Reviews for The Atari assembler

The average rating for The Atari assembler based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-03-24 00:00:00 Frank Busch I had read a review that said it was a great intro to machine language and asked my mom for it for Christmas. The big day came in 1983 and I opened what was clearly a book, only to find it was one of those "intro to computers" books - "oh... thanks..." After opening more gifts I notice there's one more under the tree... Now all of this was taking place far from my computer, we were spending a week in northern Ontario at my grandparents. Not a lot to do there... so I read the book. Pretty much cover to cover. By the time I was about 1/2 way through I had an epiphany, and suddenly I just "got it", 6502 assembly was now an open book. All without a computer to test things. This is, to this day, the best programming book I've read. Not a lot of use these days, the 6502 is rare enough, and the Atari 8-bit market is a little thin. But if you're interested in retrocomputing, or in learning assembly, I can't imagine a better book than this one.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-03-22 00:00:00 Eric Prendergast I got this book many years ago when an Atari 8-bit was my only computer. I read through it last year, since I've been revisiting the Atari as a challenge I've set for myself. I'm using it as an entree into the practice of reworking a system in a deep way. One avenue I thought I might use for that was 6502 assembler. This book was a nice introduction to assembler on the Atari, though it's by no means complete. I ended up finding a more complete Atari Assembler reference online from an old Atari users group newsletter. This book gets you familiar with the basics, understanding memory, what some of the terms for that mean (like MEMLO, and MEMHI, low byte and high byte, etc.). It goes through examples of how to use a basic list of operators that a 6502 programmer will need to know how to use. It has some nice touches, like teaching how to do 16-bit arithmetic operations, and how to use the Atari's sound hardware. If you want to do anything more than "hello world"-type programming, though, you will need more than this book.