Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

6502 Machine Language for Beginners

Posted by timothy on from the your-motivation-may-vary dept.

savetz writes "If you've always wanted to learn 6502 assembly language, now's your chance. The full text of the classic, best-selling 1983 book Machine Language for Beginners is now on the Web. It includes examples and program code for Atari 8-bit, Apple ][, PET/CBM, VIC-20, and Commodore 64 computers."

3 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. Understanding computers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    An old eight bit processor is the best tool for understanding how computers work. They are simple enough to avoid discouraging the student, but the core concepts are still the same today. There are free simulators, so students don't have to put up with uncomfortable data entry or long loading times.

  2. Re:Interesting fact... by rasteri · · Score: 3, Funny
    The 6502 doesn't have an ADD instruction.

    Ah well, at least it won't get distracted as easily.
    ---
  3. Those were the days -- Like the first NCC-1701 by TheWanderingHermit · · Score: 3, Interesting

    When I saw this, my first thought was of the scene in ST:TNG with Scotty and Picard on the hologram bridge of Kirk's Enterprise. Scotty liked the first Enterprise because he could tell the speed by the feel of the deck plates and Picrad said the Enterprise was superior than the Stargazer in terms of numbers, but he still often wished he was on the Stargazer.

    I learned almost everything I know about computers from my Apple //e. I knew the monitor ROM backwards and forwards. I used an amazingly powerful assembler called ORCA/M (known for it's macros and libraries), and learned hardware from books about the Apple //e. It was a wonderful world to learn and play in. I sold my //e to buy an Amiga. I still have the Amiga, but I wish I still had that //e -- it had a FULLY SOCKED motherboard, with a modified ROM that gave me extra features (I did the ROM mods myself), and a few nice accessories -- like a hard drive with a whopping 5 Meg of storage and a memory card that gave me over a megabyte of online memory -- which I used as a ramdrive.

    Just like Picard and the Stargazer, I often wish I were programming on my old //e (I had even figured out how I could make it multi-task w/ a clock card -- but never got around to programming it) instead of worrying about networking and web pages and relational databases.