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Atari Assembler Editor
Atari Assembler Editor

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!!!Atari Assembler Editor ; Copyright (C) 1980 Atari, Inc. & Kathleen Ann O'Brien
!!!Atari Assembler Editor
Copyright (C) 1980 Atari, Inc. & Kathleen Ann O'Brien
Atari hired Shepardson Microsystems to write [Atari BASIC] for the 8-bit line. Shepardson developed it using a cross-compiler, but took the opportunity to begin writing their own assembler for the Atari platform as well.
Atari Assembler Editor shared many components with Atari BASIC, notably the screen editor which used the same line-number based system as BASIC. However, it added several editing commands, including a RENumber and DELete, which, perhaps surprisingly, could also be used to edit BASIC programs.
The system ran entirely in system RAM, meaning that both the source code and resulting machine code had to be able to fit in memory at the same time. This could be a significant limitation in many situations. Additionally, it did not include the ability to link multiple files together into a single larger program, which put further limits on the sort of programs that could be developed with it. [Eastern Front 1941] required six modules, which had to be linked together by hand using DOS, ensuring that the memory locations in the six files were correct.
For larger programs, Atari also sold [Atari Macro Assembler], which used a separate full-screen editor, saved files to disk, and included a linker. This was, however, both slow and expensive. As a result, many programmers were left wanting something more powerful than Assembler Editor (notably with macro support, which it lacked) but faster and less expensive than Macro Assembler. This led to a thriving market for 3rd party assemblers on the Atari platform.
This page (revision-62) was last changed on 03-Feb-2023 15:21 by Roland B. Wassenberg  Top