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Assembly language question — Parallax Forums

Assembly language question

radialrandyradialrandy Posts: 78
edited 2010-09-22 19:03 in Propeller 1
Is there any good books or study guides to learn the propellers assembly language? I understand the Spin language but I need to learn the basics of the assembly language a fast as possible. I have no privious programming but I'm catching on to this very quickly. Just need to try to shorten my learning curve alittle. Any educational type stuff would be great.
thanks

Comments

  • Mike GreenMike Green Posts: 23,101
    edited 2010-09-20 20:26
    Look in this "sticky thread" under Getting Started
  • LukeHLukeH Posts: 22
    edited 2010-09-20 20:27
    Read Programming the Propeller in Machine Language by deSilva.

    Read the beginning of the Assembly section in the Propeller manual. Read it carefully. Several times.

    Watch the Propeller Assembly webinar. It's a couple of hours, but pretty good if you've never done assembly before.

    Check out this thread which has a number of ASM examples for the beginner.

    Become very familiar with the architecture of the Propeller. Study the block diagram of the 8 cogs and the hub. Carefully. Understand the different ways you can store data and move data to and from cog RAM and hub RAM. Get comfortable with basic binary operations including Boolean logic - bit shifts/rotations, AND, OR, XOR, etc.

    In Assembly, think small steps. Moving a single number at a time. Adding or subtracting a single number. Shifting a bit left or right. Whereas a one-line Spin command can do a bunch of powerful stuff, one line in Assembly will do exactly one thing. But slowly, carefully, put lots of assembly instructions together, and your reward for the patience will be the blazing-fast performance you can expect from assembly language.

    I had no previous assembly experience, (though I did have a smattering of experience with several high level languages) and just started learning propAsm last week, but have caught on well enough to get along pretty well with it. It took me a few days to wrap my brain around it, but eventually it clicked, and I "understood" assembly.

    Most importantly of all, get in there and do it. Find a very simple assembly program that you can type in, then start modifying it. The more you practice, the more quickly you'll pick it up. It's very simple and in my opinion one of the easiest programming languages I have learned.
  • radialrandyradialrandy Posts: 78
    edited 2010-09-22 16:12
    thanks alot! that gives me a place to start!
  • bill190bill190 Posts: 769
    edited 2010-09-22 18:16
    Also check out the sticky at the top here called "The Propeller Q&A System Online!". Click on the link in that post, then see the Propeller Assembly area. (Takes awhile to load.)

    And the OBEX or Propeller Object Exchange has programs already written and ready to use. Some of these are in assembly and will indicate so. That is a big help to me to see entire programs.

    Object Exchange...
    http://obex.parallax.com
  • User NameUser Name Posts: 1,451
    edited 2010-09-22 19:03
    LukeH wrote: »
    Check out this thread which has a number of ASM examples for the beginner.

    Thanks, Luke. This is a great thread that I didn't know existed. Having very recently created an SPI Master in SX assembly, Beau's example in PASM is exceptionally useful to me right now.
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