Commander X16

Hi everybody,

I follow David Murray for a long time and appreciate his effort to bring the 8bit area back to life. I'm a software developer, mainly Java fullstack - so high level at all. But to be honest, the projects are big, complicated and rely enormously on other frameworks - so it never feels like I know it all and did it all by myself. I wanna turn back time for myself as well and thought: Why not coding something pure in Assembly?

Since there are tons of old books and articles to find around the 6502 I dare to ask the community here:

Which book do you recommend to get a full grasp of the 6502 and it's instruction set? Is there a standard one? And since I'm more or less a beginner to Assembly, is there a recommended book for things like how to implement a floating point multiplication or how to properly implement subroutines? I am sure there are tons of basic concepts which need to be implemented each time one want's to code Assembly, thus, is there a place I can get these basic recipes?

Many thanks for any helpful information. I'll take links as well, but I'd prefer classic book recommendations containing good references.

Start here: http://www.6502.org/books

The seminal text on the subject is https://archive.org/details/Machine_Lan ... ed_Edition by Jim Butterfield.

Jim was a prolific writer, who taught a generation of programmers machine language. There are, of course, a few differences between the X16 and Commodore computers, but reading our own documentation will help you there. (You can, of course, grab a copy of VICE and enter the book's example code on an emulated Commodore 64 or 128. The 128 has a built in ML monitor, so that makes entering the example code very easy.)

I also recommend Programming the 65816: Including the 6502, 65C02, and 65802 by Eyes and Lichty, as it covers the 65C816. For $10 on Kindle, it's worth having. (I read this cover to cover when I wrote my 65816 emulator.)

Lance A. Leventhal's book is another good resource: https://archive.org/details/6502-assemb ... rogramming

Many thanks TomXP411 for the information. Programming the 65816 I already have on my list, the other sources I will checkout and try to get physical copies.

Your info really helps to to avoid wasting time with bad books. Thanks again

While not about the CMOS variant the Computes/Mansfield books are good. The first deal with the primary stuff, the second is more of a walk through of creating an assembler using machine language. Both have code for the machines of the day, Atari, Apple and Commodore.

I read Compute's Second Book of Machine Language in conjunction with the Vic 20's Programmers Reference guide back when manuals were printed and spiral bound

They can be found online in many locations in electronic formats, and perhaps second hand if you want the true 80s experience.

Thanks Edmond, are now on my list (downloaded yet but also on my list for physical copies )

I would point you toward the Blacksburg Continuing Education Series. Their books on the 8080/8085 and 6502 have helped me out immensely.

As a useful supplement to the 65C02 instructions that the classical books from the 1980's won't include, you can also bookmark the information at the 6502.org site, http://6502.org/tutorials/65c02opcodes.html

BruceRMcF wrote: ↑Sat Mar 09, 2024 5:36 pm As a useful supplement to the 65C02 instructions that the classical books from the 1980's won't include, you can also bookmark the information at the 6502.org site, http://6502.org/tutorials/65c02opcodes.html

And, of course, the X16 PRG also has a 65C02 reference. (Although we're still finding typos... some are ours and some come from the source material we started from.)

https://github.com/X16Community/x16-doc ... ocessor.md

Thank you Steven Lee and BruceRMcF for these additional tips.