Assemblers • Table of Contents • The Mops Manual

Assemblers

Introduction

With the Mops 68k and PowerPC Assemblers you can write colon definitions and method definitions in assembly code and you can also reference Mops data and executable words. The older Macintosh models use a Motorola 68000, 68020, 68030 or 68040 microprocessor, usually collectively dubbed ‘68k’. The 68k assembler syntax is based on standard 68000 assembly language. The newer Macintoshes use a PowerPC microprocessor. The PowerPC Assembler uses a postfix-style syntax, which is more normal for Forth-based assemblers.

This is not a tutorial—we assume a basic knowledge of 680x0 and PowerPC assembly programming. 68k manuals might now be a little hard to come by, but we give an outline of the 68000 processor later in this manual. The PowerPC is a much more complex processor, but there is a huge amount of information, including manuals, available for downloading from the Motorola web site. Only the 68000 instruction set is supported by the 68k Assembler. The 68020 and later have some additional instructions and addressing modes. If you were to use these, however, your program would not run on earlier Macs which have a 68000 processor (Mac Plus, SE, Classic, and PowerBook 100).

*** WARNING ***
While the Assemblers give you absolute control over the machine, there is a major downside—if you write a definition in assembly, it will only run on Macs with that particular microprocessor (68k or PowerPC). High-level Mops code is quite fast anyway, so you should really only be using assembly code if you just want to learn assembly, or if you're doing some very low-level machine-specific things. You may have perfectly good reasons for doing this and if so, fine.

Contents

Chapter 1 PowerPC Assembler and Disassembler	Assembler colon definitions Accessing the dictionary Executing colon definitions from code Executing other code definitions from code Assembler source PowerPC register usage Example PowerPC Disassembler
Chapter 2 68k Assembler	Getting started Assembler colon definitions Assembler method definitions Accessing the dictionary Executing Mops-defined words Toolbox calls Syntax
Chapter 3 68k registers and addressing modes	Registers	Data Registers Address Registers Uses of Data and Address Registers
	Condition Codes	Interrupt Mask Supervisor Bit Trace Bit
	Data Addressing Modes	Addressing Modes Data Register Direct Address Register Direct Other Register Direct Address Register Indirect Address Register Indirect with PostIncrement Address Register Indirect with PreDecrement Address Register Indirect with Displacement Address Register Indirect with Displacement and Index Program Counter Indirect with Displacement Program Counter Indirect with Displacement and Index Absolute Short Address Absolute Long Address Immediate Data Implicit Reference
Chapter 4 68000 Instructions	About this chapter Motorola 68000 Instructions Instruction Descriptions
Chapter 5 68k Assembler error messages

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