to read/write CSUBs. I saw it on the wishlist of CMM2.fun, too. Has this topic continued in the last two years? Is anybody working on an assembler/disassembler? Best Regards Matthias |
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thwill Guru  Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3848 |
I'm not aware of it having gone anywhere Matthias, perhaps you could provide a link to the original thread ? Unfortunately our community (at least the active parts of it) has a dearth of programmers with anything approaching the skill-set. Peter might be capable if there were twice as many hours in the day (I'd require x5), maybe two or three others ... possibly ... what's your skill-set  ?Even if it was done would it be used enough to merit the effort ? Best wishes, Tom Edited 2024-04-21 01:32 by thwill Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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| matherp Guru Joined: 11/12/2012 Location: United KingdomPosts: 8592 |
Writing an assembler for the CMM2 would be an enormous undertaking - probably a bigger job than the CMM2 firmware itself. Have a look at this |
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| thwill Guru Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3848 |
That's a file on your local D:/ drive. Tom Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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| matherp Guru Joined: 11/12/2012 Location: United KingdomPosts: 8592 |
Oops |
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| joker Newbie Joined: 06/02/2024 Location: GermanyPosts: 18 |
Hallo, I'm referring to https://www.thebackshed.com/forum/ViewTopic.php?TID=13184&PID=160570#160570#160570 where someone did an assembler in another Basic dialect. I studied the source (https://github.com/jirsoft/ARM2CSub) and it doesn't look that complicated. By the way: Thanks for the datasheet about the command set  . I have already a whole bunch of them, beacause there is not only one ARM assembler as I have learned. Nevertheless, it will help me understanding the differences.I'm highly interested in learning more about RISK architecture and the CMM2 is my road to it. So, the "merit" question is not really important for me. I have written software for almost 40 years now, starting with Basic/Assembler on a C64, Assembler/C on an Amiga, C,C++,python,Java on GNU/Linux. I don't know if by skills are sufficient enough writing an Assembler for the CMM2. I haven't done this before, but this is part of the fun, isn't it? If you want to learn more about my programming skills I would recommend to have a look on my work:Air Rescue, Fort Micromite and CMM2Profiler and see for yourself. Best Regards Matthias |
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| JohnS Guru Joined: 18/11/2011 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3661 |
Sounds like you could do it... A pretty big effort, though. John |
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| thwill Guru Joined: 16/09/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 3848 |
Ah, I vaguely remember now, shortly before life and work overwhelmed @jirsoft. I didn't pay a lot of attention at the time as my involvement would have been all talk and no trousers. Ideally I guess we would want inline assembler (c.f. BBC Micro), which assuming you could get assembly on the CMM2 to work at all (in BASIC or otherwise) it probably wouldn't be too great a leap to move it into the firmware. Sounds like you might be the man for the job .I pay a casual interest but at the moment if I spend much time looking at other people's projects I don't have enough left for my own. Nevertheless keep up the good work .Best wishes, Tom Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures |
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PeteCotton Guru Joined: 13/08/2020 Location: CanadaPosts: 316 |
Building an Assembler would be an interesting challenge. I suspect a limited subset (MOV, MVN, CMP, LDR, ADD, SUB, MUL, AND, OR, LSL etc.) wouldn't be too hard to implement, something like just the commands for moving variables between memory registers/locations which would allow for functions that do mass sorting, or fast algorithms. These could be pointed at BASIC arrays in memory or graphics memory banks to ensure that it stuck to reserved memory. But the cortex processors appear to be a significant step beyond 6502 or 68000 assembly, with a multitude of quite complex commands, interrupts and memory manipulation (Note: I cannot program ARM assembly - but I was pretty proficient with 6809E and Z80 back in the day). I don't know how deep this rabbit hole goes, but I think a full implementation might be fraught with issues. And then of course, there's the fact that it would have to co-exist with another program (the BASIC interpreter) and not step on each other's toes. Even then, I'm talking about a separate Assembler program written in BASIC that would spit out the machine code for the CSUB, which could then be saved to disc (as a BASIC program with a CSUB) and then loaded into memory (replacing the Assembler program in memory) and executed. I think trying to do an inline one (where it is part of the BASIC editor) might be a bridge too far to begin with. But the real question is - Why? The CMM2 BASIC is fast - I mean really fast. Sure, you can eventually hit the limit of what it can do, but isn't that part of the fun of programming it? Finding those limits and working within them. If we want an infinitely powerful computer, then we could just run MMBasic for Windows on a pc. Also, many of the functions (moving chunks of memory between graphics pages) are probably already so heavily tuned, that being able to do it in assembly probably isn't going to gain you much. Having thrown up all of those road blocks - I don't want to dissuade anyone from doing this - I think it would be fascinating, but the reasons for doing it might not be as straightforward as we think. Of course, a good reason to do it would be as a learning tool for ARM assembly language.  Edited 2024-04-23 08:28 by PeteCotton |
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Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 5735 |
I was banging my head against the wall just doing an assembler for the PIO. It's non-trivial when you have multiple arguments for each instruction. Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
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