Learning machine code

[arjun]

I wandered down to my local library and I picked up a lot of books at that made me feel that way. The one that was most influential for me was the 1983 Usborne Introduction to Machine Code for Beginners (link provided by publisher) - it had cool robots, good pacing and did a great job at making assembler seem accessible and fun. I'd recommend it to anyone wanting to get started today, especially if they like cool robots.

I loved Usborne books! They were colourful, approachable and surprisingly jam packed with info. The link above seems to be access locked but I found a more useful link at archive.org.

[Hedge1970]

I loved Usborne books! They were colourful, approachable and surprisingly jam packed with info. The link above seems to be access locked but I found a more useful link at archive.org.

Thank you for posting a working link to this book. I’ve been glancing at it on and off all evening. I hope with enough saturation on the topic it will all click one day.

[Timmy]

A while ago, I understood that on the Usborne site, the books are only working if you come from the UK.

For every other country it will redirect you to somewhere else.

So, the books are available, just not on their site if you live in some other country.

[lexi]

oof - sorry about that - i'm in Canada, but i also learned from going Incognito that public drive links require letting google track you with a login - would edit the broken link out of my post if i could

i should have known better than to trust anything google at this point

Thank you for posting a working link to this book. I’ve been glancing at it on and off all evening. I hope with enough saturation on the topic it will all click one day.

It will - and I hope you enjoy that book as i did - take it at whatever pace is comfortable - once you have a feel for the concepts, it'll unlock a way to start understanding many other books

Another interesting feature of this book is how it "hedged it's bets" by covering both the z80 and 6502 and mentions many of the popular in 1983 home computers that used them. While it may seem counter-intuitive to try to learn z80 while being distracted by 6502 listings.. it's interesting to see so clearly how they have different approaches to essentially doing the same thing - and i think that act of comparison helped me understand more about the z80 than a pure focus on the z80 in isolation would have.

[1024MAK]

Well, the official site is here. But for me, I get directed to a Google Drive if I want to download a copy.

Mark

[Morkin]

Sandy White famously wrote the code for Ant Attack using pen and paper.

He must have been able to see the Matrix (even though it didn't exist until 1999).

[ParadigmShifter]

Skool Daze and its follow ups also written the same way... but he got his wife to type in the hex data lol

I heard Stonkers was also written that way but since it was a John Gibson game I doubt it. Maybe I confused it with some other game. I assume John Gibson had an assembler by then since it wasn't his first game for Imagine?

[flange]

Sandy White famously wrote the code for Ant Attack using pen and paper.

He must have been able to see the Matrix (even though it didn't exist until 1999).

An interview he gave to Sinclair User doesn't mention the hand done stuff and he says he developed the game engine ( 3D Solid Soft ) on a 6502 system or have I got it incorrect?


Partial quote, ""In fact it was not developed on a Z80 based machine, I did most of the work on a 6502 system"...

https://worldofspectrum.org/archive/mag ... user/21#88

Page 88.

[ParadigmShifter]

I assume he's referring to the device he used to input the hex code and squirt it to the spectrum which I have seen info about before but I can't find any of it now

EDIT: I think it actually mapped into memory space on the Z80 though so it wasn't just used as a way to transfer data. I'm not sure if it had debug features or not either (pause/single step CPU etc.).

EDIT2: Though it was EPROM based IIRC so if the code crashed (inevitable when hand assembling lol) he didn't have to type in everything again just modify the hex.

[flange]

I assume he's referring to the device he used to input the hex code and squirt it to the spectrum which I have seen info about before but I can't find any of it now

EDIT: I think it actually mapped into memory space on the Z80 though so it wasn't just used as a way to transfer data. I'm not sure if it had debug features or not either (pause/single step CPU etc.).

EDIT2: Though it was EPROM based IIRC so if the code crashed (inevitable when hand assembling lol) he didn't have to type in everything again just modify the hex.

Thanks for that, makes more sense now.

[Morkin]

squirt it to the spectrum

...Not sure I want to know what sort of interface was used for that

[lexi]

Obviously by:

using NMI's over your basic Interface Too(Much Information)?