Nascom News­let­ter

PA – print an assembled source program
PAT – print an assembled source program with sorted symbol table
S – save source program to tape

The editor mode may be entered either just with E or E followed by a string. Movement about the source file is via the cursor keys and various combinations of control keys to move forward and backward by lines, pages and the complete text. Lines and characters may obviously be deleted and inserted. Points that I found un-natural were that only text on a line up to the cursor were entered and if a line began with a space, an error was flagged and the cursor disappears which looks remarkably like a program crash. It was only after frantic searching of the manual that I found that CS has to be typed before you get a cursor back after an error is flagged.

As mentioned previously, each line of source must begin in character position 1 which means that the listing looks, in my opinion, a bit untidy and not too clear.

The D(elete), M(ove), P(print source), PA(ssembled source) and S(ave to tape) commands all allow the use of optional labels which enable only sections of the source to be worked on. A very useful touch for the print and save commands.

The assembler handles all the Z80 nmenonics plus the usual DEFB, DEFW, DEFS, DEFM, END, EQU and ORG. Labels are up to 6 alphanumerics starting with a letter and must be followed by a colon and a space. Numbers are either decimal or hex (preceded by £) and are equated to 16 bits.

Gener-80 is cassette based and consequently all text is loaded/​saved to tape. No technical data is given in the manual to help anyone who wanted to make the assembler disc based. It is also set up for the default Nascom serial printer but, at explained in the manual, it goes via 0C78 so can easily be intercepted and re-directed to your own print routine.

All in all Gener-80 is an adequate assembler package. It does not go for any of the fancy frills like macros etc but as an assembler it does its job well. I think that more technical information is needed for it in this day and age to make it easier for people to patch in their own routines for additional pseudo-mnenonics and I/O. All in all, simple but adequate.

Gener-80 is available from Seven Stars Publishing who hail from __ __________ ______, London ___ ___.