Anyone seen this Universal Cross-Assembler?

[William Gallant]

Hi.
William Gallant here.
Stumbled upon -
"How To Write a Universal Cross-Assembler by
J. Robert Heath and
Shailesh M. Patel some time ago.
Runs on DEC PDP-11/40 with RSTS-11 OS using Basic-Plus.
Typed it in after snipping from the PDF. Didn't take long.
I hope to understand it better. I'll probably translate the algorithm(s) behind
the program into another language. Anyone seen these things before
written in simple to understand languages? The article
is on IEEE and ResearchGate. ( Article uses intel 8080 mnemonics ).

- William

[Ahem A Rivet's Shot]

On Sat, 22 Jan 2022 20:13:13 -0800 (PST)

Post by William Gallant
Anyone seen these things before
written in simple to understand languages? The article
is on IEEE and ResearchGate. ( Article uses intel 8080 mnemonics ).

In the early 1980s I wrote a remote debugging tool for games
consoles that included a table driven assembler/disassembler with tables
for several processors including Z80, 6502, CP1610 (that's a weird one, 10
bit instructions and the data bus can be 10-16 bits wide so that cheap 5 bit
ROMs could be used alongside 16 bit RAM) and a few others. That was written
in C - and was probably far from simple and elegant since it was also my
first work in C - the employer knew that, I was given a photocopy of the
reference section of the original K&R to learn C from while waiting for the
compiler to arrive. Once the framework was good the work consisted of
making dongles (fake cartridges with RAM, ROM and a serial port) for
various games consoles and filling in the tables for whatever obscure CPU
they used.

[Bob Eager]

Post by William Gallant
Hi.
William Gallant here.
Stumbled upon -
"How To Write a Universal Cross-Assembler by J. Robert Heath and
Shailesh M. Patel some time ago.
Runs on DEC PDP-11/40 with RSTS-11 OS using Basic-Plus.
Typed it in after snipping from the PDF. Didn't take long.
I hope to understand it better. I'll probably translate the algorithm(s)
behind the program into another language. Anyone seen these things
before written in simple to understand languages? The article is on IEEE
and ResearchGate. ( Article uses intel 8080 mnemonics ).

Meta-assemblers were around in the 1970s, if not before! Unfortunately I
haven't seen a good, portable one.

[Ahem A Rivet's Shot]

On 23 Jan 2022 17:38:47 GMT

Post by Bob Eager
Meta-assemblers were around in the 1970s, if not before! Unfortunately I
haven't seen a good, portable one.

The worst I've seen are macro assemblers tortured into supporting
another CPU by defining macros for all the instructions.

[Kerr-Mudd, John]

On Sun, 23 Jan 2022 18:50:50 +0000

Post by Ahem A Rivet's Shot
On 23 Jan 2022 17:38:47 GMT

Post by Bob Eager
Meta-assemblers were around in the 1970s, if not before! Unfortunately I
haven't seen a good, portable one.

The worst I've seen are macro assemblers tortured into supporting
another CPU by defining macros for all the instructions.

Hey! That's my idea! Oh.

[Rich Alderson]

Post by Ahem A Rivet's Shot
On 23 Jan 2022 17:38:47 GMT

Post by Bob Eager
Meta-assemblers were around in the 1970s, if not before! Unfortunately I
haven't seen a good, portable one.

The worst I've seen are macro assemblers tortured into supporting
another CPU by defining macros for all the instructions.

And yet a very successful software company was built on just such a foundation,
by a crackerjack programmer whose program was used by two others to create the
BASIC interpreter for a new microprocessor based computer. Continued in use
for nearly 20 years...