27 Apr
2006
27 Apr
'06
1:23 p.m.
My take on the hex-vs-octal 8080/Z80 debate:
My gosh, it doesn't take a mental giant to subdivide an 8 bit quantity into
either octal or hexadecimal! Hex is attractive for 8 bits in that there's
no "hole" to deal with in 16/24/32... bit quantities (although that can be
accomodated with application of a bit of grey matter).
Another reason I like hex for 8 bits is because I can output a line of 16
bytes in a dump format, complete with address and alpha translation on a
single 80-character line. Heaven knows why ZSID went to a two-line format
to do that. But if all you've got is octal, no problem, I can deal with
that, too. Or decimal, for that matter.
Hi Chuck,
Well stated, and THANK YOU - thats exactly what I was trying to say.
Given the choice, and where it makes sense - I work in hex. but I don't
have a huge problem with other notations. I never suggested that anyone
rewrite their existing tools to support one or the other. Only that there is
some validity to others preference for different notations than I use.
On anything I have developed from scratch, I worked in hex - but all of
my tools accept binary, octal and decimal representations as well.
When I worked on the Altair, I worked in hex - even though the Altair
front panel was grouped in octal - it is simple enough to just visualize
the switches in groups of four.
When I worked on the H8 however, I usually worked in octal - the H8
has octal displays and octal keypad - the listings are all in octal, and
the tools all work in octal - It's easier to "go with the flow" than to be
constantly convertng - but I did that too when I moved code to and
from ...
No matter how "wizbang" your tools are, I think you still benefit from
a good low-level understanding of the architecture - no matter what
particular dialect you speak - the "important stuff" is still the same and
is what matters.
Cheers,
Dave
PS: And for-the-record yes, sometimes I prefer to use simple tools
and the debugger between my ears - Many a time I've found the problem
while the other guy was busy hooking up logic analyzer cables...
--
dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield
dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com
com Collector of vintage computing equipment:
http://www.parse.com/~ddunfield/museum/index.html