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From: hedley@iitinc (Hedley Rainnie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: ZX81 Emulator was Re: Z80 cross assembler/Emulator
Summary: casette
Message-ID: <157@iitinc.UUCP>
Date: 28 Aug 90 02:05:40 GMT
References: <1990Aug3.185119.848@newcastle.ac.uk> <21393@duke.cs.duke.edu> <140.26d302a9@brb.isnet.inmos.co.uk>
Organization: Integrated Information Tech., Santa Clara, CA
Lines: 24

> gary@brb.isnet.inmos.co.uk writes:
> You could if you wished program the Z80 in assembler (in fact there may have
> been one on the disk). The normal way to load a machine code program was to
> have a REM statement as line 1 with lots of characters (more than the length
> of your machine code), then poke the machine code into RAM byte by byte (in
> decimal!) which would overwrite the characters following the REM statement.
....
> Sigh! Those were the days. I wanted a ZX81, but couldn't afford one, so I had
> to stick to my ZX80.

Actually I used an assembler for it, you read the assembler in from cassette
and it was a large basic program, since cassette didn't make for a robust
file system there was no way to build an "object" so you entered the 
assembly statements in REM statements at the top of the program (the assembler!)
then run the assembler. The resulting machine code would be org'd to some spot
in memory, my friend an I were using it to do vector graphics via DAC's to a scope.

The cassette was unreliable at best. Why didn't the ST come with a cassette port? :-)

Hedley

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