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From: terrell@OHIO-STATE.ARPA (Eric Terrell)
Newsgroups: net.micro.atari16
Subject: Antic A-SEKA Assembler Initial Impressions (Trash)
Message-ID: <8609261745.AA06193@ohio-state.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 26-Sep-86 13:45:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: ohio-sta.8609261745.AA06193
Posted: Fri Sep 26 13:45:23 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 30-Sep-86 03:19:44 EDT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The ARPA Internet
Lines: 49


I've had the Antic A-SEKA 68K assembler for a couple of days and I would like
to strongly discourage anyone from buying it.  The program is expensive 
(~35.00) for an assembler, and it seems like "standalone" .tos or .prg programs
cannot be written with it.

First off the user interface is non-GEM.  The editor is a line editor (YUK)
but a regular editor can be used instead (I've used the OSS Pascal editor
with the assembler successfully).

The most serious problem that I've had with this product is that although
assembled programs seem to run from the debugger, it seems that they cannot
be saved as .tos or .prg programs and run by themselves.  I suspect that the
programs produced by the assembler lack the information required by the OS
to load and run them correctly.  I had this problem with one of the example
programs in the documentation - it ran from the debugger but not on its own.

The documentation is on the disk and one must print it on one's own printer.
The documentation seems to be fairly complete (~30 pages) but there are almost
no examples of programs to type in and run (I think that there are only two or
three VERY small example programs).

When syntax errors are discovered in one's source code the assembler writes out
an error message and then starts writing all sorts of mysterious characters
to the screen for several lines...

On the positive side, the assembler seems to run very fast because all files are
memory resident.  The program is small enough (~17K) to fit on a RAM disk along
with a reasonable editor (that you will have to supply yourself).  The assembler
has rather primative support for macros.

In summary this assembler seems to be useless since it appears that standalone
programs cannot be produced with it (this may be due to my own inexperience - 
but I couldn't even get the examples to run by themselves).

The program is not copy protected.

This program is the last program that I'll ever buy without getting a recommendation,
reading a review, or running it in the store first!

Perhaps those of you that are pleased with your assemblers can recommend one.
I AM ESPECIALLY INTERESTED IN GETTING AN ASSEMBLER THAT CAN PRODUCE CODE THAT
CAN LINK TO OSS PERSONAL PASCAL!

Hope this helps,



Eric Bergman-Terrell