The Sinclair QL Forum

Ordered...they charge US a few dollars more (£30 retail price -- $37.99) but the 55% off takes care of most of that At least Massachusetts didn't tack on its own sales tax to the VAT...

Thanks! I hope you enjoy it and/or find it useful.


Cheers,
Norm.

It arrived today...that book is heftier than I thought. Very nice!

Mine arrived yesterday - through the first 2 chapters. I too was surprised by the size of this book - it's a hefty tome!

Morning Gents,

well, you know me! Why use one word when 20,000 will do instead!

Hope you enjoy it, 600 pages of fun coming up....plus the index (the best part!)


Cheers,
Norm.

When examining your new book, I have found following:

Norman Dunbar, "QL Today’s QL Assembly Language Programming Series", Springer-Verlag GmbH,
Heidelberg, ISBN 978-1-4842-5790-6, chapter 1.2.1, page 4:

"Data held in registers and in memory is held in High Order format.
This simply means that the numbers are stored in a similar manner to the way in which we would
expect them to be - the ‘rightmost’ end holds the most significant bit and the ‘leftmost’ the lowest -
just the way we write numbers down."

(Note: For me rightmost means towards larger memory addresses, e.g. decimal 18 = 1*10 + 1*8,
i.e. 1 is by factor 10 more significant than 8, so clearly 1 [leftmost] is more significant than 8
[rightmost]).

Isn't that "Little Endian" what you are describing? I think 68k uses Big Endian, meaning the end
of the number, i. e. lowest digit (0-9) is towards the end (Big) of RAM. IMHO on 68k (and how
I will write it down), I would write 18 (decimal) as:

12 (hexadecimal)

The most significant "decimal bit" is the first digit (1), which is left most, i. e. the natural way.
The least significant ("decimal bit" - towards the BIG END of available RAM) is the 2 (8 decimal).

Hab ich was übersehen??? (Rough translation: Did I have missed something obviously)

I also just ordered "Delete: A Design History of Computer Vapourware" by Paul Atkinson .

The Aduino book I ordered arrived today. I did not realise that the Mega 2560 board I ordered uses an Atmel clone, I hope this will not prove to be a problem.

I have "published", with Mr Dunbar's permission, his 380 page A4 book on QL assembler. The proof is being sent to me at the moment. I tried a number of
methods to do this with Blurb being by far the most expensive. The method I have used (upfront setup charge and then very low cost printing on-demand)
has a snag. Buyers have to log on to the publishers using my account and then place an order for a single copy.

The advantage is the very low cost of a one-off copy:- <£10.00

Once I have approved the proof copy I will post the logon details.
The setup charge includes the delivery of the proof copy and an approved final copy so I will have one book to give away to anyone who wants it.

ql_freak wrote:When examining your new book, I have found following:

Norman Dunbar, "QL Today’s QL Assembly Language Programming Series", Springer-Verlag GmbH,
Heidelberg, ISBN 978-1-4842-5790-6,

Ok, I'm confused. You mention that the title is my QL Today QL Assembly language, but the ISBN number is my Apress book Arduino Software Internals. I assume you have the correct title, and if so, that eBook doesn't have an ISBN and is not published by Springer-Verlag GmbH. (aka Apress.) Anyway, moving on...

ql_freak wrote: chapter 1.2.1, page 4:

"Data held in registers and in memory is held in High Order format.
This simply means that the numbers are stored in a similar manner to the way in which we would
expect them to be - the ‘rightmost’ end holds the most significant bit and the ‘leftmost’ the lowest -
just the way we write numbers down."

(Note: For me rightmost means towards larger memory addresses, e.g. decimal 18 = 1*10 + 1*8,
i.e. 1 is by factor 10 more significant than 8, so clearly 1 [leftmost] is more significant than 8
[rightmost]).

Isn't that "Little Endian" what you are describing? I think 68k uses Big Endian, meaning the end
of the number, i. e. lowest digit (0-9) is towards the end (Big) of RAM.

In a word, that's an absolute bug! Well spotted. I wrote than way back in th 1990's and nobody noticed when it was published in QL Today and until now, it has remained a bug. I suspect this means that I, along with many other peoplr, have difficulty telling left from right!

I've corrected the text and uploaded a new latest version to https://github.com/NormanDunbar/QLAssem ... ses/latest.

ql_freak wrote:Hab ich was übersehen??? (Rough translation: Did I have missed something obviously)

No, it was me who missed the obvious! Thanks for the update.


Cheers,
Norm.

Tinyfpga wrote:The Aduino book I ordered arrived today. I did not realise that the Mega 2560 board I ordered uses an Atmel clone, I hope this will not prove to be a problem.

The board might be a clone, but usually (!) the clones use genuine AVR parts. I have a Chinese Uno V3 clone and a Mega 2560 clone, both have actual AVR microcontrollers.

Tinyfpga wrote:I have "published", with Mr Dunbar's permission, his 380 page A4 book on QL assembler. The proof is being sent to me at the moment.

In which case, you better get the latest version from https://github.com/NormanDunbar/QLAssem ... ses/latest (dated June 2020) as there is a bug in section 1.2.1 where I get left and right mixed up and describe littel endian format rather than big endian.

Tinyfpga wrote:The advantage is the very low cost of a one-off copy:- <£10.00

Sounds reasonable. Hope it sells well!


Cheers,
Norm.