Recent content by cj7hawk

For opcodes, you can still do that with unhashed characters and the search space is quite limited for opcodes, even just matching first letters and you can drop that down to 4 bits and 16 buckets if you ignore Bit0 and are case agnostic. Given the number of 2 byte opcodes, I'm not sure...

I've seen people use the stack pointer for those kinds of objectives. Load the next vector, compare 2 registers at a time. Very linear. Set up the stack and just keep on popping off the table contents.

I'm also curious as to how much more efficient different schemes would be. And what size hashes we're talking about? 32 bit? 64 bit? I'm not sure anything over 24 bit is going to be significantly faster. Many mnemonics are 2 to 3 bytes, so a hash requires an encoding operation, is...

Well, its possible you've damaged the drive, but they are pretty solid, so assuming you haven't misconnected any cables, etc, you can take the drive out and run it outside the machine, and watch it. Usual checks. Look at the strobe pattern under your lights to see if the speed is right on the...

Ahh, got it - My bad description is at fault here. The assembler doesn't hold normal instructions in the label table. I just use the same name as the opcode for my labels for memory purposes when writing the assembly source, since they are small remove any interpretation errors when debugging...

The heads are pretty solid.... The whole drive is pretty solid for that mattter. Look for bits of magnetic material that have shredded onto the disk surface. They will be microscopic, but will prevent reading.

With the latest update, only opcodes and assembler directives can't be used as labels, and group labels and normal labels can coexist with the same name. The latest update supports local and global labels with any degree of granularity, and it's even possible to have groups within groups...

With the latest update, only opcodes and assembler directives can't be used as labels, and group labels and normal labels can coexist with the same name. The latest update supports local and global labels with any degree of granularity, and it's even possible to have groups within groups...

I had an osborne-like drive in a Kaypro - same mechanism. Anyway, it failed due to grease going solid int he drive... I just cleaned it with some WD40 and it was OK. If driveB boots, then possible issues; * Drive terminator incorrect. * Drive head misaligned. * Drive head dirty ( common when...

Macro's don't have a global scope. All macros in my assembler are labels, so if you can hide a label, you can hide a macro. The only exception is that you can't copy macro contents in a formula, for obvious reasons. Attempting to use a macro in a formula will only reflect it's length, though...

It would be very inefficient on a z80 based system to search up to 50K of label space before decoding opcodes but could be done with a command line switch... Can you give me an example where you would want to replace an existing functional opcode with a macro, yet still have it look the same...

I only just noticed this - I note the WD1002 interface has 40 pins, but the WD1002-SHD ( which I assume is used in a bunch of old CP/M machines ) is a 50 pin host interface. Is the TRS-80 or Kaypro interface actually a WD1002-SHD Host Controller interface or did Kaypro's and TRS-80s use...

It's more that there's been lots of good ideas, and I'm working out which ones I can fit into the current architecture. Some I still like, but they aren't going to make the first cut, if ever. I've set myself an 11.75K hard limit on the assembler size, on disk, and I've just cracked 10K with the...

That's a great link, thank you. One of the best and exactly in line with some of what I was looking for ( and didn't previously find ). Even if it is for the 6502. One of the difficult balance points in assembler design is memory. Cross-assembly doesn't have this limitation, which is why...

Actually I was getting the feeling that the impression I gave was that I didn't do testing, so thought I'd correct that to better inform suggestions. Not at all. I started writing a single set of tests, but over time I found that using a compartmentalised approach to testing was more helpful...