68k Assembly

[Stephen Coates]

Who here has done any 68k assembly?

I got a copy of Devpac 2, and the Abacus book 'Amiga Machine Language' a couple of years ago. I did the first few pages but didn't really make much progress, then gave up.

Fortunately, on the HND course which I am doing now, we are going to be doing some 68000 assembly.

I guess I'll get my book out and get a head start.

[Harrison]

I gave it a try many years ago. First on the Atari ST, and later on the Amiga. It is pretty heavy going and always seemed very long winded to get anything done. I had a couple of decent books on the ST. One focusing on 3D graphics. Got a few things to work, but it was over complex for what I wanted to do. I really only took a look to explore it a bit and see what it was all about. Never really interested me enough to get me hooked. I think with programming languages you either enjoy and fall in love with them early on, or you find them hard work and give up.

At the time I instead got interested in STOS on the ST, and then AMOS on the Amiga. I also gave HiSoft Basic a try, as well as Helm (which was a multimedia interactive environment like an early version of Macromedia Director).

I also gave C and C++ a try a few years ago, but again found it a bit too heavy going. Was interesting though and definitely thought it more useful than Assembler. Could see the usefulness in learning it these days as C can be used to code pretty much anything on any platform. Are you being taught C on your course at all?

For me, high level languages have been of more interest. The one that first really grabbed me was Lingo within Macromedia Director. I loved that language. And Actionscript in Flash was a very similar experience, and now overtaken and more powerful than Lingo. And I also was really drawn in by PHP. I hate all other server-side languages for web development, but love PHP.

[Submeg]

C is not too bad...I also did some assembly...so long winded! Very annoying and not worth it :/

[Stephen Coates]

I doubt we will be doing any C, as this is an electronics course. I think C comes more under 'computing'. There are lots of books on it in the library though.

[Phantom]

Don't let 68k assembly scare you off. It's not so difficult as it seems in the beginning.

Trust me, I had the same feelings when I started to learning 68k assembly, but when you'll understand how the system and memory works, it will be much easier for you; and yes, that Abacus book helped me a lot for a start.

[Stephen Coates]

I'm not scared. I find the hardware easy enough to understand. I just didn't do much when I got the book a couple of years ago because I was concentrating on learning BASIC for a project.

[Stephen Coates]

We've started using assembly now.

We have some brand new microcomputers, which have a 68000 running at 8MHz. It has a small amount of memory, an OS (monitor) in ROM and the usual PIT and DUART. Its called TIM and is made by LJCreate. You can write the programmes on a Windows PC and send them down a serial cable, then the PC just acts as a terminal. Its a nice system.

TBH assembly isn't as hard as it looks. It just takes a bit of getting used to, especially since I am coming from BASIC.