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The code comes from the RGBDS source and documentation zip files found on this website: http://www.otakunozoku.com/1999/08/01/rednex-gameboy-development-system/ The same website reports: "Best of all, it’s free! That’s right! Free! The executables are free to use, either for personal hobby use, or full blown commercial productions — I know of at least a dozen commercial games you can purchase that are written with RGBDS — and the source code is free to modify. "The only thing I ask is that you do not charge for either distributing the executables or source code, and any derivative works you give credit to the original authors of the tools. That means you have to say “Thanks” to the original authors SurfSmurf and Otaku." Signed-off-by: Vegard Nossum <vegard.nossum@gmail.com>
156 lines
8.7 KiB
HTML
156 lines
8.7 KiB
HTML
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
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<HTML>
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<HEAD>
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<TITLE>General Information</TITLE>
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</HEAD>
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<BODY BGCOLOR="#692764" TEXT="#F5A0D8" LINK="#8AAEE6" VLINK="#2B9DA4" ALINK="#95F0DA">
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<HR><CENTER>
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<TABLE BORDER=0 BGCOLOR="#000000" CELLPADDING=25>
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<TR>
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<TD><FONT COLOR="#FFFFFF"><H2>ASMotor General Information</H2></FONT></TD>
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</TR>
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</TABLE>
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</CENTER>
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<HR>
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<H2><CENTER>Table of Contents
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</CENTER></H2>
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<UL>
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<LI><A HREF="#BlahBlahBlah">BlahBlahBlah</A>
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<LI><A HREF="#Author">The Author</A>
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<LI><A HREF="#Introduction">Introduction</A>
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<LI><A HREF="#Installation">Installation</A>
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<LI><A HREF="#Documentation">The Documentation</A>
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<LI><A HREF="#History">History</A>
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</UL>
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<BR><HR><H3><BR><A NAME="BlahBlahBlah">BlahBlahBlah</A></H3>
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<P>The <B>ASMotor</B> package (<A HREF="asm.htm">xAsm</A>, <A HREF="link.htm">xLink</A>, <A HREF="fix.htm">RGBFix</A>, examples and <A HREF="#Documentation">documentation</A>) is freeware and distributed as is. The
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author retains his copyright and right to modify the specifications and operation of the software without notice.
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<P>In other words this means I encourage you to...
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<UL>
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<LI>use it for whatever purpose even professional work without me charging you a penny
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<LI>copy it to another person (wholly or in part, though I'm sure he'd appreciate the whole package) in
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whatever form you find suitable
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<LI>mass-distribute the <B>ASMotor</B> package if it is complete (<A HREF="asm.htm">xAsm</A>, <A HREF="link.htm">xLink</A>, <A HREF="fix.htm">RGBFix</A> and documentation).
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<LI>contact me if you have any problems
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</UL>
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<P>This also means you can't...
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<UL>
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<LI>blame me for loss of profit, data, sleep, food or other nasty things through the use or distribution of <B>ASMotor</B>. If
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you choose to use <B>ASMotor</B> you do so at your own risk.
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<LI>expect me to be able to help you should you have a problem related or not to <B>ASMotor</B>.
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</UL>
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<P>I am happy to say that xAsm and xLink use PMODE/W as DOS-extender for the MS-DOS port! This means fast assembling of your sourcecodes. A lot faster. PMODE/W is a drop-in replacement for the bulky DOS4GW. If you are a programmer you should check out <A HREF="http://www.di.net/pmw">http://www.di.net/pmw</A><BR>
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"PMODE/W is Copyright (c) 1994-1997, Charles Scheffold and Thomas Pytel. All rights reserved."<BR>
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<BR><HR><H3><BR><A NAME="Author">The Author</A></H3>
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<P>Any questions? Write me!<BR>
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<BR>
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Carsten Sorensen<BR>
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1 Spring Court<BR>
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Guildford<BR>
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Surrey GU2 6QW<BR>
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United Kingdom<BR>
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<BR>
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<A NAME="Email">e-mail:</A><BR>
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<A HREF="mailto:surfsmurf@matilde.demon.co.uk">surfsmurf@matilde.demon.co.uk</A> (private)<BR>
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<A HREF="mailto:csorensen@ea.com">csorensen@ea.com</A> (work)<BR>
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<BR>
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Get the latest version from my web page at <A HREF="http://www.matilde.demon.co.uk">http://www.matilde.demon.co.uk</A>
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<BR><HR><H3><BR><A NAME="Introduction">Introduction</A></H3>
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<P><B>ASMotor</B> is a package currently consisting of three programs (<A HREF="asm.htm">xAsm</A>, <A HREF="link.htm">xLink</A> and <A HREF="fix.htm">RGBFix</A>) originally designed for development on the Gameboy hand-held
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video-game console by Nintendo but recently it has moved towards being a target independent shell for making development of new
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assemblers for different processors easier.<BR>
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<A HREF="asm.htm">xAsm</A> is a decently fast assembler (up to <I>800000 lines/minute</I> (hrm well actually that's for 16384 lines of NOP's ;) on a P-120). It converts an assembler source into the <A HREF="rgb0.htm">RGB object-fileformat</A>.<BR>
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<A HREF="link.htm">xLink</A> is used to link multiple (one or more) object files together into one target file eg. a Gameboy ROM or Psion2 relocatable module.<BR>
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<A HREF="fix.htm">RGBFix</A> is used to apply some final cosmetic details to a Gameboy ROM-image.<BR>
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<P>This document does not try to teach you how to program in assembler, how to program a specifix processor or the Gameboy.
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It does just briefly explain the features of <A HREF="asm.htm">xAsm</A> and <A HREF="link.htm">xLink</A>. Sometimes I will assume that you have actually worked with assemblers before and that you are familiar with the target processor.
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<P>Why another assembler? There seems to be millions out there! This project started out as a Gameboy assembler because none of the available assemblers had the features I wanted. Now the reason is I want to make the most powerful assembler. Ever ;) And I want to be able to re-use it easily whenever I encounter a new system with another processor.
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Don't like it? Something you'd like to see added? <A HREF="#Email">Mail me</A> and I'll see what I can do.
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<P>The <A HREF="asm.htm">assembler</A> and <A HREF="link.htm">linker</A> are written entirely in ANSI C using Bison for the parser. I try to maintain two pre-compiled ports of <B>ASMotor</B>, one for the MS-DOS environment and one for Linux. Bison
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is a GNU tool (compiler-compiler) tailored to aid in the development of compilers which you will need if you want to compile it afresh.<BR>
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<BR><HR><H3><BR><A NAME="Installation">Installation</A></H3>
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<P>Anywhere on your HD will do. For maximum enjoyment I recommend adding the directory to your path.
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Alternatively you can run it from a floppy.<BR>
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<BR><HR><H3><BR><A NAME="Documentation">The Documentation</A></H3>
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<P>The documentation only comes in one flavour. HTML. This has several advantages for me
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<UL>
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<LI>It's a more "portable" format.
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<LI>Not everybody has the nice fonts I used in the Word file.
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<LI>Hypertext r00lz. (Typesetting for programmers ;)
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<LI>I can put it "as is" on <A HREF="http://www.matilde.demon.co.uk">my web page</A>.
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</UL>
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<BR><HR><H3><BR><A NAME="History">History</A></H3>
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<TABLE BORDER=1>
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<CAPTION><I>The history of ASMotor</I></CAPTION>
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<TR>
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<TD ALIGN="Center"><B><I>Version</I></B></TD>
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<TD ALIGN="Center"><I><B>Dated</B></I></TD>
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<TD><B><I>Release notes</I></B></TD>
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</TR>
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<TR>
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<TD ALIGN="Center">1.0</TD>
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<TD ALIGN="Center">03 July 1997</TD>
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<TD>First release</TD>
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</TR>
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<TR>
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<TD ALIGN="Center">1.01</TD>
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<TD ALIGN="Center">20 July 1997</TD>
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<TD><B>RGBDS fixes:</B><BR>
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RGBFix can now also truncate the ROM-images to a valid size.<BR>
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RGBAsm supports the LDD and LDI syntax plus [HLD] and [HLI]. LDH is
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synonymous with LDIO.<BR>
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Example filenames have been changed to adhere to Jeff Frohweins proposed
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standard.<BR>
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<B>General fixes:</B><BR>
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RGBLink knows about big and little endian. Plus it can do range checking
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on intermediate results in an expression. This is necessary to support
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different types of CPUs.<BR>
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RGBLink DIDN'T know about the special PC symbol "@" so if you used it
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more than once per sourcefile in an expression the linker had to
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resolve, things would go horribly wrong.<BR>
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There was a bug in the macro parameter passing. Any whitespace after the
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last parameter would be appended to the last parameter. Reported by Jeff Frohwein.<BR>
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A section stack has been implemented. Look up POPS and PUSHS in the
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manual. Jeff Frohweins doing again.<BR>
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OPT command added for defining and changing some options while assembling.<BR>
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You can now define which characters are used for the Gameboy graphics
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integer (`) using the commandline or the new OPT command. Cool idea by (surprise surprise) Jeff Frohwein.<BR>
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Also, an option stack has been added. Look up POPO and PUSHO in the
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manual.<BR>
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Fixed yet another line number bug reported by Jeff Frohwein (when will this guy leave me alone? ;)<BR>
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</TD>
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<TR>
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<TD ALIGN="Center">1.02</TD>
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<TD ALIGN="Center">22 July 1997</TD>
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<TD><B>General fixes:</B><BR>
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The lamest typo bug of all time has been fixed. RGBAsm would output a word defined with DW as 4 bytes instead of 2. Jeff Frohwein reported this.<BR>
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The first line of an included file didn't assemble correctly.<BR>
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-b option added for setting the characters used for binary constants.<BR>
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</TD>
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</TR>
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<TR>
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<TD ALIGN="Center">1.10</TD>
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<TD ALIGN="Center">21 Sep 1997</TD>
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<TD><B>General fixes:</B><BR>
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The assembler would crash if you tried to use a macro symbol in an expression.
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(Jeff Frohwein)<BR>
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You couldn't use STRCMP, STRLEN and STRIN in relocatable expressions. (Harry
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P. Mulder)<BR>
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Relocatable symbols are no longer allowed as arguments to the DEF function.<BR>
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Finally! A librarian and smart linking has been added.<BR>
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Bug fixed in the assembler where it would sometimes write out too many bytes
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for HRAM section definitions.<BR>
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-z options (set fill value used for uninitialised data) added to the
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assembler and linker.<BR>
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The assembler will now read in any type of ASCII file on any type of OS.
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</TABLE>
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<BR><HR>
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<FONT SIZE="-1"><I><P ALIGN=RIGHT>Last updated 08 October 1997 by <A HREF="mailto:surfsmurf@matilde.demon.co.uk">Carsten Sorensen</A></P></I></FONT>
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