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Help with SORCIM ACT assembler command line format

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pjh

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Does anyone know were I can find a SORCIM ACT cross-assembler Manual. I downloaded the ACT assembler from www.schorn.ch/cpm/zip/act.zip but it does not include any documentation. When I assemble a test file, all I get is a .HEX file output. I don't get a .PRN output listing. The ACT assembler doesn't accept the 'filename.abc' format where .abc are output directives. I have tried adding L, LST, OUT, and PRN to the command line. Each time it assembles clean with no input command syntax errors, but I don't get a .prn file with any of them.

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
 
If no one else does, I may still have an old ACT manual kicking around. I'll check. It's been almost 30 years, however.

Knowing what I do about the people there, command-line syntax may well have followed CDC SCOPE conventions.
 
Finally dug it out. Just what I thought. Use L=filename on the command line to get list file. Default extension is .PRN, but you can override both this and the source file extension by specifying them.

You had to know the Sorcim gang to predict this. Everyone but Anil and Martin were CDC CPD. They wrote what they knew--CDC conventions. I suspect that Paul McQuesten wrote ACT, but any of the gang could have done it.
 
Thanks,

I'm trying to recover the Monitor ROM for my OSBORNE 1 by using the v1.41 listing from the OSBORNE Technical Reference Manual. Debugging my keying would be hard without being able to see the printout. Some images of listings aren't that great and I have to guess at the proper character to key in.
 
I did get a copy of the FOGCPM.008 disk. I continued searching after my first post and came across ftp.df.lth.se/pub/bitsavers.org/ which has .IMD copies of the FOG Library. However, when I tried assembling the sources I got a sector error on one of the first files on the disk. I will try recreating the disk at a later time on the chance I had a bad diskette and not that the .IMD file has errors. I have, however, run across other cases where .IMD images must have been created incorrectly because making several copies of the disk results in the same sector errors on all of the copies.
 
See attached for the FOG.008 files disk (including ROM144.ASM).

Edit Know where Sorcim got the mnemonic "LDK" for load constant into 16-bit register? (Intel uses "LXI").

It's from CDC 6000 PPU code, namely the macro used by both the SCOPE and KRONOS macro libraries to load a constant into the 18-bit PPU "A" register. The PPU instruction set had two forms of the "load constant" instruction--a two-word (12 bits per word) "LDC" that would load all 18 bits of the A register and the one-word "LDN" which would load 6 bits into the A register. The LDK macro looked at the value and selected between the two instructions, depending on the size of the value.

Just a bit of CDC lore. Sorcim products are full of it (e.g., why they talk about PRUs instead of sectors, etc.)
 

Attachments

  • FOG008.ZIP
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Thanks,

The ROM144.ASM list in the FOG008.ZIP saves me several more days of transcribing the listing out of the Technical Manual.

While I am at it, I would still like to be able to disassemble the code in the corrupted BOOT ROM. It displays as a version 1.5x. I can use the 1.44 to try and get the system running, but if I can save it, I would like to not loose the v1.5x

Two Z80 disassemblers that I have tried, Z80DIS22 and ZDASM15, don't seem to be able to handle the fact that the ROM firmware was ORG'd at 00h. Do you know of a dissassembler that can handle an ORG 00h file.
 
pjh said:
Two Z80 disassemblers that I have tried, Z80DIS22 and ZDASM15, don't seem to be able to handle the fact that the ROM firmware was ORG'd at 00h. Do you know of a dissassembler that can handle an ORG 00h file.
Click to expand...

IDA is by far and away the best disassembler that I've ever used. Full versions (32 or 64 bit Windows) are expensive--and the freeware windows version doesn't do Z80--just x86.

However, there still are a couple of down-level 16-bit free DOS versions that will work just fine. Here's version 3.7 There may be later versions out there with Z80 enabled.
 
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