🚀 go-pugleaf

I have a few questions regarding assembly language programming on the
Amiga.  Mucho thankso to those who can take the time to answer them for me.

On most other systems (such as Unix), there is a convention that a6 is the
"frame pointer".  It always points to the last call frame.  In other
words, most subroutines start out with "link a6,..." and end with
"unlk a6".  But it seems that on the Amiga, a6 is conventionally used to
hold the library base address for library calls ("move.l _DOSBase,a6  ...
jsr _LVOUnLock(a6)").  Is there a convention used for the frame pointer?
Or is it just any register you want?  Other than the "preserve
d2-d7/a2-a7" convention, are there any other assembly language conventions
I should be paying attention to?

Are there any known bugs in ROMWack?  The RKM:Exec makes no mention of any
limitations on the '[' command, making me think that I can nest '['
commands arbitrarily.  I would think I could at least nest them 2 deep.
But the second '[' gives me a guru very consistently.  Even when the
memory location is in a reasonable place (i.e.: definitely fast ram).
What gives?

Am I doing something wrong, or is A68K notoriously slow?  I'm talking
upwards of 5 minutes for an assemble.  Now, my program does include
'intuition.i', which is very large and includes about 50 other files, but
it still seems to take too long.  Is there a shortcut I can use with
equivalence files or something?

Why oh why are the definitions in 'exec/types.i' IN ALL UPPER CASE?
(I'm sure there's a good reason).

I'm working on a little helper program for browser users.  Stay tuned for
details.  I hope to have it ready after thanksgiving break (when I'll have
some time to finish and polish).  Maybe I can pay a little back to the
Amiga community that has given me so much (browser, Dmouse, DME, ConMan,
etc.).

			William LeFebvre
			Department of Computer Science
			Rice University
			<phil@Rice.edu>