m80v7.msg

   1 Bruce Tanner of Cerritos College has contributed a new release of MAC80, his
   2 8080 cross assember for the DECsystem-10 and DECSYSTEM-20, to the KERMIT
   3 distribution.  For those of you who may have an earlier copy, here are the
   4 differences:
   5
   6 Changes between MAC80 6A and 7:
   7
   8         <filename>.SYM is created whenever a list file is requested.
   9         This can be used by SID and ZSID.
  10
  11         MACLIB <filename> will read in <filename>.LIB (in your default path)
  12         as a library of macros and symbol definitions.
  13
  14         PAGE will force a page eject.
  15         PAGE n will set the default page size to n.
  16
  17         NUL FOO will return TRUE if FOO is a null argument to a macro.
  18         NUL actually checks for an undefined symbol generated for the macro,
  19         so passing an undefined symbol as an argument to a macro will be
  20         tested as a null argument.
  21
  22         REPT <expr> ... ENDM  repeats the code inside the macro <expr> times.
  23         Local symbols may be used in REPT.
  24
  25         EXITM may be used to abort a macro or REPT.
  26
  27         One layer of fuzzy thinking removed from upper/lower case handling.
  28
  29         One known bug: OPT SMAC and nested macros generate junk in the
  30         listing. The generated code is OK.
  31
  32
  33 Changes between MAC80 6 and 6A:
  34
  35         Relational operators in expressions (=,<>,<,<=,>,>=,eq,ne,lt,le,gt,ge),
  36         returns FF if true 0 if false.
  37
  38         @ and ? are allowed in symbols.
  39
  40         $ are considered non-significant in symbols.
  41
  42         local symbols are now ??n instead of L$$n.
  43
  44 Changes between MAC80 5B and 6:
  45
  46         Symbols may now be up to 12 characters long
  47
  48         Symbols (including numbers) may include dollar signs
  49
  50         The listing file output reflects the actual case of the input file
  51
  52         The value generated by dollar signs (assembler PC) in EQU statements
  53         are now correct
  54
  55         Binary numbers are now legal
  56
  57         Macros may now be nested
  58
  59         Local symbols in macros
  60
  61 You can get the new MAC80 via anonymous FTP from COLUMBIA-20 (ARPAnet) or
  62 anonymous NFT from CUCS20 (CCnet), specifying files KER:M*8*.* and
  63 KER:TORTUR.* (the latter being a "torture test" that illustrates all the
  64 features of the assembler.
  65
  66 Bruce's utility HEXIFY, which converts a CP/M .COM file to a .HEX file on the
  67 DEC-10 or -20, remains available as before.  In addition, he has contributed a
  68 complementary program, HEXCOM, to convert a .HEX file to a .COM file.  These
  69 programs can be obtained by specifying KER:HEX*.* to FTP or NFT.
  70
  71 - Frank
  72