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DEVPAC80 (Amstrad Computer User) | HISOFT - DEVPAC80 (Popular Computing Weekly) | DEVPAC80 (CPC Amstrad International) |
There are plenty of reasons to regard HiSoft's Devpac assembler package with respect - it is perhaps the most sophisticated and powerful of the various such utilities available for the Amstrad range. Devpac 80 is the CP/M version of this program and as such there are several important differences. For a start, although you can use an ordinary assembler to produce CP/M compatible code, and vice versa, there are some disadvantages in doing so. If nothing else it is far better if you can test the code simply from within the operating system to which it applies. Perhaps more important, however, is that the CP/M version of Devpac has been written to fully exploit the strengths of the medium. Disc handling from the assembler in particular is absolutely superb. There are three modules to the package - Ed80 is a full screen editor which has excellent block Cut and Paste commands, auto indentation, good Search, Replace and Insert modes but, as is so common with such things, relatively poor printer control. The control sequence for cursor movement, deletion etc have all been defined as compatible with the equivalent Wordstar sequences - a remarkably sensible move for a CP/M editor, although you can easily redefine them to use the same keys as a different utility such as Amsword if you would rather. Help menus are available at a keypress which summarise the commands. Gen80 is the assembler module which includes the following special features: macros that are called by their label name with the appropriate parameters; direct keyboard input of text to be assembled as though it was part of a file. Files which can be called from disc and assembled within other files by the powerful include command - these can be nested and recursive and almost provide a high-level function in that programs can be written as small ‘procedures'. Virtual discing, which allows owners of only one drive to code as thought they had several; direct control over symbol table size or the number of significant characters in a label, as well as many more options that are usually fixed in most assemblers. Many arithmetic and logical operators; conditional assembly which can produce different results if coding for different machines for example; assembly to disc and production of symbol files for debugging purposes - the list goes on. Mon80 is the disassembler/ monitor module. On screen you have provided at the same time the disassembled memory, the hex values of the memory itself and the corresponding ascii codes. The documentation reflects the quality of the package. It is helpful, if advanced, and even goes so far as to give details on patching your own code to change the modules. There is also a very good tutorial at the back that goes some way to teaching the rudiments of CP/M programming as well as how to use Devpac. Tony Kendle , PCW |
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