Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!udel!haven!adm!cmcl2!phri!cooper!gene
From: gene@cooper.cooper.EDU (Gene (the Spook) )
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Zilog's mnemonics; a boon to programmers
Message-ID: <3065@cooper.cooper.EDU>
Date: 15 Nov 90 02:16:48 GMT
References: <1768@metaphor.Metaphor.COM|
Organization: The Cooper Union (NY, NY)
Lines: 42

in article <1768@metaphor.Metaphor.COM|, djh@neuromancer.metaphor.com (Dallas J. Hodgson) says:
| 
| In article <1990Nov9.164838.26423@amd.com| ching@brahms.amd.com (Mike Ching) writes:
||In article <9333@b11.ingr.com| lhughes@b11.ingr.com (Lawrence Hughes) writes:
||...
|||
|||The Z80 WAS upward compatible with the 8080, at both architecture and binary
|||opcode level - curiously enough, though, the bright boys at Zilog invented
|||a better (read "different and incompatible") symbolic assembly langauge
|||which made it much more difficult to take advantage of the Z80's extended
|||instructions: you either stuck with Intel mnemonics (and the 8080 subset) or
|||worked with Zilog's "preverted" ones (e.g. almost half the actual binary 
|||opcodes mapped onto the single symbolic opcode "LD"). Zilog's symbolic
|||language was SUCH a turkey, that several extended Intel symbolic assembly 
|||languages were developed (and widely used) leading to a regular tower of Babel.
|||Clever, Zilog.
| 
| Ahem, excuse me, but Zilog's mnemonics were readable and orthogonal in a way
| that Intel's never were, and were by far the more popular standard for Z-80
| programming. Intel was never quite sure how to recast the Z-80 extended ops
| into their particular mold; often their syntax was just borrowed "as is"
| from the TDL Zilog format. Unless you had a vested interest in the 8080 for
| some reason, Zilog mnemonics were simply the preferred way to go. It's
| interesting to note that Zilog was founded by ex-Intelites.
| 
| On the binary opcode level, the Z80's instructions were mondo hack attempts
| to extend the language while maintaining almost complete backward
| compatibility with the 8080. Simple conversion programs have always been
| available to translate between different formats, so I don't see any reason
| to get religious over this issue. Frankly, this is the first time I've
| ever heard ANYONE get religious over Intel's (!@#?!) assembler syntax.
| 
| Now Motorola, there's a company that really did things right...
| 
| LDIR! CPIR! EXX! Reasons to Live!

Pardon my French, but...

	A-fuckin-men!

							Spookfully yours,
							Gene