Re: a compembler for x86 that looks nearly portable

"R. L. Watkins" <RLWatkins@CompuServe.Com> wrote in message news:02-01-125...
> Yes. The same thing might be said for parts of the PDP-11 / WD-16
> instruction set, on which Macro 11 is based. Most useful seem to be the
> ones they have in common.
>
(talking about portability layers and machine models)


I found a programmer's cheatsheet for MACRO-11 at
www.spies.com/arcade/simulation/cpuRefCards/Macro-11


Fascinating. It does afford some portability, but not at the register
level, it seems. It also clearly is a good portion of the "machine" C
models. C strings for example are predicted in MACRO-11 thus...


|.ASCIZ /string/ |ASCII string with Zero byte terminator |


(osimplay BTW does cell-prefixed arbitrary data ranges, NOT those
hideous .ASCIZ things.) As C probably originated as a pre-processor
to MACRO-11, and as GNU Gas is similar to MACRO-11, I found that one
can write the data structure of a Forth dictionary entirely in the
assembler, such as MACRO-11. opcodes are distinctly more
problematic. While looking for some MACRO-11 stuff I saw in the PDP
FAQ though that it was astoundingly prepotent (it's offspring resemble
it). There's portable assembly in there SOMEWHERE. :o)


Hmmm, was MACRO-11 code portable across the PDPs?


Rick Hohensee
[Macro-11 was an assembler for the PDP-11, which was utterly unlike the
PDP 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, or 15. The Vax was somewhat like
a stretched -11, but the assemblers were quite different. -John]

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