Re: Monitoring Program

[Michael Black <blackm00@CAM.ORG>]

On Wed, 3 Feb 1999, Dennis McCormick-Kovacich wrote:
[stuff deleted]
> 
> That's all I can remember right now. Some models have a built-in assembler
> called Sweet-16 that was written by Steve Wozniak, but I'm not sure which
> models have it. I think the command to enter it was simply an exclamation mark
> (!). I think its prompt was also the "!". If you have it, this will allow you
> to enter programs using 6502 assembly mneumonics instead of having to know the
> hex values. When you're done with the monitor and want to return to AppleSoft,
> there are three ways to do it:
> 
I thought the mini-assembler disappeared when the II+ came out.  There was
an article about putting it back in for later models, in Creative
Computing if I remember correctly.

The mini-assembler used some of the routines in the disassembler.  I had
an OSI Superboard back then (a complete 6502 system, but more limited than
the Apple II), and bought the Apple II manual to get the monitor listing
so I could rework it for the OSI.  It really was quite interesting.

However, Sweet-16 was not the name of the mini-assembler.  It was an
interpreter for a 16-bit pseudo-machine language.  It was meant to be
invoked when 16-bit operations were needed, and then you'd switch back to
6502 machine language.  WOZ mentioned it in connection with integer BASIC,
but I can't remember whether he said in the interview that integer BASIC
used Sweet-16, or that he didn't have it ready in time for use with the
BASIC.

   Michael