6 ms·

I prefer RISCV as an starting assembly language because: it has good design, it's more intuitive, it has modern language and tool support (GCC, LLVM, Rust, etc.

I prefer RISCV as an starting assembly language because: it has good design, it's more intuitive, it has modern language and tool support (GCC, LLVM, Rust, etc.), and it runs on QEMU and real available hardware.

musicale 2y ago
> real available hardware Last I checked the 65C02 was still being manufactured and sold. It can also at a blazing 14 MHz.
- musicale 2y ago
  *run
- brucehoult 2y ago
  It's $8 and can't run without external ROM and RAM and a clock circuit and some glue logic. A RISC-V CH32V003 32 bit processor with 2k RAM and 16k of flash running at 48 MHz costs $0.10 for an 8 pin package (6 available I/O pins) or $0.20 for the 20 pin package. Once programmed, it needs only electricity between 2.8V and 5.5V to be applied to start running. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005036714708.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005036714708.html You can get it on a ready-made board or kit for as little as $1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfXWs4CJuY0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfXWs4CJuY0 https://www.olimex.com/Products/Retro-Computers/RVPC/open-source-hardware https://www.olimex.com/Products/Retro-Computers/RVPC/open-so... The recommended dev board, with a USB programmer/debugger interface for your PC, plus 5 of the 20 pin chips, costs $8.35 about the same as a bare 65C02 chip. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004895791296.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004895791296.html You can make your own cool shit like this, which uses the $0.10 8 pin chip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W7Z0BodhWk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W7Z0BodhWk It's as easy to learn the instructions of as a 6502 -- there are fewer of them! -- and far easier to write useful code for. MUCH easier to learn than a 68000, and no more difficult to use. TBH the A and D register split always annoyed the hell out of me in early Mac days.
  - musicale 2y ago
    Sounds nice, but the 6502 is certainly real, available hardware that you can buy and set up on a breadboard. There are tutorials on youtube for it as well, such as Ben Eater's tutorial.
    - brucehoult 2y ago
      Yes I'm well aware. I have a 65C02 on a breadboard. I have a 6809 on a breadboard. I've seen all Ben's videos. The *only* advantage the 6502 has is the exposed and non-multiplexed address and data busses, which you can single-step and examine with an Arduino or something. The whole setup is going to cost you the thick end of $100. But you can do that just as easily in an emulator. And meanwhile with RISC-V you can get an ESP32-C3 board with 400k RAM for a dollar or two, or the 1 GHz 64 MB RAM 64 bit Linux Milk-V Duo for $5. And if you wish, run exactly the same programs on a $2500 64 core 128 GB RAM Pioneer. And bunches of $10, $30, $70, $100, $200 boards (and now $400 laptops) in between. Only ARM gives you similar breadth, but the instruction sets of a Cortex-M0 and M4 Mac are so different they might as well be from different companies.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - tcbawo 2y ago
        Having a large body of old software and games, written for various random platforms across 20+ years is also a killer feature.
        renewedrebecca 2y ago
        And you'd have to spend a ton of time porting to each target system. OTOH, the Z80 is better for this, because you can at least get CP/M up and running with a minimum of trouble.
        musicale 2y ago
- lanstin 2y ago
  All my old assembly games would be 14x too fast. I'd have to adjust the between loop sleep constant?
pjmlp 2y ago
Last time I checked there was yet to exist a macro assembler worth its name for RISC-V.
pjc50 2y ago
ARMv7 also meets these criteria, and is very nice to use. Available inline in BBC Basic on the Acorn Archimedes.
- rlpb 2y ago
  > Available inline in BBC Basic on the Acorn Archimedes. The 32-bit ARM ISA, yes, but ARMv7 came much later. You're basically limited to ARM2 on the Archimedes, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes

musicale 2y ago

> real available hardware Last I checked the 65C02 was still being manufactured and sold. It can also at a blazing 14 MHz.

musicale 2y ago
*run
brucehoult 2y ago
It's $8 and can't run without external ROM and RAM and a clock circuit and some glue logic. A RISC-V CH32V003 32 bit processor with 2k RAM and 16k of flash running at 48 MHz costs $0.10 for an 8 pin package (6 available I/O pins) or $0.20 for the 20 pin package. Once programmed, it needs only electricity between 2.8V and 5.5V to be applied to start running. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005036714708.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005036714708.html You can get it on a ready-made board or kit for as little as $1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfXWs4CJuY0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfXWs4CJuY0 https://www.olimex.com/Products/Retro-Computers/RVPC/open-source-hardware https://www.olimex.com/Products/Retro-Computers/RVPC/open-so... The recommended dev board, with a USB programmer/debugger interface for your PC, plus 5 of the 20 pin chips, costs $8.35 about the same as a bare 65C02 chip. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004895791296.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004895791296.html You can make your own cool shit like this, which uses the $0.10 8 pin chip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W7Z0BodhWk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W7Z0BodhWk It's as easy to learn the instructions of as a 6502 -- there are fewer of them! -- and far easier to write useful code for. MUCH easier to learn than a 68000, and no more difficult to use. TBH the A and D register split always annoyed the hell out of me in early Mac days.
- musicale 2y ago
  Sounds nice, but the 6502 is certainly real, available hardware that you can buy and set up on a breadboard. There are tutorials on youtube for it as well, such as Ben Eater's tutorial.
  - brucehoult 2y ago
    Yes I'm well aware. I have a 65C02 on a breadboard. I have a 6809 on a breadboard. I've seen all Ben's videos. The *only* advantage the 6502 has is the exposed and non-multiplexed address and data busses, which you can single-step and examine with an Arduino or something. The whole setup is going to cost you the thick end of $100. But you can do that just as easily in an emulator. And meanwhile with RISC-V you can get an ESP32-C3 board with 400k RAM for a dollar or two, or the 1 GHz 64 MB RAM 64 bit Linux Milk-V Duo for $5. And if you wish, run exactly the same programs on a $2500 64 core 128 GB RAM Pioneer. And bunches of $10, $30, $70, $100, $200 boards (and now $400 laptops) in between. Only ARM gives you similar breadth, but the instruction sets of a Cortex-M0 and M4 Mac are so different they might as well be from different companies.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - tcbawo 2y ago
      Having a large body of old software and games, written for various random platforms across 20+ years is also a killer feature.
      - renewedrebecca 2y ago
        And you'd have to spend a ton of time porting to each target system. OTOH, the Z80 is better for this, because you can at least get CP/M up and running with a minimum of trouble.
        musicale 2y ago
lanstin 2y ago
All my old assembly games would be 14x too fast. I'd have to adjust the between loop sleep constant?

pjmlp 2y ago

Last time I checked there was yet to exist a macro assembler worth its name for RISC-V.

pjc50 2y ago

ARMv7 also meets these criteria, and is very nice to use. Available inline in BBC Basic on the Acorn Archimedes.

rlpb 2y ago
> Available inline in BBC Basic on the Acorn Archimedes. The 32-bit ARM ISA, yes, but ARMv7 came much later. You're basically limited to ARM2 on the Archimedes, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes