Any idea how to compile?

[Tenome]

I've tried running Make.com on DOSBox and Windows 3.1 to seemingly no avail. I'm not too familiar with running 16-bit programs unfortunately.

Thanks for uploading all this stuff by the way.

[Unity123]

make.com is not a windows .com file.

[Unity123]

it's in a language called digital command language, it's designed for mainframes. there's a windows version but I doubt you would get it to compile, try finding an openvms emulator.

[frobozzz]

They were using a VAX running VMS as their development platform at the time, so these are the DCL files to automate the build process. The big question is, what 6809 assembler were they using? It would have been one available on VMS. I'll see if I can figure that out.

[Anonymous941]

@frobozzz Any progress?

[Anonymous941]

In WITT/COPYRIGH.SRC, there's some text that's very helpful:

*	Unfortunately, the stupid BSO assembler forces the instruction
*	sbcb	00,U	to assemble as
*	sbcb	,U	which has a different post-byte.
*	So, this and the direct page reference are hard coded as FCB's
*	but will still disassemble and execute as normal 6809 code.

This should help narrow down which assembler they used...

[synamaxmusic]

I'm wondering if "BSO" refers to Boston Systems Office? https://www.pagetable.com/docs/cbmasm/cy6502.txt

[Anonymous941]

@mrsinistar64 That's what I thought after reading this article, but my attempts to assemble it in a modern PC port of 6502ASM (which is supposed to be backwards compatible) have failed. Maybe I did something wrong, I'm not used to assembly, so it can't hurt for someone else to try it.

[frobozzz]

Sinistar runs on a 6809 processor, so at the very least a 6502 assembler isn’t going to work for that reason.

…

On May 10, 2023, at 6:21 PM, Anonymous941 ***@***.***> wrote: @mrsinistar64 <https://github.com/mrsinistar64> That's what I thought after reading this article <https://www.pagetable.com/?p=1518>, but my attempts to assemble it in a modern PC port of 6502ASM (which is supposed to be backwards compatible) have failed. Maybe I did something wrong, I'm not used to assembly, so it can't hurt for someone else to try it. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#1 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAD4FHNBPZZMDECTXJEGB2TXFQPGTANCNFSM42P37SDA>. You are receiving this because you were mentioned.

[synamaxmusic]

I also found this on line 17 in COM/ASM.COM:
$! -NEW = Assemble using the 4/83 version of the BSO assembler (default).
$! -OLD = Assemble using the 1982 version of the BSO assembler.

So, at least we now know to look for the 4/83 version of this 6809 assembler.

Also, if I need to make a new issue, I'll do that but I noticed some discrepancies with sound effects tables compared to the actual values found in the binary ROM. For example, QFIRE has four bytes defined:

https://github.com/historicalsource/sinistar/blob/dc00bce37e5c5c7947369cf5040c10e4799f4a06/SAM/SAMTABLE.SRC#LL353C2-L353C2

But only the first and last ones match. .SOUND should be defined as AE, and .PRIO should be 52.