- NEW FOR VERSION 1.1 -¢¢Cybergate, my ISP, discontinued their service in my area. Thus, I have¢another new EMail address: jharris@poboxes.com¢¢New distribution method and installation procedure. Please read¢INSTALL.DOC for details.¢¢Configuration utility CONFIG.COM now provided.¢¢MAE now has full text substitution macros. This adds a tremendous¢amount of power and flexibility to the macro processor. The syntax is¢completely different, so please see the macro section of ASM.DOC.¢¢The ':' character can no longer be used in label names, due to conflicts¢with the new macro processing. The ';' character can't be used either,¢but was mistakenly listed as a valid label character in the docs. This¢hasn't been usable as a label character for many years.¢¢Conditional assembly has been changed to be more standard, and more¢complete. IFE, IFN, IFP and IFM have been removed and replaced with .IF,¢.ELSE, and .ENDIF. Complementing the .IF statement are four new¢expression operators, <, >, =, and # (not equal). <, >, and = join the¢list of symbols that are no longer allowed as part of a label name. I¢am sorry for any inconvenience or confusion these changes may be causing,¢but I suppose their use was non-standard to begin with. Lastly, .IF¢statements can now be nested up to seven levels deep. Please see the¢conditional assembly section of ASM.DOC for full details.¢¢Editor key macros can now be saved to and loaded from disk files.¢¢New config bit for editor to start with Caps lock on or off.¢¢Improved screen handling to do minimal text redraws when cutting and¢pasting. Improves screen redraw speed, most noticably on XEP80 and¢software 64/80 column modes.¢¢- NEW FOR VERSION 1.0 -¢¢I have a new EMail address: jharris@cybergate.com¢¢40 column limit on source code lines has been removed, although text is¢still limited to 79 columns. Lines will scroll horizontally to display¢the extra columns.¢¢There are two software screen drivers provided, that allow 64 column¢and 80 column editing on a high-speed Gr.8 screen. If your machine has¢Antic-compatible bank select RAM, using the drivers will not decrease¢the size of your source text buffer! The drivers were written by Itay¢Chamiel. Thanks Itay! Installation of these software drivers, as well¢as support for 64K machines, is described in the file INSTALL.DOC.¢¢Disassembly supports 16-bit operands. See the D command in DEBUG.DOC¢for details.¢¢24-bit address support in debugger, including hex and decimal values¢for the "=" math function.¢¢Because of 24-bit address support, I had to move the locations of¢address variables. This affects the User function parameters, and I¢apologize for any inconveniences. The parameters that used to be at¢$F0, $F2, and $F4 are now at, $F0, $F7, and $F3. I know the order is¢unusual, but there are internal reasons.¢¢Debugger memory display command changed somewhat due to screen width¢limitations with 24-bit addresses. New ASCII-only mode supported.¢See DEBUG.DOC for details.¢¢While tracing, a new option L has been added to RTL from 24-bit¢subroutine calls. (65816 version of MAE only).¢¢New assembler pseudo-ops .CByte for making ASCII strings with the most¢significant bit set on the last character. Also .FLoat for defining¢constants in the OS floating point format.¢¢New editor command Ctrl-; can be used to comment or uncomment a block¢of text by adding or removing ";" characters at the start of each line.¢Mark the start of the block with Ctrl-Z, and then press Ctrl-; at the¢end of the block. You can also mark one line at a time by using Ctrl-;¢without a Ctrl-Z block mark.¢¢Editor command Ctrl-D, which used to just duplicate a single line, can¢now be used to duplicate an entire block if there is a Ctrl-Z block¢mark set. This makes it consistant with the operation of Ctrl-;.¢¢Shifted 1200XL function keys should now work for moving to the beginning¢or end of lines, or the beginning or end of the file.¢¢Cursor column position is retained while scrolling in the editor.¢¢MAE was not fully ZP clean, but should be now.¢¢The debugger will use High-speed SpartaDOS SIO routines, if present.¢Unfortunately, sector reading and writing will no longer work on the old¢400/800 operating system as a result, unless you are using SpartaDOS.¢¢In the editor, Ctrl-N did not work properly when pressed on a blank¢line.¢¢Conditional assembly could get messed up when source code contained a¢label on a line by itself.¢¢.BI pseudo-op was broken in version .99.¢¢New version of Hyper E: included, which fixes an incompatibility with¢TextPro, and adds support for the SDX CON: device.¢¢- NEW FOR VERSION .99 -¢¢65816 opcodes and tracing are now supported in the debugger. There¢is still no support for 24-bit address entry, so technically, the¢debugger can be considered 65802-compatible.¢¢There are new pseudo-ops in the assembler. ".02" can be used when you¢need to assemble 6502-only code. When this opcode is active, all 65816¢specific instructions will be flagged with a "NOT 6502" error. ".816"¢selects the 65816 assembly mode. The initial assembly mode is set to¢whichever processor version of the MAE assembler you are using. The¢initial version sign-on message shows the processor version of MAE,¢which will also be the default assembly mode.¢¢There has been a significant increase in assembly speed. MAE will be¢about twice as fast, depending on the size of your source files.¢Small files will show less of an improvement, whereas larger files¢will show an even bigger difference. Assembly time is closer to a¢linear relationship to source file size, whereas it used to be¢somewhat exponential.¢¢There have been big changes in memory configuration, resulting in¢twice as much symbol table space, a little more source space, and all¢of main memory from $4000-$7FFF free to the user. The region from¢$400-$5FF is no longer used by MAE. The debuger has been moved to¢bank select memory now, reducing the main memory usage to $B700-$BBFC.¢In its place however, MAE uses up to three banks of extended memory¢for optimal configuration. Due to these and other changes, the format¢of the memory configuration bytes at the start of the file has changed.¢Consult MAE.DOC for full details. MAE actually still runs in 64K¢machines, and will continue to do so, but the amount of RAM available¢for source text has dropped from 17K down to only 14K for 64K'ers.¢¢Two new operators have been added to the assembler and debugger¢expression evaluators. You can now use "^" for exclusive or, and¢"\" for modulo. Because of this, these characters can no longer be¢used in label names.¢¢There are two new editor functions. You can move an individual line of¢text up or down with respect to surrounding lines. Press Shift-Ctrl-[¢to move a line up, and Shift-Ctrl-] to move it down. In a similar¢function, you can move a label by itself up or down to adjacent lines.¢Press Shift-Ctrl-( to move the label up, or Shift-Ctrl-) to move the¢label down. Lines that start with comments or other labels will¢automatically be skipped.¢¢Full SpartaDOS directory listings are now supported.¢¢The "*" at the start of a marked text block would not get erased on¢lines that did not begin with a label. Also, the location of the¢block start was not getting updated when surrounding text was edited.¢¢There was a bug which prevented macros from being recognized when they¢were defined after a .IN included files.¢¢JVC and JVS macros were missing from the example MACROS file.¢¢There was a bug that could sometimes clear your entire source text if¢you used the Esc-V menu option to get the value of a label which was¢undefined. This bug only occurred after an assembly aborted with one¢of a few fatal error types.¢¢I didn't realize that MyDOS could use ':' characters as subdirectory¢path separators. This confused MAE's ':' search routine to determine¢if full filespecs (or just file names) were being entered. The¢effect was that MAE would not load files properly from subdirectories¢unless you used '>' for path separators. It works better now, unless¢you have subdirectory names that are one or two characters long. If¢you had a directory named "T", and tried to load "T:FILE", it would¢think you were referring to a T: device. Thus, it is recommended that¢you either always use the '>' character as a path separator, or enter¢complete filespecs. Either "T>FILE" or "D2:T:FILE" will work fine.¢¢Fixed two problems with using "." to get the value of defined labels¢from the debugger. Because control was passed to the assembler's¢expression evaluator, the default number base became decimal instead¢of hex. Thus, if you entered ".LABEL+10" in the debugger, you would¢get the value at LABEL+$A, and not LABEL+$10. Processing is now¢returned to the debugger once the label has been decoded, making the¢rest of the line behave consistantly in regards to hex numbers.¢Also, expressions like ".>LABEL" were returning the wrong value.¢¢The debugger command V has been changed, and is easier to add user¢extensions into. Please consult DEBUG.DOC for details.¢¢The editor could corrupt bookmarks and ^J marks if they were within a¢text block that got deleted, and close to the top of the file.¢¢MAE was not restoring the BRK IRQ vector when it exited, and it now does¢this by default. Because it is sometimes desirable to leave the BRK¢vector installed, such as for trapping BRKs in programs called from DOS,¢you can follow the X command in the debugger with any other character to¢exit with BRK trapping still active. Note that you must be careful to¢not overwrite any part of the MAE program, including bank select RAM, if¢you want MAE to successfully trap BRK instructions that occur after you¢leave the assembler.¢¢The debugger should no longer lock up if it encounters a BRK when output¢is redirected to an SIO device. Also, the inconsistancy with supplying¢filespecs in the O command has been removed. All filespecs are now¢treated the same way, for supplying Dn: in front of any input that does¢not in itself contain a ":" character. To send output to the printer,¢you should now enter "O P:".¢¢- NEW SINCE VERSION .95 -¢¢Conditional breakpoints were not working in the .95 version.¢¢The 65816 version of MAE has a new register display that shows 16-bit¢registers for A, X, and Y. Processor status bits are now displayed as¢normal characters for bits that are off, and inverse characters for¢bits that are on. When changing bits, either normal/inverse, or 0's &¢1's may be typed, and are freely mixable. The Emulation Mode shadow¢bit is also displayed, and can be changed. Make sure you have native¢mode interrupt handlers available before changing this bit. Also note¢that this bit, just like the rest of the status register display, only¢affects the state of programs run or traced from the debugger.¢Clearing the E bit will not instantly put the machine into native mode,¢but native mode will be set as soon as any user programs are run or¢traced.¢¢In the memory configuration bytes, entering 0 for the text buffer¢start or end would use the value from LOMEM or MEMTOP respectively.¢Now, this ability also applies to the symbol table addresses.¢¢1200XL function keys were not working, and should be fixed now.¢¢It was pointed out to me that memory expansions above 128K use the¢high bit of $D301, which is a problem for the way I programmed the¢.BA pseudo-op. Thus, .BA now stores the entire byte at $D301, and a¢new pseudo-op, .CA, has been added for bank select cartridge support.¢I also realized that support for bank select carts is worthless when¢the assembler resides in the cartridge address space. My personal¢version is located at my LOMEM, and so I didn't realize the problem¢here. If anyone wants a custom version of the assembler located at a¢different address, please let me know and I will be happy to provide¢it for you.¢¢The .WO and .LO pseudo-ops support multiple addresses now.¢¢There are misc. small cleanups, such as .EN is no longer required at¢the end of the source text, "()" characters are no longer necessary¢for enclosing parameters of a macro definition, and other cosmetic¢changes.¢¢Disregard the earlier note about default drive detection being¢different in the .95 version. MAE still detects Sparta's default¢drive correctly, even if MAE is started from a different drive.¢¢- New since version .93 -¢¢When assembling code to disk, the .MC pseudo-op can now be used to¢make the object code load at a different address than where it is¢assembled, much like the way the function already worked in RAM.¢¢When recording key macros in the editor, you must now use Ctrl-3 to¢end recording, instead of Esc. This allows Esc menu commands to be¢entered into macros, primarily to support a chain of assemble¢commands when your program contains several modules. The next¢version of the assembler should allow loading and saving macros to¢disk, which will further enhance the macro usefulness.¢¢Hunt routine in the monitor now automatically skips over the area¢from $D000-$D7FF. So you can search the OS using $C000-$FFFF and¢not generate any hardware accesses.¢¢Hunt and Memory display routines would not always stop when the¢address reached $FFFF. This has been fixed.¢¢I removed the automatic OS routine detection from the trace function.¢Now, you must use the S key to trace through OS functions in one¢step, just like any other subroutine. You can also use the R key if¢you are already within the OS code. The reason for doing this, is¢that it makes things more consistant, and also allows you to trace¢code in the $C000-$FFFF area if you need to.¢¢Pseudo-ops are now available in the debugger's single line assembler.¢¢The debugger now includes a built-in function for switching between¢display lists for the debugging text screen, and your program's¢screen. It uses the letter "V", for change View. Both V and the¢"U" user function can be called from both the trace mode, as well¢as any paused memory or disassembly listing.¢The "%" key did not work as a wildcard in the debugger, since it¢was interpretted as the start of a binary number. I have changed¢the default wildcard to "?" in both the debugger and editor. This¢propagated through a few of the debugger command key assignments,¢along with a few other changes as well. Overall, I feel the key¢assignments have been improved, and they won't be changed from now¢on. Here is a sumnmary of the changes:¢ ? - Change Wildcard¢ = - Evaluate expression¢ V - Change display view¢ \ - Disk Directory¢¢The editor uses the same wildcard configuration byte as the¢debugger. You can use the debugger's "?" command, or a Cntl-?¢in the editor to change the wildcard character. Both modules¢will use the new assignment.¢¢1200XL function keys are now supported for moving the cursor.¢¢You may enter Ctrl-key graphic symbols or international characters¢into the editor by pressing Ctrl-A, and then the key you wish to¢enter.¢¢Now uses an improved method for detecting the default drive when¢first loaded. This should be compatible with all SpartaDOS¢versions, and cause no problems for non-Sparta DOSes. It also¢allows you to specify a different default drive from the command¢line, such as, "MAE D2:".¢¢The MAE.COM file now comes with a RUNAD address installed. The¢SpartaDOS bug that prevented using the RUN command to return to¢a program which used RUNAD has been fixed in 3.2g and later, so¢I have decided to include RUNAD in the file now.¢¢Fixed a stack corruption problem when disk I/O errors occurred¢during assembly with a .IN include file.¢¢Improved documentation.¢¢- New since version .92 -¢¢When dinosaurs ruled the Earth. History has been removed to save¢space. They didn't even have computers back then, did they?¢¢
