Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!udel!rochester!rutgers!cbmvax!daveh
From: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: 8-bit death
Message-ID: <21314@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Date: 6 May 91 22:41:17 GMT
References: <1991Apr30.112820.2451@sugar.hackercorp.com> <1991May1.064455.3058@kessner.denver.co.us> <21135@cbmvax.commodore.com> <1991May3.041705.9907@kessner.denver.co.us> <21216@cbmvax.commodore.com> <1991May3.220043.28760@ncsu.edu>
Reply-To: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
Lines: 35

In article <1991May3.220043.28760@ncsu.edu> kdarling@hobbes.catt.ncsu.edu (Kevin Darling) writes:
>In <21216@cbmvax.commodore.com> daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie) writes:

>I must say that too many Amiga programmers shy away from the reentrant and
>position-independent modes of the 680x0, btw.  

There's nothing wrong with either, when used for the right reasons.  And
everything wrong with both, when used for the wrong reasons.

>Treating a 68K cpu like a giant 6502 makes me want to throw up :-).  

Me too.  I would rather see it treated like the 32 bit CPU that it is, maybe
like a VAX.

>The fact that those addressing modes are _faster_ than the long addressing 
>modes often used instead, 

Assuming you have small chunks of code.  Going through wacky jump tables 
because you don't have a way to deal with proper linear addresses in large
programs seems to me to be, well, rather Intel-like.

>Yet they're what the cpu was designed for!

No, they're one option, among many.  A simple tradeoff between instruction time
and code size.  And of course, now we have real 32 bit buses and ALUs in these
things, not that 68000 hybrid nonsense.  And in any case, once you need the 
code size, they get in the way just as surely as 8088 segments.  Pure code is
good for a 3K "C:" tool that I want on the resident list, and base register
addressing doesn't get in the way.  For a 1MB CAD or DTP program, it will get
in the way, and I have no need to make the thing resident.

-- 
Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests"
   {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh      PLINK: hazy     BIX: hazy
      "That's me in the corner, that's me in the spotlight" -R.E.M.