🚀 go-pugleaf

A while ago I posted a request for a public domain cross-assembler for
the intel 8051 microcontroller.  I would like to thank all the people
who replied.  Also, enough people asked for me to relay my findings
that I feel it would be worthwhile posting what I've found out.

I have obtained two shareware assemblers, PsuedoSam 51 by PsuedoCode
and TASM by Thomas Anderson at Speech Technology Incorporated.  Both
are available from Steve Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar Bulletin Board ((203)
871-1988).  TASM is in a file called TASM.ARC in the /IBM/UTILITIES
directory and PusedoSam 51 is available as 8051.ARC in the
/IBM/UTILITIES directory and as PS51A123.ARC in the /PROJECTS
directory.  PsuedoSam 51 (and PsuedoSam assemblers for all sorts of
other processors) are reportedly available from SIMTEL20 but it has
been down.

The major problem with these assemblers is that they are not compatible
with the intel assembler or with each other.  However, they are both
quite usable.  PsuedoSam uses a somewhat unusual syntax (.equ ONE, 1
instead of ONE equ 1).  TASM is a table driven assembler.  The .ARC
file includes tables for the 8048, 8051 and 6502.  The format of these
files is documented for people wishing to create their own tables.
TASM also includes a C like preprocessor with #define, #if, #include,
etc.  I think this is a good idea, but some problems came to light when
I tried to use this feature.  In particular the implementation of
#define works on characters rather than tokens, therefore the following
code does not work as expected:

#define LATE            R3
#define LATEPORT        0x50
        MOV     R0, #LATEPORT

Both of these assemblers produce listings and intel hex format object
files.  After briefly trying both products I chose to use PsuedoSam 51.
-- 
Ron Jeffery                     | Internet: ronj@datacom.ee.ubc.ca
Communications Research Lab     |     UUCP: ubc-cs!ubc-datacom!ronj