[dorkbotpdx-blabber] assembler on the arduino?

[Ben Bleything]

On Mon, Jan 28, 2008, Greg Borenstein wrote:
> You've got it exactly right. Maybe the prof is planning to use exactly  
> that C-based method yiyi pointed me, too. I guess I'll find out soon.  
> I was mostly just trying to get a head start on some of this stuff  
> since I'm going to be playing catch up not ever having taken a formal  
> computer science class before. I thought that at least I could be the  
> guy who knew how to actually run code!

If you're just looking for assembler principles, I'd look at a PIC
instead.  It looks like the class is going to cover how to do everything
you want to do on the AVR/Arduino, so I wouldn't stress yourself trying
to figure it out ahead of time.

The PIC is a (somewhat) similar uC to the AVR, is way cheap and
programmers and really simple and cheap.  In fact, you can just borrow
my programmer and I'll give you some PICs.  You'll be able to get the
feel of assembly and still be working on a uC.

Alternately, JVM assembly is pretty easy and interesting, and it's very
accessable.

These options will only give you the "feel" of assembler, and you'll
have to rely on the class to show you how it works on the target
platform.

Finally, you can use an AVR but you'll need a programmer... there are
some low-cost AVR programmers available, but an STK-500 will pay off in
the long term.

Ben