Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!ncar!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!caen!umich!terminator!pisa.citi.umich.edu!rees From: rees@pisa.citi.umich.edu (Jim Rees) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo Subject: Re: Assembler for the Apollo Message-ID: <51bd2592.1bc5b@pisa.citi.umich.edu> Date: 23 May 91 18:50:10 GMT References: <9105221714.AA23994@cel.cummins.com> Sender: usenet@terminator.cc.umich.edu (usenet news) Reply-To: rees@citi.umich.edu (Jim Rees) Organization: University of Michigan ITD Lines: 24 In article , mike@vlsivie.tuwien.ac.at (Michael K. Gschwind) writes: Here we see again how HP/Apollo manages to infuriate its customers by telling us _they_ know better what we should and we should not do. ("No, you don't want to write assembler code - Use Pascal and/or C!"). They have a quite stable product which their customers ask them to _sell_ (as a supported product) for _money_ (That's what a company is supposed to make, right ? ;-) and they mess it up. That's not quite fair. Someone made a marketing decision, that it would cost more to support the assembler than they could make by selling it, and that it would be a money loser. I think that was the right decision, from a purely marketing point of view. Given that decision, the best they could do is release it as an unsupported product, which I think they have done (we've got it, but then we're not exactly Joe Customer). Anyway, why would you want it? It won't assemble from compiler output, it uses non-standard (Motorola?) mnemonics, and I find it somewhat cranky (early versions treated tabs as illegals!). The gnu assembler with Vasta mods is much better, and is free. If anyone is interested, I'll even make it available for ftp from here. This is one case where I think HP/Apollo has done exactly the right thing (except maybe they should tell you where to get the gnu assembler).