[Coco] assembly programming on a 16K CoCo 2

[Roger Taylor]

At 11:22 AM 6/26/2006, you wrote:
Either Rainbow IDE or Portal-9 will work for you if you want to create 
programs for the Coco on a PC. However, for the best use of either program 
you will also want the MESS emulator.

>If you just want to write assembly programs and not test them prior to 
>use, Rainbow IDE or Portal-9 can take the place of Disk EDTASM. However, 
>EDTASM also offers a built-in DEBUG routine that permits testing programs 
>as part of the editor/assembler package.



Thanks for the plug, Robert.  It's true that Rainbow and EDTASM both have 
their pros and cons.

By using the M.E.S.S. emulator with my IDEs, excellent testing of your 
software is possible because of how accurate the CoCo emulation 
is.  Anything that can run Sockmaster's demos with convincing realism of a 
real CoCo is good enough for me. :)

Many would agree, Rainbow IDE and the M.E.S.S. emulator is the best new way 
to develop CoCo games because you can go from source code to emulation in 
one click and start testing right away.  You just keep repeating this cycle 
anytime you make enough changes to your source code that you want to see in 
action.  It would take hours longer to do this on a real CoCo using EDTASM 
because you have to assemble to disk, exit EDTASM, load your program, test, 
then reboot EDTASM.

What's better?  ROM Pak development!  As soon as you click Go to assemble 
your game/program, it starts running immediately.  This is truly the most 
seamless and convenient form of CoCo development known to man.  If you 
haven't tried it, you're in for a treat.  In fact, you can easily develop 
your programs first as 'ROM Paks' then later change the ORG (Origin) to 
lower memory so that they load from Disk.  You can do this to avoid having 
to type LOADM "GAME" at the CoCo prompt each time M.E.S.S. is launched.

Ofcourse, any software that uses hardware that an emulator can't emulate 
should be further tested on a real CoCo.

-- 
Roger Taylor