Vorticon wrote: ↑Fri Mar 11, 2022 1:44 pm
but doing assembly on the Zeddy hardware (not emulation) appears to be a particular form of masochism
I have NEVER coded a game in machinecode on the ZX81.
I did do it on a ZX Spectrum (TORNADO ASSEMBLER and export .P) but now I do it on a PC environment.
But enough whining. I do have a question: How many characters can be stored in a single REM statement?
This is one of the mainreasons I don't code on the ZX81. My .P is optimized in saving bytes.
Outside the ZX81 makes using more memory to be used. My BASIC is placed over sysvar and no REM needed since
the program will never do a syntaxcheck, it will only execute.
Thanks for the tip. The Baker book does actually detail a procedure to merge REM statements as well, although it's a rather clumsy procedure.
I've been taking a look at the ZX Assembler 2 and I think this package will be a huge step up from hand assembling code and worrying about REM statements manipulation.
I use Memotech's Z80 Assembler loaded at location 8k-16k. I find it pleasant that the source is stored in a Basic string array, and can be manipulated outside the assembler if needed.
I remember in one of the Sinclair magazines the listing for a game all done in MC - the article had the user create a single large REM statement by hand, then duplicate it several times (edit, change line number, hit ENTER); afterwards, it had the user issue a CLS, then a few POKEs that would end up "merging" all the REM statements into a single one.