Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!crdgw1!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!tuegate.tue.nl!svin02!eba!ebh.eb.ele.tue.nl!wjw From: wjw@ebh.eb.ele.tue.nl (Willem Jan Withagen) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo Subject: Re: Assembler for the Apollo Message-ID: <1196@eba.eb.ele.tue.nl> Date: 28 May 91 11:35:27 GMT References: <9105221714.AA23994@cel.cummins.com> <51bd2592.1bc5b@pisa.citi.umich.edu> Sender: news@eb.ele.tue.nl (The News system) Reply-To: wjw@eb.ele.tue.nl Organization: Digital Systems, Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands Lines: 55 In article <51bd2592.1bc5b@pisa.citi.umich.edu>, rees@pisa.citi.umich.edu (Jim Rees) writes: => 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). So did we after some real pushing, and threatning to buy SONY-NEWS systems which had more memory, power, screen, ... (except that they weren't Apollo) They told me that what I could get was for free, but I wasn't allowed to ask questions. (Not even the stupid ones. :) ) Is that the way an unsuported product works, than that should certainly be done for the assembler. => 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. How about running under the debugger (DDE), generating PIC code which is compatible with the way things went with sr 9.7? (I had little problem converting my toolset from 9.7 to 10.x ) I find the assembler nice to work with but it does require the docs. I could make the Apollo-asm available for anon-ftp, but then somebody in HP with some authority has to tell me that that's oke. I'll put in a note that it's an unsuported product. (It's even already there, but acl's prevent the anonftp-user to read it. Ain't ACL's great. :) ) => 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). You can get it in /pub/apollo/local/lib/gcc-as at ftp.eb.ele.tue.nl [131.155.20.25] ^^ Just changed!!!------------------------------>>^^ Willem Jan -- Eindhoven University of Technology DomainName: wjw@eb.ele.tue.nl Digital Systems Group, Room EH 10.10 P.O. 513 Tel: +31-40-473401 5600 MB Eindhoven The Netherlands