Re: LISA assembler

["Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com>]

Andy McFadden wrote:
> Deckard <boutillon@free.fr> wrote:
>
> > I own few disks full of sources written with LISA 2.5B (saved as BIN
> > files with special bytes instead of the normal 6502 mnemonics, etc...)
> > I would like to convert them to a txt format (to use with Merlin pro,
> > DOS 3.3 version).
> > I tried the LISA "WRITE" cmd but it failed (created empty txt files).
> >
> > Do you know if there is a tool which allow to convert such sources
> > automatically?
>
>
> CiderPress can convert the three known LISA formats (2.x, 3.x, 4.x/5.x)
> to text files.  You will have to convert the text files to your assembler
> of choice.  Besides the text formatting, there are differences in the
> psuedo-opcodes for macros, conditional assembly, chunks of data, etc.
>
> Convert the disks to disk images on a Windows machine.  Select the files,
> click on Extract, select "Configure for easy access in Windows".  It will
> extract all selected files into plain text.  You *might* just need to
> add them back to a DOS disk -- CiderPress will do the DOS text conversion --
> but I don't know if the DOS Merlin editor will handle plain text files
> with multiple spaces between fields.  (Is there an "import text file"
> sort of option in that?)
>
> FWIW, I had similar problems with the LISA 2.5 "WRITE" command.  The 5.x
> editor wasn't exactly intuitive either, and none of the later versions
> can read files from the earlier versions.

I've had some experience converting formatted text files to Merlin.

First, eliminate redundant spaces by iteratively replacing pairs of
spaces with a single space.  When no pairs are found, you're done.
(This can be done either in a text editor or in Merlin's editor.)

Then (if you haven't already got it there) L)oad the text file into
Merlin and enter the editor.  Make any formatting touch-ups.

Then type "fix" to normalize the source file.

The source can then be saved as a standard Merlin ".s" source file.

-michael

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