[Coco] Kinda disappointed with 6809 assemblers

[Steve Bjork]

The reason why better assemblers don't include a fill a block of memory 
option is its wasteful.

While it make it easier to write the source code with a memory "init" at 
run time by loading in all that data, it waste space in the run-time 
file that's loaded.

In the days when file space could not be wasted for 256 zeros, it was 
better to reserve the space in memory for the data and at run-time to 
clean it out with a few lines code. (It goes without saying that code 
running in ROM would have clear it at run-time.)

Too many times I've seen code create by young programmers with megs and 
megs of array data fill with none thing but zeros.  Once I got a 
programmer to see the errors of his ways, the Game Install CD-ROM 
dropped from three to just one.  (The savings in production cost more 
than paid for the consulting fees for that project.)

Yes, you can pack (zip) the file to remove most the wasted space. But 
why have the wasted space in the first pace?

Steve


On 1/30/2013 8:03 PM, Luis Antoniosi (CoCoDemus) wrote:
> 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 :(
>