Review - overview of modern assemblers: Alasm 3.8, Tasm 4.12, XAS 7.4, ZASM 3.10.

Today's   review   assemblers me
I wanted to start with Alasm 3.8,especially
that in  the third issue of our magazine we
They promised to tell us about it in detail. But sleep-
began a short introduction.                
  I would like to immediately thank the state
under M.M.A  (for providing me all
the programs listed below for testing) and
MaxSoft'a  (for what is so necessary for the Motherland
(Oberon)  beginning - description of the assembly
ditch).                                     
  Times  are changing, requirements are changing,exposed assemblers  programmers,
hackers and even mere mortals
mi. How many new unusual, non-standard
assemblers appeared?  Quite a lot. But one
you can  say  with confidence: so far
not  an ideal assembler is written. Yes it is
and  cannot be. Some people like fancy
valuable  shells, as in Zasm 3.l0, someone
ultra-fast and original in everything XAS,
for some, simplicity  of the good old Tasm'ah,
and  someone still hasn’t “climbed out” of Zeus.
How many people   - so many opinions. The main thing is
to  there were plenty to choose from. As I said
one unforgettable "formatter":             
                                          
 "More assemblers, good and different!". 
                                          
  And a couple more general phrases. It is possible that when
Description of the program I  will seem a little
biased, but in my opinion this should
only mean that the assembler is remembered
(liked) I a few more,  than
other  similar programs.  So that,
Messrs. Authors, please do not be offended, but accept
Please note the facts below. That's it for me
the official introduction has completed.          
                                          
           Thank you for your attention.           
                                          
                ALASM 3.8                 
               ■■■■■■■■■■■                
                 (Alem)                   
                                          
                                          
  This  program and earlier  was the most
powerful and fast assembler of all ONE-
PASSING  :), created over the last year.
And  this version, apparently, will have to
satisfy the requests of all those who were wounded
she  anything scared away in Alasm'. Now
The program  supports any additional
new memory more than 128K. The package comes with -
There are memory drivers forATM, PROFI, SCOR-
PION,but it is possible to write your own
local driver and connect it to SetUp.
ExceptIn addition, it became possible to configure
parameters  of your keyboard to your taste,
so now it looks like the problems will go away
polling the keyboard when the turbo re-
bench press                                     
 On my opinion is one of the few unsatisfactory
  inconveniences  in  work  - pretty
defectivetext editor (missing
even line numbering), which in general is
titus the whole impression. Yes, and the opportunity to work
bots with binary  numbers would be nice
this assembler (although  I don't really care
necessary).                                   
  One of the important features of the
grams  is the ability to work with
stami,  number  of which  is limited  only
availability free pages RAM. Available
Possibility of assembly into a page.   
About some plans of the author:                
  l) Label table size up to 64K:         
  2) RAM disk for include's:             
                                          
There is nothing special to say about the last one  
in my opinion this is not necessary (if the text
located  on  page, then references to
disk doesn’t happen anyway), and the first point
there will bewelcome to all coders.    
 TASM 4.l2                 
               ■■■■■■■■■■■                
               (Rst#7/CBS)                
                                          
  Somewhere at the beginning of this year a new
your version of Tasm, and not from some
another VasyaSoft, and from a person who
being  the original  author of this program
frames,  -  Rst7. Honestly speaking, reading
announcement  assembler  v ZX-Review  l-2 for 1997
year, I really wanted to see it: and re-
moving through lines with errors, and hypertext
standard Help on directives and controls, and
assembly speed has been increased, and
you  length restrictions  tags  (up to 128
char.), and  etc. etc. All this, of course,
good, but I would like to point out that
how many other moments:                   
  l) The most complete
These are the newest of all the ones I have seen before. MACROS.
when describing  which  can be used
local  tags (!).  As an example
Rst7 provides several files:     
    6S02.A, containing macros  for easy
learning  writing  programs  under
 Dendy's video controller :).       
    SNAKE.A - game  (  v common people -
 'python' ),  which work is based on
 using conditional translation commands
 tions.                                  
    SINUS.A - sine table generator.  
    EXAMPLES.A  - an example of using the Mac
 rosov, local marks.               
  2) Assembly now possible
to the page.                              
  3) Finally, the original Tasm is working
Tal on all sorts of Scorpios and other computers
without modifications.                            
  All other proprietary gadgets have
are of dubious value:                 
  l) In  runeptekctobom  Help'e,  for example,
except  description of Tasm directives (in case someone
forgot how to use ORG?) you can fix it
thief obscene  statements addressed
AIG's (one of the authorsMasm l.x and the author
futureMasm 2)which once made
hand to Tasm, or find out that Tasm
3.0 was beta(!) version.             
  2) Transition by lines with errors (record-
minus 76 lines, that  quite a lot)
made  not  in the best possible way. Line in
text  not marked in any way, not highlighted
color. In addition, if you add in the text
or delete lines, the transitions will be executed
nen incorrect.  It was worth doing if somewhere
done better?                            
  3) The format of the stored text has been changed. Sla-
Oh God, there is a built-in transcoder.  
  4) The editor remains the same poor
although specially made for the visually impaired
32 characters per line.                      
  S) Selecting  the loaded file with the cursor from
catalog is made  very  original. I
I didn’t even immediately understand what happened.       
  6) There is a screensaver that inspires
creating masterpieces like Black Raven...  
  XAS 7.432.7.432c             
            ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■            
          (Max Petrov, Creator)          
                                          
  Official Xas  7.l  is the last
version of the assembler, to which he attached ru-
ku  Max Petrov. All subsequentimprovements
programs  were executed by Creator'th (aka
Paul Falcon) with the consent of the author.          
  Another version of the most non-standard
assembler  did not make me very happy. Case
in  the fact that even with a living author :) practically
practically was not given  complete attention
development of functionality
grams, but only assembly speeds
speed
Tasm 3.0  7 times). Meanwhile in the editor
there is no even  text search with replacement
Noah. Among the innovations, I would like to note the following:    
  l)It became possible to specify production
free length  tags from 3 to 14 characters.
 this is worth mentioning separately. Maybe it's
and not bad, because... only for tags
onesixth page (or #56th :), but with
on the other hand, there is now a trend
using the Hash algorithm, which allows
You cannot use labels up to 128 characters long.
 2)  possibility of using
procedures,  "bitten"  from your own
vein libraries.                         
  3) Thongs in DEFB.                      
  4) Working with multiple drives.       
  S) Fixed  bug transcoder
All>Xas, which made the last one squirm
on some machines without Kempston Mouse.  
                                          
  Disadvantages:                             
  l)No support for additional
memory (more than 128K).                      
  2) There is no possibility of assembling
tion to the page.                           
  3) There is no text search with replacement
 4) The editor does not allow you to enter characters
{}[]| etc., which causes some inconvenience
stva.                                     
  S) Version  Xas 7.432c provides re-
dactor  with 64 characters per line, but, to
Sorry, contains some errors. Besides
same  All>Xas transcoder does not support
64 characters per line!                      
                                          
  And one more thing. When I tried to
load sources from the old Xas, then when
assembly received a bunch of errors. How
It turned out that Xas 7.l and all subsequent versions
these stopped understanding labels starting
from the symbol '_'. Given that search with replacement
Noah is missing,  you probably already guessed
were given what inconvenience this caused.     
                                          
  Of course, '_' can be used somehow
in the program, but since Max Petrov (or
someone  other) did not bother to provide
full  Help,  as, for example, in Alasm'e, and
threw  'stub' ReadMe.X, then '_' and
remained a mystery to me.                
 Zasm 3.l0(dv)              
              ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■             
      (K. Afendikov, V. Rubtsov, O. Khokhlov)     
                                          
  On the sixth of May this year, a significant
telial event: 'threw' into the echo Zasm 3.l0
(demo  version). It's difficult to say anything
certain about the demo version, evaluate the convenience
discomfort/inconvenience in  work.  But one thing is clear:
on  Spectrum  a full-fledged inte-
grated  turbo environment. Even demo version
is striking in its scale: recoding
boxes,  disk-doctor  (in my opinion look the most
best  from existing ones), own
monitor (not counting STS), the possibility of half-
valuable work with the printer, copying and
deletion files,  compression  and view
screens, fonts, without leaving the shell, and
much, much more that assembler does not
really necessary.                         
  But since it is not possible to work with the compiler
seems  possible, then you will have to

take the authors at their word and cite some
other characteristics taken from Help, or
heard from Mr. Afendikov:            
  l) Supports labels up to 128 characters.     
  2) Possibility of typing several assemblies
ler commands on one line, separating them
colon.  [Oberon: Value, I must say,
Well,  doubtful... Although this is probably
and convenient when typing some non-documentary
commands.]                         
  3) The assembly speed has been increased.  
  4) "...many other useful features..."   
                             © K. Afendikov
                                          
In my opinion, one of the disadvantages is -
xia  possibility of working with only one technology
stoma in memory, for which about
30K. But the most interesting thing is that the same
memory  will be  'eat' and  label table,
slowly,  but  surely moving towards
text.                                  
                                          
                                          
                                          
                  * * *                   
                                          
  On with this I will finish the description of assemblers,
I will say  only that in the REVIEW there were
Lena best assemblers for 1997, which
are strongly recommended for use
Vania. It remains to wait for the full
versions  Zasm 3.l0, Masm 2(*AIG*) and Masm 3
(the program that I started writing KSA,a
  apparently,  will have to
*AIG*'y).Also, nothing has been heard about joint
nom projectRst7 withStalker'om. According to
first  Tasm+STS  will represent the
battle similarity turbo environment to RSwith the possibility
debugging by text, etc.            
                                          
                          Review prepared by
 Alex Noman.
                                          
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