Category: Assembly Language

Benoit Gilon has announced the immediate release of the Peersoft Applesoft Extensions version 1.5.5.  Shown extensively at the recent Apple II Festival France, this extension package allows for user defined functions to be added to Applesoft through both machine language and Applesoft.  What’s new? Ability to define up to 10 user defined functions. Such functions could handle up to 2 input arguments instead of just one. Sample functions provided, GCD, LCM, Factorial, Binary operations on 16bits integers, MAX and MIN…

David Finnigan of MacGui.com has announced the availability of his latest software project, the Marina TCP/IP stack for the Apple II.  Marina is a stack which was written completely in 6502 assembly language and is written to work with the Uthernet,   According to the press release, Because I wanted to learn more about ethernet and TCP/IP networking, and because I was dissatisfied with existing TCP/IP implementations for the Apple, I decided to write my own implementation. It is called…

Paris, January 6th, 2015 – Brutal Deluxe Sofware releases Merlin 32 Merlin 32 is a multi-pass Cross Assembler running under Windows targeting 8-bit processors in the 6502 series (such as 6502 and 65c02) and the 16 bit 65c816 processor. It is compatible with Glen Bredon’s Merlin 16+ syntax, including support for Macros, Pre-processor, Logical Expressions, Conditional Operations, Variables, Loops, Local Labels… It can build fixed position object code or relocatable executables (OMF v2.1) as we can find on 16-bit APPLE…

Brian Picchi, the curator of the Tanru Nomad Computer Museum and author of the 2013 Apple II game Lamb Chops, has released his source code to the public.  According to his posting, “With the release of the new Assembly Lines book, I thought I’d share the source code to Lamb Chops which borrows almost entirely from concepts covered in that book. I wrote it in November of 2013 when I was first learning 6502 assembly language so it may be…

The Apple2Scans Website has posted a scan of the Apple II book, Assembly Language Programming for the Apple II by Robert Mottola.  The book is a 96 mb PDF and is available for download at: http://www.apple2scans.net/2014/09/01/assembly-language-programming-for-the-apple-ii/

The world of Apple II is never dull; there are new projects and things happening each month! Let’s take a look at what’s going on this week:

David Schmenk has released his new Proto Language ASsembler for Apple or PLASMA for short.   This latest language release is the second for the creator of Java for the Apple ][. According to the introduction on David’s website, “PLASMA is a combination of virtual machine and assembler/compiler matched closely to the 6502 architecture.  It is an attempt to satisfy a few challenges surrounding code size, efficient execution, small runtime and fast just-in-time compilation.  By architecting a unique bytecode that maps…

Egan Ford, the curator of the Apple ][ Game Server and the Apple ][ Disk Server, has come up with a new application which writes games directly to a disk allowing them to be played, without DOS or ProDOS on the Apple ][.  According to his posting on Comp.sys.apple2 usenet group, “I just posted c2d (code to disk) to http://asciiexpress.net/files.  I included the source with OS/X and Windows binaries.  c2d will take a single binary (with or without 4-byte DOS…

Egan Ford and Michael Mahon did a good bit of collaboration this week to effect the upgrading of the Apple ][ Game Server. The Apple ][ Game Server allows users to load games straight from the Internet onto their real Apple ][ computers via the cassette port and the audio port of their PC. The HIFI files have been sped up from 12kHz/6kHz 8000 bps to 12kHz/8kHz 9600 bps. LOFI continues to operate at the cassette interface default of 2kHz/1kHz…

WIlli Kuche has documented the Merlin Macro Assembler IDE Source code and made it available for download.   Merlin, which was written by Glen Bredon at Southwestern Data Systems, was available for download for the past two years, however, the version that was available was without documentation and  without instructions for building the IDE. Now after a long effort by Willi, the IDE is documented, and according to Willi’s note left on CSA2, “it contains all the source files needed to…

After a request by Willi Kuche, the Apple ][ community came together and managed to come up with two versions of the source code for Glen Bredon’s Mr. Fixit for Prosel 8.  Being as no original source code was available, two people in particular disassembled the program and have posted their respective versions to the internet. Antoine Vignau of Brutal Deluxe Software posted his Merlin based version of the source code at: http://www.brutaldeluxe.fr/public/mrfixit/ Willi Kuche also decided to create a…

Don Lancaster, Curator of the Guru’s Lair website and  author of several Apple ][ releated books including A.P.P.L.E.’s Call-A.P.P.L.E. In Depth Book 4, All About Applewriter, has made a number of his Apple ][ books available in PDF for free download.  The current books he has released are the Apple Assembly Cookbook, Book 1 and Book 2, as well as a number of others. You can find all of Don’s currently released books at: http://www.tinaja.com/ebksamp1.asp

Dear Call-A.P.P.L.E. I am writing to say I am very impressed with the Call-A.P.P.L.E. newsletter.  It is not only informative, it is also very useful, particularly the section dealing with the System Monitor and Mini-Assembler, since I am especially Interested in Assembly Language.  How about making an Assembly Language Tutorial tape.  Also, how would I go about getting a copy of the listing for Integer BASIC? Linda Egan 6471 E. Nixon Street Lakewood, CA 90713     Dear Linda, if…

The following section covers use of the Apple II mini-assembler only. It is not a course in assembly language programming. The following section assumes the user has a working knowledge of 6502 programming and mnemonics. The Apple II mini-assembler is a programming aid aimed at reducing the amount of time requir.ed to convert a handwritten program to object code. The mini-assembler is basically a look-up table for opcodes. With it, you can type mnemonics with their absolute addresses, and the…

If you have a newer Apple with the silent keyboard, Don Williams has written a short and sweet machine language routine to solve your problem. 0300:  48              PHA 0301 : A9 20        LDA #$20 0303: 8D 30 CO   STA $C030 0306: 20 A8 FC    JSR $FCA8 0309: 8D 30 CO   STA $C030 030C: 68              PLA 030D: 4C 1B FD   JMP $FDIB 0038: 00 03 Once you store the address ($0300) in location $38 and hit return, your keys will click…

The Assembly Language classes are now scheduled to start June 1 at Empire Electronics. Cost $35 per persorn including Synertek manual. To sign up, call Tom Geer at (206)244-5200 or Don Williams at (206)242-6807. The course includes Number Systems, Boolean Algebra, 6502 Instruction set and Programming.

I would like to comment briefly on my. experience running Don’ s program the first time.  Like most of you, I have had very little to do  with low level programming. With Don’s program, I was able to see at a glance how a BASIC line like “500 PRINT” translated into Hex bytes 08 F4 01 63 01, and in turn, I was able enter a line of Basic from machine language.  Examining the result, I was able to determine…