Assembly Lines: The Video Podcast

Chris Torrence — Fri, 01 May 2015 23:47:54 +0000

For the past few months, I've been making YouTube videos in a series entitled: "Assembly Lines: The Video Podcast." The videos came directly out of my involvement in the Softalk Apple Project, which provided the PDF scans (and the encouragement!) to create Assembly Lines: The Complete Book, by Roger Wagner.

In the videos, I cover the basics of assembly-language programming on the Apple II. Titles include:
Assembly Lines: The Complete Book
The Merlin Assembler
The Merlin Editor
Arduino EEPROM Programmer
Replacing Apple //e RAM
Merlin 8 Full-Screen Editor
6502 Clock Cycles
Pi to 1000 Digits
Debugging Assembly Code Using Virtual ][
Oregon Trail and Typetime Part I
Oregon Trail and Typetime Part II

I've also uploaded two interviews with Roger Wagner, of "Assembly Lines" fame:
Interview With Roger Wagner
Roger Wagner's Apple IIGS

If you have feedback, be sure to create an account on the Softalk Apple Project and leave a comment below!

Assembly Lines: The Complete Book

Chris Torrence — Mon, 22 Dec 2014 17:45:30 +0000

I am very excited to announce that Assembly Lines: The Complete Book is now available as a hardcover from Lulu press. Roger Wagner’s Assembly Lines articles originally appeared in Softalk magazine from October 1980 to June 1983. The first fifteen articles were reprinted in 1982 in Assembly Lines: The Book. Now, for the first time, all thirty-three articles are available in one complete volume. This edition also contains all of the appendices from the original book as well as new appendices on the 65C02, zero-page memory usage, and a beginner’s guide to using the Merlin Assembler. The book is designed for students of all ages: the nostalgic programmer enjoying the retro revolution, the newcomer interested in learning low-level assembly coding, or the embedded systems developer using the latest 65C02 chips from Western Design Center.

The book will be available in a few weeks from Amazon and other online retailers. I am currently working on an eBook version, which I hope to have finished in early 2015.

You can download disk images of all of the assembly-language programs from the Asimov ftp site in the pub/apple_II/images/programming/assembler directory:

AssemblyLinesWagnerDOS1.DSK contains DOS versions for chapters 1-17
AssemblyLinesWagnerDOS2.DSK contains DOS versions for chapters 18-30
AssemblyLinesWagnerProDOS1.DSK contains ProDOS versions for chapters 1-17
AssemblyLinesWagnerProDOS2.DSK contains ProDOS versions for chapters 18-30

Note that a few of the programs (in the DOS chapter) will only work in DOS, not ProDOS.

To create your own programs, you can download a copy of the Merlin assembler from the same directory:

merlin/Merlin-8 v2.48 (DOS 3.3).dsk
merlin/Merlin-8 v2.58 (ProDOS) Disk 1-2.dsk

These disk images can be opened in any of the Apple II emulators, such as Virtual ][ for the Mac or AppleWin for Windows. You could also use ADTPro to transfer the disk images to an actual Apple II.

I would love to get your feedback on the new book. If you have any questions or comments on the new book or the original articles, please post them below.

Here's a video explaining more about how the book was created...

Chris Torrence's blog

Assembly Lines: The Video Podcast

Assembly Lines: The Complete Book