10 Jan
2017
10 Jan
'17
8:03 a.m.
From: Brent Hilpert
>>> One assembler doc uses a prefix of
"&o"
So the answer is, by modern expectations the old
standard would be
ambiguous or misleading.
Well, the ideas of 'assembler' and 'standard' don't really go together
in my
mind... :-)
But seriously, I don't know how many different PDP-11 assemblers there were,
but the two _main_ ones (DEC's, and Unix's) both use the same numeric
convention (although they differed in other ways, probably because of the
CTSS/Multics erase character convention): a sequence of digits is an octal
number, unless there's a trailing '.', in which case it's decimal.
(Well, technically, DEC had PAL-11 and MACRO-11, but PAL-11 was basically a
subset of MACRO-11, and used the same number syntax.)
I've never heard of that '&o' bizzaro-stuff - where did you find that?
Noel
10 Jan
10 Jan
8:53 a.m.
Noel Chiappa wrote:
Well, technically, DEC had PAL-11 and MACRO-11, but
PAL-11 was
basically a subset of MACRO-11, and used the same number syntax.)
I've been wondering about this!
What's the difference between PAL-11 and MACRO-11?
There's PAL III, PALX, PAL-D, PAL-8, PAL-10, and MACRO-8 for the PDP-8.
What's up with all those?!?
PALX is also the name for a cross assembler targeting PDP-11.
11:37 a.m.
I've always assumed the P in PAL was for paper tape.
The Wikipedia artile for PDP-8 says that PAL-8 assembled from paper
tape into memory, so the A and L could have been for Assembler and Loader.
ISTR PAL-11A was also an "absolute" assembler (did not output REL
files), but there was also a PAL-11R.
11:59 a.m.
On Jan 10, 2017, at 11:37 AM, Phil Budne <phil at
ultimate.com> wrote:
I've always assumed the P in PAL was for paper tape.
The Wikipedia artile for PDP-8 says that PAL-8 assembled from paper
tape into memory, so the A and L could have been for Assembler and Loader.
Could be. I took it to be PDP11 Assembly Language, but I'll admit that was just made
up on the spot and I never saw a real explanation.
ISTR PAL-11A was also an "absolute"
assembler (did not output REL
files), but there was also a PAL-11R.
The PAL I remember was part of the Paper Tape Software package for the PDP-11. Two pass
assembler, you actually had to feed it the source tape twice, if I remember the manual
right. (I never had to use it for real.)
There's also a non-Macro assembler for RT11 for systems with just 8k of memory.
ASEMBL.SAV? It came with a separate macro processor called EXPAND, so you could assemble
PDP-11 assembly code with macros, it just took more steps.
paul
12:02 p.m.
On Jan 10, 2017, at 8:03 AM, Noel Chiappa <jnc at
mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
Is that the Unix assembler convention? It certainly isn't the one used by the GNU
assemblers, which are modeled after the old Unix syntax. That one assumes decimal, and
doesn't appreciate decimal points after a digit string.
I wonder why DEC changed comment markers in their assemblers (from / in the PDP-8 to ; in
the PDP-11). Yes, not using / frees it for use in expressions, but at least early on it
wasn't supported there.
paul
From: Brent Hilpert
>>> One assembler doc uses a prefix of
"&o"
So the answer is, by modern expectations the old
standard would be
ambiguous or misleading.
Well, the ideas of 'assembler' and 'standard' don't really go
together in my
mind... :-)
But seriously, I don't know how many different PDP-11 assemblers there were,
but the two _main_ ones (DEC's, and Unix's) both use the same numeric
convention (although they differed in other ways, probably because of the
CTSS/Multics erase character convention): a sequence of digits is an octal
number, unless there's a trailing '.', in which case it's decimal.
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days inactive
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participants (4)
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jnc＠mercury.lcs.mit.edu -
lars＠nocrew.org -
paulkoning＠comcast.net -
phil＠ultimate.com