Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!olivea!apple!usc!orion.oac.uci.edu!cedman From: cedman@golem.ps.uci.edu (Carl Edman) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech Subject: Re: Assembler Programming - Costs versus Benefits Message-ID: Date: 1 Dec 90 01:34:35 GMT References: <1990Nov25.040121.10773@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <7167@sugar.hackercorp.com> Organization: University of California, Irvine, USA. Lines: 36 Nntp-Posting-Host: lynx.ps.uci.edu In-reply-to: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com's message of 30 Nov 90 12:54:20 GMT In article <7167@sugar.hackercorp.com> peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) writes: In article , cedman@golem.ps.uci.edu (Carl Edman) writes: > Amiga OS has been written in a way which is compatible > with higher processors, ST OS hasn't. User programs for the ST should > run unmodified under higher processors. Um, no. It seems the ST operating system interface includes a bunch of calls made by using reserved opcodes. Which turned into real opcodes on the 68020. Big mistake. If it was just O/S internals stuff they could have fixed it by now. In any case, none of it was necessary. Ah, yes , I remember. The graphics calls , weren't it ? It has been a long time since I last read or thought about the ST. Anyway ,Amiga OS has avoided such obvious brain-damage. > And intuition.library does not screen you from any processor > incompatibilities. No, but high level languages do. Try doing "move SR,ea" in C some time. I've programmed a lot in both assembler and C, and I've never used this instruction. I don't know why any user program would want to use it. I don't know why the only program which I know of which used it , "Calc", did use it. I don't know why anybody complains about it as this incompatibility is quite trivially fixed (with any number of PD programs out there). It is unfortunate that this problem exists, but it really is only a very minor problem. Carl Edman Theorectical Physicist,N.:A physicist whose | Send mail existence is postulated, to make the numbers | to balance but who is never actually observed | cedman@golem.ps.uci.edu in the laboratory. | edmanc@uciph0.ps.uci.edu