asm6809
NAME
asm6809—6809 cross-assembler
SYNOPSIS
asm6809 [OPTION]… [SOURCE-FILE]…
DESCRIPTION
asm6809 is a portable macro cross assembler targeting the Motorola 6809 and Hitachi 6309 processors. These processors are most commonly encountered in the Dragon and Tandy Colour Computer.
OPTIONS
-B
,--bin
- output raw binary file (default)
-D
,--dragondos
- output DragonDOS binary file
-C
,--coco
- output CoCo RS-DOS (“DECB”) segmented binary file
-S
,--srec
- output Motorola SREC file
-H
,--hex
- output Intel hex record file
-e
,--exec
addr- EXEC address (for output formats that support one)
-8
,-9
,--6809
- use 6809 ISA (default)
-3
,--6309
- use 6309 ISA (6809 with extensions)
-d
,--define
sym[=number]- define a symbol
--setdp
value- initial value assumed for DP [undefined]
-P
,--max-passes
n- maximum number of passes to allow symbol values to stabilise [12]
-o
,--output
file- output filename
-l
,--listing
file- create listing file
-E
,--exports
file- create exports table
-s
,--symbols
file- create symbol table
-q
,--quiet
- don't warn about illegal (but working) code
-v
,--verbose
- warn about explicitly inefficient code
--help
- show help
--version
- show program version
If more than one SOURCE-FILE is specified, they are assembled as though they were all in one file.
USAGE
Text is read in and parsed, then as many passes are made over the parsed source as necessary (up to a limit), until symbols are resolved and addresses are stable. The fastest or smallest representation should always be chosen where there is ambiguity.
Output formats are: Raw binary, DragonDOS binary, CoCo RS-DOS (“DECB”) binary, Motorola SREC, Intel HEX.
Additional optional output files are:
- A listing file is an annotated copy of the source file with addresses and generated code prepended to each line.
- An exports file contains a list of all macro definitions and symbols
flagged for export with the
EXPORT
pseudo-op. Suitable for inclusion in subsequent source files. - A symbols file contains a list of all non-local symbols. Suitable for inclusion in subsequent source files, but beware multiple definitions errors if two source files include a common set of symbols.
Home page: <https://www.6809.org.uk/asm6809/>
Differences to other assemblers
Motorola syntax allows a comment to follow any operands, separated from them only by whitespace. To an extent, this assembler accepts that, but be aware that as spaces are allowed within expressions, if the comment looks like it is continuing an expression it will generate bad code (or raise an error if the result is syntactically incorrect). Example:
0000 8605 lda #5 0002 C60A ldb #5 * 2 twice first number
A strict Motorola assembler would generate bytes C6 05 for the second line,
as the “* 2” would be ignored. For consistency, it is best to introduce end of
line comments with a ;
character. An asterisk (*
)
can introduce whole line comments.
An unquoted semicolon always introduces a comment. The alternate form of the
6309 instructions AIM
, OIM
, etc. listed in some
documentation that uses a semicolon as a separator is not accepted.
A symbol may be forward referenced; any time a reference is unresolvable, another pass is triggered, up to some defined maximum.
In 6809 indexed addressing, the offset size will default to the fastest
possible form, e.g. if the offset is an expression that happens to evaluate to
zero, the no offset form will be used. Prepend <<
to coerce a 5 bit offset, <
to coerce 8 bits or
>
to coerce 16 bits.
asm6809 currently has no support for OS-9 modules or multiple object linking.
Program syntax
Program files are considered line by line. Each line contains up to three
fields, separated by whitespace: label, instruction and arguments. An unquoted
semicolon (;
) indicates that the rest of the line is to be
considered a comment. Whole line comments may be introduced with an asterisk
(*
). Motorola-style end of line comments without a
;
are accepted, but see the notes about assembler differences.
Any label must appear at the very beginning of the line. If a label is omitted, whitespace must appear before the operator field. Certain pseudo-ops may affect a label's meaning, but usually labels define a symbol referring to the current position in the code (Program Counter, or PC).
The instruction field contains either an instruction op-code (mnemonic), a pseudo-op (assembler directive), or a macro name for expansion.
Pseudo-ops allow conditional assembly and inline data, can affect code placement and symbol values and be used to include further files inline. See the section on Pseudo-ops for more information.
Arguments are a comma-separated list: either instruction operands or arguments to a pseudo-op or macro. Permitted arguments are specific to the instruction or pseudo-op, but in general they may be:
- An expression.
- A register name, with optional pre-decrement or post-increment.
- A nested list surrounded by
[
and]
. This is generally only used to indicate indirect indexed addressing.
In addition, any argument may be preceded by:
#
, indicate immediate value.<<
, force 5-bit index offset.<
, force direct addressing, 8-bit value or 8-bit index offset.>
, force extended addressing, 16-bit value or 16-bit index offset.
Expressions
Expressions are formed of:
- A decimal number.
- An octal number preceded by
@
or with a leading0
. - A binary number preceded by
%
or0b
. - A hexadecimal number preceded by
$
or0x
. - A floating point number: decimal digits surrounding exactly one full stop (
.
). - A single quote followed by any ASCII character (yielding the ASCII value of that character).
- A symbol name, local forward reference or local back reference.
- Any of the above prefixed with a unary minus (
-
) or plus (+
). - A string delimited either by double quotes or
/
. - A combination of any of the above with arithmetic, bitwise, logical or relational operators.
- Parenthesis to specify precedence.
The assembler uses multiple passes to resolve expressions. If an expression
refers to a symbol that cannot currently be resolved, an extra pass is
triggered. Similarly, if a symbol is assigned a value (e.g. by an
EQU
pseudo-op) that differs to its value on the previous pass,
another is triggered until it becomes stable.
When not directly used for their contents (e.g. by FCC
),
strings can be used in place of integer values. The ASCII value of each
character is used to represent 8 bits of the integer result up to 32 bits.
Example:
0000 CC443A ldd #"D:"
Operators
The following operators are available, listed in descending order of precedence (where operators share a precedence, left-to-right evaluation is performed):
Operator | Description |
---|---|
+ | unary plus |
- | unary minus |
! ~ | logical, bitwise NOT |
* | multiplication |
/ | division |
% | modulo |
+ | addition |
- | subtraction |
<< | bitwise shift left |
>> | bitwise shift right |
< <= | relational operators |
> >= | relational operators |
== | relational equal |
!= | relational not equal |
& | bitwise AND |
^ | bitwise XOR |
| | bitwise OR |
&& | logical AND |
|| | logical OR |
?: | ternary operator |
Division always returns a floating point result. Other arithmetic operators return integers if both operands are integers, otherwise floating point. Bitwise operators and modulo all cast their operands to integers and return an integer. Relational and logical operators result in 0 if false, 1 if true. Integer calculations are performed using the platform's int64_t type, floating point uses double.
Conditional assembly
The pseudo-ops IF
, ELSIF
,
ELSE
and ENDIF
guide conditional assembly.
IF
and ELSIF
take one argument, which is
evaluated as an integer. If the result is non-zero, the following code will be
assembled, else it will be skipped. Undefined symbols encountered while
evaluating the condition are interpreted as zero (false) rather than raising an
error.
Conditional assembly pseudo-ops are permitted within macro definitions and will be evaluated at the time of expansion, therefore positional variables can be used to affect macro expansion.
Sections
Code can be placed into named sections with the SECTION
pseudo-op. This can make breaking source into multiple input files more
comfortable. Without ORG
or PUT
directives,
sections will follow each other in memory in the order they are first defined.
Within each section, there may exist multiple spans of discontiguous data. Certain output formats are able to represent this, for the others (e.g. DragonDOS), the spans are combined first, with the gaps between them padded with zero bytes.
Local labels
Local labels are considered local to the current section. A local label is any decimal number used in the label field, and the same local label may appear multiple times, unlike other labels.
As an operand, a decimal number followed by B
or F
is considered to be a back or forward reference to the previous or next
occurrence of that numerical local label in the section.
In this example, the 1
label occurs twice, but each use of
1B
refers to the closest one searching backwards:
0000 8E0400 scroll ldx #$0400 0003 EC8820 1 ldd 32,x 0006 ED81 std ,x++ 0008 8C05E0 cmpx #$05e0 000B 25F6 blo 1B 000D CC6060 ldd #$6060 0010 ED81 1 std ,x++ 0012 8C0600 cmpx #$0600 0015 25F9 blo 1B 0017 39 rts
An exclamation mark (!
) in the label field is treated as a
local label numbered zero. Operands of <
and >
are considered equivalent to 0B
and 0F
respectively,
and can therefore refer to the !
local label. This is included for
compatibility with other assemblers.
As local labels can be repeated, their position is used to distinguish them. For this reason, all file inclusions and macro expansion must occur during the first pass so that the absolute line count at which each local label is encountered remains the same between passes.
Macros
Start a macro definition by specifying a name for it in the label field, and
MACRO
in the instruction field. Finish the definition with
ENDM
in the instruction field.
Use a macro by specifying its name in the instruction field. Any arguments given will be available during expansion as a positional variable.
Positional variables can be used within strings, or pasted to form symbol names. In either case, they must be quoted or they will be passed by value, which will result in an error if they do not correspond to valid symbols by themselves.
The positional variables are referred to with \{1}
,
\{2}
, …, \{n}
. For the first nine
arguments, the braces are not required, so \1
, \2
,
…, \9
are valid alternatives. For compatibility with the
TSC Flex assembler, another form is accepted: &{1}
,
&{2}
, …, &{n}
. Within a
string, the shorter &1
, &2
, …,
&9
is still valid, but as this can be confused with bitwise
AND, it is not permitted elsewhere.
Here's a silly example demonstrating positional variables and symbol pasting. Consider the following macro definition and utilising code:
go_left equ -1 go_right equ +1 move macro lda x_position adda #go_\1 sta x_position endm do_move move "right" rts x_position rmb 1
The main code generated is as follows:
0000 do_move 0000 move "right" 0000 B60009 lda x_position 0003 8B01 adda #go_\1 0005 B70009 sta x_position 0008 39 rts
Pseudo-ops
Conditional assembly:
IF
condition- Subsequent lines are assembled only if condition evaluates to true (non-zero).
ELSIF
condition- Subsequent lines are assembled only if all preceding
IF
andELSIF
pseudo-ops evaluated to false (zero) and condition evaluates to true (non-zero). ELSE
- Subsequent lines are assembled only if all preceding
IF
andELSIF
pseudo-ops evaluated to false (zero). ENDIF
- Terminate an
IF
statement.
Macro definition:
MACRO
- Start defining a macro. The macro's name shall be in the label field.
Subsequent lines up to the enclosing
ENDM
pseudo-op will not be assembled until the macro is expanded. Macro definitions may be nested; that is, using a macro may define another macro. ENDM
- Finish a macro definition started with
MACRO
.
Inline data:
FCB
value[,value]…FCC
value[,value]…- Form Constant Byte. Each value is evaluated either to a number
or a string. Numbers are truncated to 8 bits and stored directly as bytes. For
strings, the ASCII value of each character is stored in sequential bytes.
Historically,
FCB
handled bytes andFCC
(Form Constant Character string) handled strings. asm6809 treats them as synonymous, but is rather more strict about what is allowed as a string delimiter. FCN
value[,value]…- Identical to
FCC
, but a terminating zero byte is stored after the data. Included to increase compatibility with other assemblers. FCS
value[,value]…- Like
FCC
, but the last byte in each value has its top bit set. This is the format used to represent keywords in the Dragon and Tandy Colour Computer BASIC ROMs. FCV
value[,value]…- Like
FCC
, but ASCII is translated into the values typically required for display by the MC6847 VDG as present in the Dragon and Tandy Colour Computer. FCI
value[,value]…- Like
FCV
, but inverts bit 6 for inverse video. FDB
value[,value]…- Form Double Byte. Each value is evaluated to a number, which is truncated to 16 bits and stored as two successive bytes (big-endian).
FQB
value[,value]…- Form Quad Byte. Each value is evaluated to a number, which is truncated to 32 bits and stored as four successive bytes (big-endian).
FILL
value,count- Insert count bytes of value. This is effectively the
same as the two-argument form of
RZB
with its arguments swapped. RZB
count[,value]ZMB
count[,value]BSZ
count[,value]- Reserve Zeroed Bytes. Inserts a sequence of count bytes of zero,
or value if specified. The two-argument form is effectively the same
as
FILL
with its arguments swapped.ZMB
andBSZ
are alternate forms recognised for compatibility with other assemblers.
Code placement & addressing:
ALIGN
alignment[,value]…- Align to memory next alignment bytes. Pads with
value. If value is not specified, this behaves like
RMB
instead. ORG
address- Sets the Program Counter—the base address assumed for the next assembled
instruction. Unless followed by a
PUT
pseudo-op, this will also be the instruction's actual address in memory. A label on the same line will define a symbol with a value of the specified address. PUT
address- Modify the put address—the Program Counter is unaffected, so the assumed address for subsequent instructions remains the same, but the actual data will be located elsewhere.
PHASE
address- Modify the Program Counter—the PUT address is unaffected. Useful for
assembling code that is going to be copied into place before executing. Note
that subsequent uses of
ORG
will maintain the same relative offset. Remains in effect until theDEPHASE
pseudo-op is seen. Phases can be nested. Any label on the same line will get the value of the execution address before the new phase offset is applied. DEPHASE
address- Ends a phase section. Undoes the offset applied to addresses by the last
use of
PHASE
. Any label on the same line will get the value of the execution address after the previous phase offset is removed. RMB
count- Reserve Memory Bytes. The Program Counter is advanced count bytes. In some output formats this region may be padded with zeroes, in others a new loadable section may be created.
SECTION
nameCODE
DATA
BSS
RAM
AUTO
- Switch to the named section. The Program Counter will continue from the
last value it had while assembling this section, or follow the previous section
if had not previously been seen.
Each of
CODE
,DATA
,BSS
,RAM
, andAUTO
switches to a section named after the pseudo-op. They are recognised for compatibility with other assemblers. SETDP
page- Set the assumed value of the Direct Page (
DP
) register to page for subsequent instructions. Any non-negative page is truncated to 8 bits, or specify a negative number to disable automatic direct addressing.See the section on Direct Page addressing for more information.
Symbols:
EQU
value- Short for “equate”, this must be used with a label and defines a symbol with the specified value. This may be any single valid argument (e.g. an expression or a string).
EXPORT
name[,name]…- Each name—either the name of a macro or a symbol—is flagged to be exported. Exported macros and symbols will be listed in the exports output file, if specified.
SET
value- Similar to
EQU
, this must be used with a label and defines a symbol with the specified value. UnlikeEQU
, you can useSET
multiple times to assign different values to the same symbol without error.
Files:
END
[address]- Signifies the end of input. All further lines are disregarded.
Optionally specifies an EXEC address to be included in the output, where supported by the output format. An EXEC address specified on the command line will override any value specified here.
INCLUDE
filename- Includes the contents of another file at this point in assembly. The
filename argument must be a string, i.e. delimited by quotes or
/
characters. INCLUDEBIN
filename- Includes the binary data from filename (which, as with
INCLUDE
must be a delimited string) directly.
Direct Page addressing
The 6809 extends the zero page concept from other processors by allowing
fast accesses to whichever page is selected by the Direct Page register
(DP
). An assembler is not able to keep track of what the code has
set this register to, but the information is useful when deciding which
addressing mode to use for an instruction. The SETDP
pseudo-op, or
--setdp
option, informs the assembler that the supplied value is
to be assumed for DP
. Set this to a negative number to undefine
it and disable automatic use of direct addressing (this is the default).
LICENCE
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.