Assembler for the Future
Just finished using Grok for my assembler for the computer. It took a decent bit of time, but far less than it would have to do it myself. And like, yes, others do exist, but this is mine, and I can do with it what I want. Maybe I’ll make it a web app sometime. It’s in python though, so who knows. However, it is a good step towards my final goal, which would almost be a compiler to translate something legible like Basic or, HOPEFULLY, C/C++. Or, I might try to make my computer able to run gcc or tcc. But, I think that’s a very far step, and I don’t even know if it’s possible without going to something much more advanced.
4-24 Update.
I started writing this blog yesterday, because I felt like it would be moreso a tomorrow problem. But it is also a today problem, and therefore a tomorrow problem. I got the assembler working, after realizing I goofed. The stupid thing was trying to gaslight me a couple times. I wasn’t able to get the fibonacci algorithm working right,
START:
ldi 3
sta [14] ; put 3 in ram 14
ldi 4
add [14] ;add ram [14] to 4
out ; hopefully output 7
jmp 3
hlt
I was able to get something simple like this working before going to bed, proving that I indeed can store ram, load another value, and add numbers up.
4-25 (Finally today)
I don’t have time before work today, but I should hopefully have time tomorrow once I get home. Can’t wait to finalize the SAP-1. I know many people have kept improving it to the SAP-2 or SAP-3, but that one will be put up on a wall or something. It’s my first real work of art in this space.
Finally got back from work. I don’t think I’ll have a ton of time today due to needing to pack up, but who knows. I’m reading a bit of The Elements of Computing Systems. I’ll share more books as time goes, and probably screenshot/upload individual chapters to help make more sense for various modules/why I went this way or that way for various design decisions.
This book, Digital Computer Electronics, by Albert Paul Malvino and Jerald A. Brown, is probably the BEST source of information. Chapters 10-12 are probably the most relevant, covering SAP1-SAP3 computer designs. Chapters 11 and 12 are a bit more brief, but at that point I presume they expect you to know more and figure it out. However, I won’t assume that here, and I will follow up with more details.
I highly recommend printing out Digital Computer Electronics, and maybe some other books as well, found here. I’ll continue uploading future books that I found on the subject there. I haven’t read all of them, but they seemed relevant in the quest for knowledge and future builds.
I’m going to get back to testing out my SAP-1, as it was acting weirdly. But the manual inputting of data has really shown me how annoying it is to program stuff, even when you only have 10 lines of code.
I updated the assembler a fair bit, and got some new fibonacci code generated. But something’s still goofed up, so I guess I’ll have to try it again later. Might have been me entering it in or something, as other code worked.
I’m probably going to set this up temporarily with an arduino.
You know, I might end up upgrading the SAP-1 to 256 bytes of ram, for better programming in the future. I think that’s a fair upgrade to it without reinventing the whole thing.