archive.worldofdragon.org

Were any articles published that compared the various Dragon assembler packages? And if so, where were they published?

Great question!

btw. must a assembler be "Dragon" specific or must it only 6809 specific?

jedie wrote:btw. must a assembler be "Dragon" specific or must it only 6809 specific?

The assembler is in principle 6809 specific but in the context here we talk about assembler programs running on the Dragon itself, I suppose.

Attached is the BASIC program "Editor & Assembler" by A.R.Billingham which I typed in from a magazine in 1984. Not that I used it that much. It used so much memory and I mostly hand-assembled and typed in hex in a selfmade BASIC monitor program instead. I was more productive with Forth. There was also a Forth compiler that I typed in from a magazine.

jedie wrote:btw. must a assembler be "Dragon" specific or must it only 6809 specific?

If it runs on a Dragon it better not be CoCo specific (though it is possible to have assemblers that run on both the Dragon and CoCo).

tormod wrote:Attached is the BASIC program "Editor & Assembler" by A.R.Billingham which I typed in from a magazine in 1984.

Can you explain how it works? Or is there anywhere some documentation?

No, I haven't used it in more than 25 years Maybe I will find the magazine one day, and it might have some instructions. Until then, just reading through the listing should give you some hints.

I tried Encoder 09 and is seems to be useable.

tormod wrote:No, I haven't used it in more than 25 years Maybe I will find the magazine one day, and it might have some instructions. Until then, just reading through the listing should give you some hints.

Found it! It was online, see viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4417

I always had the impression that the DREAM family was the most popular or best regarded assembler - not sure if any reviews or stats ever provided the basis for this belief. It was originally licensed by Dragon Data so probably inherited some status that way.

was more productive with Forth. There was also a Forth compiler that I typed in from a magazine.

This week I have been playing with Dragon Forth and Tele-Forth on xroar; I also got Dragon Forth, converted from .cas to a .wav to load onto my Tano Dragon. Similar conversion of Tele-Forth .cas from archive.worldofdragon.org using cas2wav does not load when played back from PC audio out. There seems to be a decent editor on Tele-Forth but no built-in Dragon graphics or sound "words". Whereas, Dragon Forth seems to have more Dragon-specific words but a poor editor. I cannot get the N.D.U.G. Forth .vdk version to load at all - presumably needs some sort of Dos loaded first. Best of all Forth implementations I have found has been Color Forth through Coco 2 emulation on xroar. It has an integrated editor, good documentation, and key press sounds .

I've looked in all the usual places for some documentation for Dragon Forth and Tele-Forth but to no avail. Most importantly, instructions / editor command summary and any Dragon-specific features, not the language itself. Does anyone have any suggestions for a well documented implementation of Forth for the Dragon which loads reliably from .wav, or perhaps Drivewire which I am still getting to grips with? Thanks.