Long posts was: breastle screen for HLA Adventure 875

On Thu, 21 Jul 2005 08:34:10 +0000, jmfbahciv

Less worrisome than not considering it useful to learn ANY machine language.

As for myself, I am out of practice, but I know the ins and outs of 6502, and have some mild hints regarding 68000, and some very faint ideas about x86.

What did I learn? I learned from the 6502 that it's still possible to do useful work on a processor that has a small number of registers, as long as you're willing to pay the price involved, in heavier memory usage and in longer end time. (Three addresses that need to be incremented, only two index registers... there's going to have to be extra work here. I hope latency's not going to be a factor...)

I learned from the 68000 that it's easy to allow yourself too much luxury and get yourself all wrapped up in the power and flexibility to the point that you forget not only what piece of information you put in what register, but what the hell you were trying to accomplish in the first place. (Was that in A4? D4? Maybe it was A5... dammit, was I pbutting a reference or actual data...)

I learned from the x86 that it's possible to build a processor with a memory model that makes no sense and arbitrary special-purpose registers and still have it become the standard for mbutt-market personal computing. (Segment what? Offset? Why can't I just specify an absolute address? Wait, the two parts have to be in separate registers? Oh, even better...)

But these things also taught me a lot about how the lower levels of bit-flipping work.