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From: bs@pbhye.UUCP (Bruce Skelly)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.cbm
Subject: MAE Assembler
Message-ID: <2050@pbhye.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 24-Aug-87 11:19:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: pbhye.2050
Posted: Mon Aug 24 11:19:23 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 25-Aug-87 02:54:29 EDT
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Lines: 34
Keywords: MAE ASSEMBLER PAL

As long as we're discussing assemblers, I'd like to mention the 
MAE Assembler.  Actually a very nice package with relocatable code,
macros, conditional assembly, etc.  Looks like the assembler has
been around a while, because it includes instructions for use on
machines that pre-date the C64.  The assembler is shipped with the
Micromon in-RAM monitor, the assembler, an editor, a text formatter,
and a relocation loader.  Several pieces of the software could be
resident at the same time.  For example I would load the monitor,
escape back to basic and load the editor/assembler.  If I remember
correctly one could assemble in absolute mode into memory, and then
execute the code form either the monitor, or SYS from basic.

The draw backs were that one had to be careful what software one
loaded at which address.  It was very easy to over write some code.
It was not very user friendly, but then, neither are hackers, and
who would be using assembler but a hacker.:-)

My problem, and I hope someone out there can help me, is that I 
bought some assembler routines from Abacus on disk.  They are in
'PAL' format and I need to get them into 'MAE' format.  Let me 
clarify that, the problem is with actual file formats and not with
the use of 'OP' codes.  It appears that MAE source files contain
memory location and length information in the header of the file.
this is a good feature for relocation, but doesn't make it compatible
with some of the more standard assemblers.  And that isn't the only
problem.  There are no carriage return at the end of line, but they
set the high-order bit on the last character on the line.  These 
are just some of the goodies I could figure out.

If someone out there could detail the MAE source file format, I'm 
sure I could write a utility to convert to and from PAL.
Thanks-in-advance

Bruce Skelly