I am utterly confused.

[Bhaliar]

So I have been kinda prancing on the line between Doing assembley and/or not doing it. I don't want to mess up and ruin my calculator, but I do want to be free of some of the limits of basic. I was looking through guides though and I am confused. They have me using notepad to make programs. Can you not make them on the calculator itself?

[calc84maniac]

There is always this new project, which takes some of the strengths of Basic and Assembly. Plus, you write programs oncalc

[Bhaliar]

Looks great. I'd probaby still want to learn basic though. I've looked at some guides, but they just jump in showing you lists of codes, and I have no idea whats going on.

[meishe91]

What calc is Axe Parser for? I couldn't find that when I was on there for a bit.

[Mapar007]

Doing asm oncalc is possible, but although there exist compilers, it's a pain in the a. I work with gedit (I down'd a z80 syntax highlighting file), and I test on TilEm.
By the way, you can't do safe testing when you do oncalc asm. The crashes can indeed mess up your calc pretty hard, so it's advisable to test in emulators.

[ztrumpet]

[meishe91]

[FloppusMaximus]

Bhaliar: Try assembly, it's fun! :)

If you have an 83+SE or an older 84+, install Omnicalc and learn to use the RAM recovery feature. Otherwise, just be sure to keep everything important archived or grouped. But it's true that you're probably going to want to do most of your debugging on a PC.

If there's anything in particular you don't understand, feel free to ask. I and many others are always happy to help, and we were all beginners at one point.

[cjgone]

[Xeda112358]

Hey, I do assembly on the calculator and I find it pretty fun. What I do is I use notepad (with a fixed width font like Courier New) and plan out the program. It is a lot less messy than using paper, believe me. I also make use of the .inc folder and a few charts for converting mneumonics. I've no idea if this is what you had in mind, but assembly is rather fun once you have it down. Plus, if you keep going back and forth between converting mneumoics to hex, you get to the point where you can remember the opcodes. I can, for example, make an assembly program directly on the calculator without referencing a chart or include file. It really builds memory... have fun. Oh, I've also been using TI-Coder to type the hex programs on my computer and then send them over to my calculator. You will get a bunch of crashes, so you should archive everything and then work on one project at a time with this method. Here is a sample of what I have made. Opcode.txt is the actual opcode I typed out on the calculator. (I'm a bit crazy when it comes to working with numbers ☺)

[Xeda112358]

I HIGHLY recommend getting Calcsys on your calculator. It really helps with understanding the memory structure of the calc. For example, try this simple program:

ld hl,0102h ;210201 ;0102h→HL
ld (86ECh),hl ;22EC86 ;HL is stored to the byte at address 86ECh
ret ;C9 ;Ends the program

Using Calcsys you can check the address 86EC to find that 0102 is actually stored as 0201. It isn't the programming that is difficult, it is the learning. My best advice is to BASICize assembly. Check out the sources for these programs (I have heavily commented them). It is my hope that these will make learning a little easier.

**Remember to turn Word Wrap OFF** ☺

[Bhaliar]

Thanks all. After erreadin and making my brain hurt more, I decided that I'll start with axe parser and move my way up. I just hate the limited abilites of the basic language. Like not being able to make more than one moving thing.

[splinter]

That's true but i recommend that you first learn BASIC (if you heaven't already) and then start with Assembler.
Well it won't be as easy to learn Assembler then as learning C, Pascal or other high lenguages because Assembler is something completely different.
But already knowing a lenguage is a big adventage for coding ASM.

[poopslayer78]

the "learn z80 assembly in 28 days" is a great tutorial, i cant get to the webpage anymore for some reason but its stored at ticalc.org as a zip file...
http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/268/26877.html
you have to do all your coding on computer but this is really the best way to do it i think