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Programming the 6502 - Rodnay Zaks

Posted: Mon Dec 16, 2013 4:24 pm
by barnsey123
Have just ordered this book...will let you know if it's any good for Oric stuff. I didn't want an oric specific book as I also want to do some Atari 8bit stuff one day.
In the meantime, has anyone else got this book? I should have asked that question before ordering but was in a hurry... :(

Re: Programming the 6502 - Rodnay Zaks

Posted: Mon Dec 16, 2013 6:18 pm
by Dbug
It's my main 6502 reference.

Zaks books are very standardized, he wrote the same book for Z80 and bunch of other processors, so they all have the same structure with some information about boolean and logic, addressing modes, then instructions and some tables.

Fortunately the books are good :)

Re: Programming the 6502 - Rodnay Zaks

Posted: Mon Dec 16, 2013 6:38 pm
by coco.oric
Personnally, i've learned 6502 code with "Leventhal's 6502 programming"
I've got later zak's books.
There're both good.

Re: Programming the 6502 - Rodnay Zaks

Posted: Mon Dec 16, 2013 7:04 pm
by Antiriad2097
I bought Zaks one when I started tinkering with 6502 last year. Seems pretty solid having not done a great deal of assembly coding, really only some stuff on the 68000 in the mid 90s.

You might want to have the Oric memory map to hand, but otherwise 6502 coding is pretty generic.

Re: Programming the 6502 - Rodnay Zaks

Posted: Mon Dec 16, 2013 7:44 pm
by Dbug
coco.oric wrote:Personnally, i've learned 6502 code with "Leventhal's 6502 programming"
I've got later zak's books.
There're both good.
I have both :)

The Leventhal's is a good source for already made programs/snippets of code, but I don't used it much as a reference.

So basically in summary:
- Leventhal to get complete examples of code to do additions, timers, etc...
- Zaks as a quick reference for instructions, timings and which flags are set by which instructions.

Re: Programming the 6502 - Rodnay Zaks

Posted: Tue Dec 17, 2013 9:22 am
by barnsey123
Dbug wrote:
coco.oric wrote:Personnally, i've learned 6502 code with "Leventhal's 6502 programming"
I've got later zak's books.
There're both good.
I have both :)

The Leventhal's is a good source for already made programs/snippets of code, but I don't used it much as a reference.

So basically in summary:
- Leventhal to get complete examples of code to do additions, timers, etc...
- Zaks as a quick reference for instructions, timings and which flags are set by which instructions.
Thanks guys...it was a toss-up between the two books...but now I think I might need both... :(

Re: Programming the 6502 - Rodnay Zaks

Posted: Tue Dec 17, 2013 1:15 pm
by iss
Here can be found good scan of Zak's book and more...
My post should not discourage buying paper books but sometimes the free space for them is so limited.

Re: Programming the 6502 - Rodnay Zaks

Posted: Tue Dec 17, 2013 10:19 pm
by Symoon
There's also a book of routines by Leventhal called "6502 assembly language subroutines". Bought it a few weeks ago but didn't read it seriously so far - but it has information about the VIA and other things. Seems very interesting to learn machine code.
EDIT: it's available on the page ISS indicated ;)

Re: Programming the 6502 - Rodnay Zaks

Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2014 11:10 am
by Godzil
This is one of the two (good) 6502 book I have :)

Strongly recommended ^^

(The other one I have is the Lance A. Leventhal one (Cf coco's website: http://coco.oric.blog.free.fr/public/livres/6502.jpg )^^)

Re: Programming the 6502 - Rodnay Zaks

Posted: Fri Feb 07, 2014 6:59 pm
by barnsey123
Yay...thanks to the Zak for getting me out of a hole...16 bit addition.

Re: Programming the 6502 - Rodnay Zaks

Posted: Thu Feb 13, 2014 11:02 am
by Godzil
To be honest, both books helped me a lot to build my own NES emulator, as it use a 6502, and in my currently onhold Oric emulator (TeORIC to be pronounced théorique in French or theoric in english)

Re: Programming the 6502 - Rodnay Zaks

Posted: Thu Feb 13, 2014 5:42 pm
by Xeron
More emulators? Well, I understand why... its fun to write your own emulator :) Was hoping for more contributors to Oricutron, though... Good luck with it, anyway.

Re: Programming the 6502 - Rodnay Zaks

Posted: Thu Feb 13, 2014 6:01 pm
by iss
yep, it's really fun to make emulators (count me with 2 more :))
@Xeron: I started Oricutron's android port, just need more free time - if you have any special ideas/requirements about that pls, contact me.

Re: Programming the 6502 - Rodnay Zaks

Posted: Thu Feb 13, 2014 6:40 pm
by Xeron
@iss

Awesome :D

Re: Programming the 6502 - Rodnay Zaks

Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2014 2:29 pm
by Godzil
Xeron wrote:More emulators? Well, I understand why... its fun to write your own emulator :) Was hoping for more contributors to Oricutron, though... Good luck with it, anyway.
Well technically, that's me that should says this :p TeORIC is older than Oricutron: TeORIC first commit in SVN was on the 25 Jan 2008 20:03:02, where Oricutron first commit was Jul 10, 2009. So... ;)