Re: contiki and an assembler

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

Alistair J Ross replied:

>> With Merlin, you load a program's source, edit it, save the source,
>> assemble it, save ithe object code, and then run it.  Seems pretty
>> natural to me.
>> 
>> Of course, I've done it a few hundred times...  ;-)
>
>Merlin attempts to load the source i made in teach in system 6.
>when i catalog in dos or merlin, i can see the file i created so i 
>know that it's there.
>
>When I go to load it, it says it can't find it.
>
>So from that point. I'm stuck.
>
>I also can't make any sense out of the editor, it looks like an
>old sort of edlin type editor.

Merlin Pro can import text source files, but you should
append ".S" to the file name so that when you type the
filename (the part before the .S) it will find it.  This is the
standard Merlin naming convention.

After you load a text file created outside Merlin's editor,
you will need to use the FIX command in the editor.  This
will put the program in Merlin's standard source format,
which conserves memory space.

You will find it easier to use Merlin if you SAVE your
source files from within Merlin, and use Merlin's edtor.
The editor is a simple line editor, but it has many
quite convenient features for working on assembly
source.

I realize that people tend to become fond of particular
editors, and resist learning new ones, but it's not much
of a problem, and it works fine.

You will quickly learn shortcuts that simplify the use
of the editor, like "." to re-list starting with the first
line of the last listed range, and "/" to continue listing
from the last line listed.  You will also find it useful that
the space bar stops a listing and "steps" a listing forward
by one line for each repeated space.

If, after using it for an hour or two, you still chafe at it,
then you can return to using a screen editor, choosing
an upper case source name ending in ".S", and using
FIX before assembling.

Frankly, I find that using sequence numbers to edit
a source file working from a marked-up listing, to be
quite straightforward.

BTW, you _do_ have the Merlin Pro manual, don't you?

-michael

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