Hello everyone,

I am really interested in learning how to program my TI-84 Plus Silver Edition calculator in assembly code. Until now, this has been a daunting task. So far, I have poured over many forums, websites etc. as to what I will require and how to set everything up. This has been more or less a pain in the rear. I have decided to use wabbitemu as my emulator. The website that has been most clear to me is z80 Heaven: Getting Started with Asm. While trying to follow the instructions for setup, this is where thing go awry. Maybe I should just delete what I have and start fresh, who knows? I will say that I have experience in C++, some assembly, although not for the calculator. I also have looked at the 28 days tutorial and found it to be somewhat confusing at first. My question is this. Is there anyone, website, anything out there that will help me to get started with learning assembly, more in a "cookie-cutter" style? For reference, I am running Windows 7. I would like to use Microsoft Visual Studio C++, because that is what I use when programming other projects. Any and all help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Welcome to Cemetech, mlholder! We can certainly help you. First, we recommend the following tools:
1) Tutorial: TI-83 Plus Assembly in 28 Days
2) Assembler suite: Doors CS SDK (includes the Brass assembler). Ignore the instructions in TI-83 Plus Assembly in 28 Days about TASM and DevPac8x
3) Questions: Post them here! This topic would be a perfect place
4) Emulator: WabbitEmu is good, but buggy; we also have the jsTIfied emulator if you like online things.

Finally, this thread might also help:
http://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8776

Thank you for the expedient reply Kerm! I was wondering if you could explain a little more about what exactly the Doors CS SDK is. When I program in C++ using Microsoft Visual C++ Studio Express, all of the linking and assembling is done for me. Is the Door CS SDK the actual assembler or is it the Brass assembler you are speaking of? It seems like after a learn of one way on how to do something, it gets stuck in my head as that's how I should do it from now on, however, now that I am venturing into a new realm of my programming experience, I understand that this is not always going to be the case. When you say to ignore the instructions about TASM DevPac8x, are you talking about what the author is telling me to download on Day 1, such as the TASM package? Also, for Day 1, it is telling me to change my folder options? I'm sorry for being so ignorant in this aspect but I'm really having to guess at what the author is trying to convey. Maybe after I download the items you mentioned in your reply, you could help me with a walk-through of how to set everything up so that I can start to code. I am very eager to get started. Thank you again for your help!

The Doors CS SDK includes a bunch of things. The most important ones are Brass (the assembler), binpac8x (the linker) and some include files. But unlike Microsoft's visual thingy, there's no IDE included. When you want to make an executable, you can give your source code to an included shell script (compile.bat or compile.sh, depending on OS) that calls the assembler and linker.

For an IDE, there's WabbitCode, which i believe comes with Spasm and WabbitEmu, though it can be a bit buggy and can be a bit slow on older computers. I don't know if Assembly Studio 8x still works on modern OS's, but i think i read AssemblyBandit say that's what they use.

I also just found z8de here, but i'm not sure what's come of it.

Personally i prefer to use Spasm with tilem2, it's quick and easy (and small). There's also an online IDE by Deep_Thought: ORG