FPGA VAX update

[Allison]

>
>Subject: Re: FPGA VAX update
>   From: spc at conman.org
>   Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 18:32:47 -0500 (EST)
>     To: cctalk at classiccmp.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 ... )

Interesting.  I've used a few 8086 assemblers and none were out of control
but it was handy running them under dos.  An alaternate is Smallc or microC
for 8088 project that are slighly larger than a monitor program.

Allison