Recognise this Assembler?

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Tuna
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Recognise this Assembler?

Post by Tuna »

Hi, I'm trying to resurrect a couple of old programs I wrote for the QL. One is a Boulder Dash clone that even at the time was fiendishly difficult and is now unplayable on emulators (RockFall).

I've found the development disks - and amazingly, they work under QPCII on an old Windows XP machine with a floppy drive. So I can see the files, editor and assembler (even if I can't for the life of me remember how they all worked!!).

I can't identify the Assembler though. It doesn't seem to match any in the Dylwin Jones' archive, and I can't seem to get it to run. If I knew which one it was, I figure at least there might be a small chance of finding a manual.

The assembler executable files seem to be:

Asm
Asma_ovl
Asmb_ovl
Asmc_ovl
Asm_boot
Asm_boot1

It looks like it loads itself into a ram disk using TK2 and other extensions(? My memory for this is terrible), but what you do with it after that is beyond me. My assembly files are dated from around 1991, so it won't be anything that was developed after that.

Any guesses?

The ultimate goal is getting this to work on the excellent MiSTer hardware based emulator (as it writes direct to screen memory, I'm guessing it'll never work for SMSQ/E type systems), but I've got to get my head around the various disk image types and formats for efficiently swapping files between machines..


RWAP
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Re: Recognise this Assembler?

Post by RWAP »

Welcome Andrew - I remember you back from CGH days.... :D

That looks like the Metacomco Assembler.


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NormanDunbar
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Re: Recognise this Assembler?

Post by NormanDunbar »

I second what Rich says, it's the Metacomco assembler. There's a really, really poor scan of the manual, as a pdf file at http://sinclairql.speccy.org/archivo/docs/prog/adk.pdf. I'm 100% uncertain how legal that document is, download at your own risk. (I found it by searching for Metacomvo assembler manual on Google.)

Cheers,
Norm.


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Derek_Stewart
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Re: Recognise this Assembler?

Post by Derek_Stewart »

Hi Norm,

The manual was part of the Spanish QL document scanning proect. As you mentioned maybe copyright issues and the scanning is awlful.

I was going to reformat most of the archive for my own enjoyment. But a couple things got in the way.

I also have my old copies of QL World to scan and OCR.


Regards,

Derek
Tuna
ROM Dongle
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Re: Recognise this Assembler?

Post by Tuna »

Ha! You're right, it's Metacomco.... I have trouble remembering what I had for breakfast, so I'm flattered you remember me :)

So far I have the code and the assembler for RockFall. It looks like it'll never work under SMSQ/E (direct access to screen memory), but it does work on the MiSTer hardware emulator and QLAY. However, the timing is all over the place.

Does anyone know if the 50/60 hz interrupt traps in QDOS are any good in the various emulators? If so I can see a possible fix... then I need to make the time limits on the levels a little less tight :)


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mk79
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Re: Recognise this Assembler?

Post by mk79 »

Tuna wrote: It looks like it'll never work under SMSQ/E (direct access to screen memory)
QPC can handle direct memory access, either set it to 512x256x4 or have a look at QPC_QLSCREMU.
Does anyone know if the 50/60 hz interrupt traps in QDOS are any good in the various emulators? If so I can see a possible fix... then I need to make the time limits on the levels a little less tight :)
They should be fine, too much relies on it. No emulator does 60Hz, I think.

Marcel


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