Why were the SAM (and Spectrum) Z80 assemblers so primitive?

Profile picture for user Stefan Drissen
Submitted by Stefan Drissen on Wed, 01/01/2020 - 14:13

While looking into some approaches for creating relocatable code I came across Z80ASM by SLR Sytems.

This is an assembler + linker for CP/M from 1984 which makes our assemblers, created years later, look like toys.

With it's $199.99 price tag (see Computer Language issue 6), this utility is definitely targeting the professional developer.

For the Spectrum the lack of a standard for disk storage could be used.

For the SAM - while Comet was great at the time - in hindsight, it could have been a lot better. Editor and assembler should have been decoupled and a linker should have been added - along with all the other common 'professional' features of much older assemblers.

References page

COMET assembler

David Fri, 01/24/2020 - 07:29

Guess it depends what you're used to.

I've used a few of the newer environments - particularly with PHP related projects - and yes, I can certainly see the appeal. Although at present I'm still more used to Comet + Textpad :-)

Certainly will be trying alternatives for future projects as I can see a lot of linking files being required... :-(

Profile picture for user rogerjowett
rogerjowett Fri, 07/03/2020 - 09:17

I know it's not an assembler but it does let you write a 64kb text file and the +3 version even had taspell can u imagine a spellchecker on a 3" disk what a joke!