Can you program directly on an A500?

[AB Positive]

I've been wanting to futz about with C and Basic on my new A500. I've been coding for the A8 directly on the 600XL (using APE to save to a virtual disk). I would imagine there's gotta be a way.


I don't know that much about Amiga IDEs or Compilers... what would be possible? I know there's "Amiga Basic" (Microsoft) but I hear Blitz Basic is better. Can it be used with no HDD?

Can any C compiler run well on an A500 w/ 512 trapdoor ram?

It seems like I'll be forced to run WinUAE for programming but I love using the legit hardware. Any tips?

-AB

[coze]

well you can always code basic or asm on a A500 floppy system, but C will give you headaches cause it will need to look headers/includes/libs ... lots of disk swapping.

[Samurai_Crow]

You can download the ADF images of AmosPro from the Amos Factory website if you sign up for the free membership. From there you can make original-quality AmosPro boot disks. You'll want a second floppy-drive minimum though and the code quality from the compiler is not as good as Blitz2. The manual is available online at the Amos Factory as well as on the Aminet in either HTML or PDF formats.

If you have trouble logging in, let me know. I'm a moderator on the Amos Factory and can fix you up if you need it.

[AB Positive]

I'll check AMOS out - I saw a few PD games that have "Coded in AMOS" so I'm certainly intrigued.

I'm more into the Basic/ASM set anyway right now in my coding so those are fine - but good to know that C will be better off with a HDD or coding via WinUAE.

[Thorham]

Let me warn you about languages like Amos: You'll outgrow them quickly if you're at least a reasonable C programmer (not a beginner). Go for assembler if 1) you don't want to be limited by a language and 2) you want the best performance (very important on an A500).

Another advantage is that a good assembler environment (AsmOne) doesn't use up a lot of space on a floppy (loads reletively quickly).

[Vortex]

Agree with Thorham.

I want to hammer away on the original hardware as well, and as soon as I get AsmOne transferred to my A500 I will lock myself up (brings back memories ).

I would def. avoid Amiga Basic.

Lars

[ricco59]

agree with Thorham
I used to use on my a500 asmone/trashmone and use it again on a1200 (few monthes ago) héhé

Have a good time programming on amiga using trash or asm One

see you

[cosmicfrog]

Amiga E, thats nice, ace basic nice basic, both found on aminet

then theres sas C or storm C for C

[Samurai_Crow]

Originally Posted by cosmicfrog

Amiga E, thats nice, ace basic nice basic, both found on aminet

AmigaE requires Kickstart 2+ and won't work on a Kickstart 1.3 system. ACE Basic might work better than Amos in terms of calculation speed but Amos has more graphics acceleration features.

If I was trying to make something with an Intuition GUI, I'd skip AmosPro and go directly to either C or ACE if I were you.

hey i want to start programming asm on my A500 but i dont have an assembler.
so can i use my action replay 3 to assemble ? or do i need libraries or includes ?

[pmc]

@ onkelf - good for you - go for it.

My advice would be to grab yourself an assembler though.

You'll be able to find Devpac, AsmOne, AsmPro, PhxAss or Macro68k all over the place on the internet.

If you have trouble finding these, come back to me - I can supply you with any or all in .adf format or, if you really need real disks I can write the .adf's to floppies for you and send them - just PM your address if needed.

In my opinion you don't want to be poking assembly mnemonics into memory with Action Replay really - you'll get frustrated and annoyed at not having a proper assembler pretty quickly I'd say...

[StingRay]

Originally Posted by pmc

In my opinion you don't want to be poking assembly mnemonics into memory with Action Replay really

Pfft, the kids today, no sense of fun. What's better than coding like "$70004e75"? Seriously though, I'd also look for an Assembler, the AR3 assemble command is OK for quick changes, but for serious coding there are better tools.

[pmc]

Originally Posted by StingRay

Pfft, the kids today, no sense of fun.

LOL.

What can I say? I'm weak and feeble.

They made 'em of stronger stuff in your day Grandpa Sting.

[Photon]

An AsmOne bootdisk with include files and a few utilities, and then have the source disk itself in the external drive works well - nothing wrong with a side port harddisk interface though. Will save you time, if nothing else - and maybe a few grey "read/write error" hairs too

Same setup should work with a Basic of your choice (or Amos, but I haven't used it so take the Amos guys' advice ) - if there are docs and examples this should be a good way to "get going" and quickly test out if you can get your idea running on the screen

[gilgamesh]

I used to own a book about C on the Amiga that recommended Lattice C and Aztec C. Aztec can be found in the official Aztec C online Museum. It comes on 4 adfs.