[Coco] Kinda disappointed with 6809 assemblers

[Luis Antoniosi (CoCoDemus)]

Hi,

Been using different assemblers and for me they all seem to lack very basic
features.

for example, I want to create a simple array of 256 zeroes ? Then I need to
do this ?

array fcb 0,0,0,0,0,0,0...,0 ???

what if my array was sized set by the size of the code ? impossible.

Maybe I'm spoiled by Z-80 assemblers. For example in z-80 it would be:

array: db 0,256

simple as that. Another good example of what is impossible with 6809 asms:

I have a game using some 8k memory banks mapping, and I need to include a
binary file into a determined bank since it's a ROM file, that would be:

org 16384
WORLD11BIN: incbin "data\WORLD11.MGL",0x108,0x1000
ds BANK_SIZE - ($$ % 8192),0ffh

not only the code above would include my binary file WORLD11.MGL into the 3
bank as it would fill the rest of the remaining bytes (in the bank) with
0xFF. And look the include bin, it has an offset and a size, so I don't
need to include the entire file.

Other nightmare: math operations in constants. Look that:

I want to make:

KEY_LEFT equ $0503

then in my code I would like this:

lda (KEY_RIGHT >> 8),x
bita #($01 << (KEY_RIGHT & $00ff))

but I can only use very basic math operations on it and shifts and ands are
out.

BTW the code above core dumps with lwasm, also a single cmpx with no
parameters crashes too.

unhappy programmer :(

-- 
Long live the CoCo