In message <000001c3e494$f2950110$6400a8c0@fasty>, "Joe Wiencis" writes:
> I haven't done any Assembler since the VAX
> days in college so any help is appreciated including source code, tips
> and tricks, beer recommendations etc. because I bet I'll need it. Could
> my VAX Assembly Language Programming book which I still have come in
> handy in any way?
Not much in the specifics on the 2600, but if you ever need to
program a Motorola 68000 machine, that's very similar to the VAX
instruction set. (This is no coincidence. :-) ) Of course both
of those map well to C, so you're often better off with a compiler
anyway. (I've an off-topic Atari (Jaguar) story about that...)
But the general knowledge of a processor with several addessing
modes (like VAX) will come in handy. The 6502 does some of them,
and that's tricky for some people to learn cold, so you've got a
leg up there.
Also the basic ideas of conditional branches and other concepts map
well between the machines (and many others). If you've had a
computer architecture survey course or something in there somewhere,
you know what I mean. (And likely we had similar undergrad educations
many moons ago, I'm guessing.)
On the other hand, you've been spoiled by having a lot of registers.
You'll need to put that idea out of your mind completely. :-)
ab
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