[Coco] What happened to the list?

[Frank Pittel]

On Fri, Jun 04, 2010 at 02:09:20AM -0400, Robert Gault wrote:
> Frank Pittel wrote:
> >On Thu, Jun 03, 2010 at 11:06:45PM -0400, Robert Gault wrote:
> >>Boisy G. Pitre wrote:
> >>>A challenge!
> >>>
> >>>Robert Gault is the Disk EDTASM king and sells an excellent patch.  I don't use it, but I have in the past, and it's definitely top choice for doing assembly work directly on a CoCo in the BASIC environment.
> >>>--
> >>>Boisy G. Pitre
> >>
> >>Thanks for the plug!
> >>
> >>If anyone is interested, you can review the specs for EDTASM6309 at
> >>http://aaronwolfe.com/robert.gault/Coco/CoCo_main.htm
> >>Just go to the Software I Sell link and see what Disk EDTASM can be
> >>made to do. You will need to own the original Tandy package as my
> >>patch is used to convert it. That avoids any copyright problems.
> >
> >I've been trying to talk myself into getting the patches you sell for a while
> >now. I'm sure I will in the next month or so as time permits. Currently I'm
> >working on to many things at once and am getting to little done!!!!
> >
> >Do your patches ease any of the problems I mentioned with edtasm? Things like being able
> >to actually read, scroll back through, etc the assembler output? Like I said in
> >my original email I don't understand now how I was ever able to work with edtasm
> >in the past. It's particularly fussy about syntax, spacing, etc and find errors as they
> >scroll past is an excercise in futility.
> >
> >Frank
> >
> 
> Frank,
> 
> For better or worse, EDTASM6309 is still a line edit format.
> However, it will run in any screen size 32 Coco1&2 and 40 or 80
> Coco3. That makes using the program much easier.
> The arrow keys permit moving through the source code line by line in
> any direction. Pa:b or P#:* permits viewing blocks of code or the
> entire source from low to high line numbers. SHIFT/ALT will pause
> the listing.
> If you want to see the binary output as it is compiled, EDTASM will
> do that but only from low to high addresses.
> Finding errors is simple even with the stock version. You just enter
> A/NO/WE   which means assemble, don't generate an output file, and
> pause on errors. Any key will restart the assembly which will stop
> at the next error.
> 
> Read the description of EDTASM6309 for all the enhancements over the
> stock version. You may find many of your complaints have been
> addressed.
> 
> You might consider this cheating :) but if you use EDTASM6309 with
> VCC or MESS, you can easily extract the source code from the disk
> image for full screen editing with the PC program of you choice.
> EDTASM6309 makes this easy, because you can save or load source code
> files without line numbers. The line number get regenerated when
> loaded into the program.
> 
> Robert

Robert,

That may be how I used to assemble code in the past. As I mentioned in my
original post on the subject it's been ~20 years since I've done any real
assembly on the coco using edtasm. Back in the day I convinced the company
I worked for to use the coco3 as a single board industrial control board.
We would take the board out of the case and put it in a metal box with a real
power supply to power the board and all the periphials<SP> which ended up being
mostly I/O. I did most of the coding for it using edtasm and we burned the code
to eprom and replaced the original coco rom with it. Looking back I wish we saved
all the coco cases that we used to throw out! Radio Shack would never sell us just
the board so we ended up buying cocos by the pallet. Alas, around the time the coco was
discontinued we started using the 68hc11 and dropped the coco. At that time I started
using development tools on a PC and my development coco ended up in a box in my closet.
Over the years I've forgotten most of what I ever knew. Even then most of what I knew
involved interupt driven machine control code and there's little that translates into
application type software.

BTW - how do I go about buying your patches. I've been trying to convince myself to do
just that for a long time!!

Frank