FPGA VAX update

[spc at conman.org]

It was rumored that The Great Scott Stevens once said:
> 
> Depending on how much 'from scratch' people feel is necessary, it's also
> interesting to roll your own computer using an off-the-shelf processor (or
> multiples).  I have a simple 8088-based SBC design wired up and waiting
> for motivation to put together some test firmware.  The main thing that
> has kept me from bringing it up is the difficulty in getting x86-based
> machine language development tools going.  I'm used to little 4 and 8-bit
> assemblers where you can plop down a few ORG statements and have it all
> resident in a ROM, and almost all the x86 asm tools start from the
> assumption you are running on DOS and have no direct control of the memory
> map.

  Have you looked at Nasm?  It's an x86-based assembler and one of the
formats it supports (for output) is a pure-binary format.  Free, source code
(in C) available and should compile cleanly on anything with at least an
ANSI C compiler.  It uses the Intel mnemonics and while not 100% source
compatible with MASM, it's pretty easy to use.

  -spc (I've used it from time to time ... )