Help, need help with an old 68hc11 assembler !!

Howdy,

Hope somebody can help.......  

I'm working on a project with an old American Automation Inc 68HC11 
assembler and linker, dating back to 1988. AS68HC11.EXE and AALINK.EXE

I tracked down the company, now American Arium, but they stopped 
supporting the product and 'threw out all the documentation', about four 
years ago.   Arrgghhhh

At any rate, I need the command line options for the Linker..... as I'm 
trying to generate a symbol table.

Can anybody help me on this ??

Thanks

DennisB

DennisB wrote:
> Howdy,
> 
> Hope somebody can help.......  
> 
> I'm working on a project with an old American Automation Inc 68HC11 
> assembler and linker, dating back to 1988. AS68HC11.EXE and AALINK.EXE
> 
> I tracked down the company, now American Arium, but they stopped 
> supporting the product and 'threw out all the documentation', about four 
> years ago.   Arrgghhhh
> 
> At any rate, I need the command line options for the Linker..... as I'm 
> trying to generate a symbol table.
> 
> Can anybody help me on this ??

When run with no params, any well designed .EXE should give options,
sometimes full help needs -H or ? the command line.

Failing that, you can look at the .EXE in an editor, and look for
the param string area, and that will give more clues.
-jg

Jim Granville <no.spam@designtools.co.nz> wrote in
news:428bdf6f$1@clear.net.nz: 

Thanks for the suggestions Jim, but I tried them all.... 
and spent another hour trying 'dummy' command line options.


DennisB


> 
> When run with no params, any well designed .EXE should give options,
> sometimes full help needs -H or ? the command line.
> 
> Failing that, you can look at the .EXE in an editor, and look for
> the param string area, and that will give more clues.
> -jg
> 

> Thanks for the suggestions Jim, but I tried them all....
> and spent another hour trying 'dummy' command line options.

You could try using the "strings" command (available under Cygwin) to see
what text messages are in the executable.

    Andrew

>> Thanks for the suggestions Jim, but I tried them all....
>> and spent another hour trying 'dummy' command line options.
> 
> You could try using the "strings" command (available under Cygwin) to see
> what text messages are in the executable.
> 
>     Andrew

Thanks

I've tried that and even did a quick disassemble with IDA. 

The program was written in assembler, using MASM 6 or 7. 

The options are single letter and are combined with + - @ and
possibly with * and &. ie /ru-s @3200 -test.h

I've tried MANY combinations, but still no symbol table.....
which makes debugging a 10000 line file, a challange.

At any rate, I was hoping somebody had an old manual, with the command line 
options hanging around. 

Thanks for the help !!!

DennisB

DennisB <dennisbattnet@net.net> wrote:

[...]
> At any rate, I was hoping somebody had an old manual, with the command
>line options hanging around.

   You could ask on the mailing list of the group in my sig below. While
the group is dedicated to the 6800 and 6809 FLEX OS, there are many
oldtime 68hc users in the group. Some of them have even ported FLEX to
hc11. 
-- 
http://www.flexusergroup.com/

On Thu, 19 May 2005 12:00:37 -0700, Scott Moore
<samiamsansspam@Sun.COM> wrote:

>6811 Assemblers can't be rare. If you're not supported, sounds like time
>to move to another assembler. You are simply going to relive this
>pain over and over again until you move.

The OP said that it was a 10000 line program.  It is likely that
porting such a program to a different compiler is not likely to be
trivial.


-Robert Scott
 Ypsilanti, Michigan

DennisB wrote:
> Howdy,
> 
> Hope somebody can help.......  
> 
> I'm working on a project with an old American Automation Inc 68HC11 
> assembler and linker, dating back to 1988. AS68HC11.EXE and AALINK.EXE
> 
> I tracked down the company, now American Arium, but they stopped 
> supporting the product and 'threw out all the documentation', about four 
> years ago.   Arrgghhhh
> 
> At any rate, I need the command line options for the Linker..... as I'm 
> trying to generate a symbol table.
> 
> Can anybody help me on this ??
> 
> Thanks
> 
> DennisB

6811 Assemblers can't be rare. If you're not supported, sounds like time
to move to another assembler. You are simply going to relive this
pain over and over again until you move.

I did quick search on "68hc11 assembler", it lit up like a Chrismas tree.
Including free ones.

On 2005-05-19, Scott Moore <samiamsansspam@Sun.COM> wrote:

> 6811 Assemblers can't be rare.

Indeed not. Gnu binutils supports the 6811/6812 architecture.
It's free (libre and gratis), and it's better supported than
anything other assembler I've ever used.  Gcc supports the
architecture as well, and does a far better job of code
generation that the (admittedly old) commercial compiler I used
to use.

> If you're not supported, sounds like time to move to another
> assembler. You are simply going to relive this pain over and
> over again until you move.

Yup.  It'll always be "just one more small change before we EOL
the project."

> I did quick search on "68hc11 assembler", it lit up like a
> Chrismas tree. Including free ones.

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I've got to get
                                  at               these SNACK CAKES to NEWARK
                               visi.com            by DAWN!!

DennisB wrote:
>>>Thanks for the suggestions Jim, but I tried them all....
>>>and spent another hour trying 'dummy' command line options.
>>
>>You could try using the "strings" command (available under Cygwin) to see
>>what text messages are in the executable.
>>
>>    Andrew
> 
> 
> Thanks
> 
> I've tried that and even did a quick disassemble with IDA. 
> 
> The program was written in assembler, using MASM 6 or 7. 
> 
> The options are single letter and are combined with + - @ and
> possibly with * and &. ie /ru-s @3200 -test.h
> 
> I've tried MANY combinations, but still no symbol table.....
> which makes debugging a 10000 line file, a challange.
> 
> At any rate, I was hoping somebody had an old manual, with the command line 
> options hanging around. 

  You could also search for .MAP ( or whatever the HC11 convention is 
for link symbol/map output - do you know if this SW is able to do this.
  Also, if you have full archived project directories, you might find
an example symbol file, and if lucky, the linker command line will be
reported in the top...
  Failing that, another pathway would to be find a HC11 simulator that 
can read the absolute files, and report the symbols.

-jg