tops20 assembly tutorials

From: David Griffith Sent: Saturday, March 05, 2016 9:36 PM http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/pdp10/TOPS20/AA-4159C-TM_Macro_Assembler_R… http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/pdp10/TOPS20/DEC-20-OMUGA-A-D_Monitor_Call… If you are comfortable with assembler language programming, these should suffice. If not, there are pointers to one online textbook in the recent flurry of messages discussing the Gorin textbook; besides the TOPS-20 books there is the Singer DEC-10 assembler book (monitor calls differ immensely system calls manuals, but as text files they're actually harder to read till you're used to the format from the older version of the user's guide above. http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/pdp10/TOPS20/V7/JSYS_USERS.MEM.txt http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/pdp10/TOPS20/V7/JSYS_REFERENCE.MEM.txt (Oh. TOPS-20 monitor calls are referred to as "JSYS calls", since that is the machine instruction, opcode 104, which invokes them. Thus these names.) Once you have a basic grasp of the assembler from the above, I recommend perusing the sources to the MM mail manager suite of programs, which use very good programming style, including the "structured programming" macros found in MACSYM.MAC. Ralph did not think highly of them, and used an older style in which conditional code is included in literals; the textbooks all seem to utilize that style. Wait. You said "running the assembler". Did you mean, "How do I invoke Macro-20?" That's simple: The commands COMPILE, LOAD, EXECUTE, and DEBUG all recognize the file type .MAC as requiring Macro-20 and do the Right Thing(TM) automagically. If you need more than that, the Macro-20 manual above and the LINK manual (damn it, there's not a copy on Bitsavers--talk to me, Al!) will provide details of how to invoke them. COMPILE does only that. LOAD will compile if necessary and link the result into an executable image in memory (which can be saved as an executable program file with the SAVE command). EXECUTE and DEBUG will compile if needed, link, and respectively either simply start running or invoke DDT and leave you ready to execute, examine memory, etc. Do you need a pointer to the user commands manual? http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/pdp10/TOPS20/V7/USERS.MEM.txt Rich Rich Alderson Vintage Computing Sr. Systems Engineer Living Computer Museum 2245 1st Avenue S Seattle, WA 98134 mailto:RichA at LivingComputerMuseum.org http://www.LivingComputerMuseum.org/