Version 1.25 now available:

Quote:

v1.25 2011-Oct-31 Fixed a bug with BKPT handling in IT blocks in ARM mode

In fasm/examples/elfexe/dynamic there are files like elf.inc and import32.inc, which are very helpful in importing functions from dynamic libraries in an i386 Linux system.

I would like to do the same thing for ARM Linux, but see no equivalents for these files or the macros they contain. Just copying them over looks like it won't work because of the differences between i386 and ELF dynamic imports.

Suggestions on how to do this? (I'm not an ELF expert and I don't to be.)

revolution wrote:

Alphonso wrote: What's happening with W8 and ARM? I wonder if it will include a translation layer to run x86 programs? I'm guessing that keeping compatibility with the bajillion existing x86 applications will be quite an important criterion?

Well it seems not. If you want to run applications on an ARM based Windows8 system them they have to be ported.

http://betanews.com/2011/09/19/will-windows-8-have-an-arm-app-gap/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/15/sinofsky_windows8_arm_support_x86_apps/

Which is all well and good if your favourite app is still supported by the developer, but for all those older "legacy" apps you'll be out of luck.

My guess is that someone will write a decent emulator/VM and allow x86 app to run on ARM systems. But it would be slow (of course) and perhaps not fully accurate in its emulation.

So for assembly programmers like ourselves we will need to maintain two source files, one for x86 and one for ARM. I've already been doing this for the last six years and it not as big of a hassle as it might first appear to be.

Some more information about the upcoming 64-bit ISA:

https://silver.arm.com/download/download.tm?pv=1199137

I've also attached it here.

Version 1.26 now available:

Quote:

v1.26 2012-Feb-24 Added support for ARM/THUMB mode v7VE instructions Added support for ARM/THUMB mode VFPv4 instructions Added support for ARM/THUMB mode SIMDv2 instructions Added alternate two operand forms for absolute difference Removed alternate two operand forms for multiply-accumulate

Very Nice. Thank you for all the work you've put into this!

First of all thank you for the great work.

I'm using this version as DLL compiler, recently the FASM have updated to 1.70.02 and when I've tried to compile I got a error at line 322 of file 'armv7.inc'.

Previous versions of compiler don't give that error.
Could you help me?

I've got a new version already made for the v1.70 line. Assuming no big problems with testing then I will upload it in a few days.

For the meantime you will have to use the older fasm version. There really isn't that much of a change. Only the 64-bit arithmetic differences.

Thanks so much revolution for all of this, I have updated my homebrew website gbadev's front page, as this is the best ARM assembler, and a great tool for coding the gba =D

I have a rather large gba project, converting a famous p.c game to the gba...
This project is very video & picture intensive, and I have had to code all my own picture/video compression/decompression to be able to fit all the data into the maximum rom cart space (32Mb).

I hit a bug in my fav ARM assembler, so I went hunting for a new one, and yours was the best one I could find...
Not only did your assembler fix the bug, compiling my game code correctly, but it also made my video decompression code perform at least 2% faster! Thanks so much, you are ace =D

I am also getting a Raspberry Pi really soon, I will keep you updated with what I do on that using your amazing assembler.

@krom, Great site, i remember using your site when i was into GBA programing.

@Dex4u Cheers for the great comment. I looked up your DexOS work... very interesting stuff. I have always wanted to code a bare metal OS myself, especially for an ARM based device =D

With your Arm GBA asm knowledge, you will find it very much like programming on the gba, as gba is as good as bare metal programming.
Are thinking about the possibility of a gba bare metal emulator on the Arm, as i think it would not be too hard.

Yep it should not be too hard, I am helping byuu implement gba emulation into the bsnes emulator at the mo =D
I would love todo a high level gba emu, translating all the gfx io calls to opengles etc, and using the main cpu to step thru the code...
I just have to wait for my Raspberry Pi, to see how far I can get using the gpu in ARM assembly...
Also I will have to code my own usb interface if I want to use a joystick!

*EDIT

Just saw your efforts on the Raspberry Pi thread, great work =D

krom wrote:

Yep it should not be too hard, I am helping byuu implement gba emulation into the bsnes emulator at the mo =D I would love todo a high level gba emu, translating all the gfx io calls to opengles etc, and using the main cpu to step thru the code... I just have to wait for my Raspberry Pi, to see how far I can get using the gpu in ARM assembly... Also I will have to code my own usb interface if I want to use a joystick! *EDIT Just saw your efforts on the Raspberry Pi thread, great work =D

Thanks, i am work on interfacing one of those cheap bluetooth serial module (from ebay) to the R-PI for keyboard, could just as well be use with a bluetooth joystick!.

Version 1.27 now available:

Quote:

v1.27 2012-Jun-09 Updated for compatibility with fasm v1.70.02, 65-bit values

This site might be useful to those of you that are still not sure what ARM is or how it works:

http://www.davespace.co.uk/arm/introduction-to-arm/index.html

@krom, or any one else that may have a answer, do you know of any jpeg decode code written in asm arm, that i can port to my ARM projects ?.
I am sure there was some for GBA.

@Dex4u I remember asm arm jpeg decoding in the GBA GfxLib v1.0318 by Jeff Frohwein http://www.devrs.com/gba/asmcode.php, there was a port to FASMARM by ghoshi here: http://board.flatassembler.net/topic.php?t=11721
Check out the subs\jpeg5.asm file inside fasmarm_gba_gfxlib.tar.gz
I hope this helps =D

krom wrote:

@Dex4u I remember asm arm jpeg decoding in the GBA GfxLib v1.0318 by Jeff Frohwein http://www.devrs.com/gba/asmcode.php, there was a port to FASMARM by ghoshi here: http://board.flatassembler.net/topic.php?t=11721 Check out the subs\jpeg5.asm file inside fasmarm_gba_gfxlib.tar.gz I hope this helps =D

Thanks krom, thats just what i was looking for.

Code:

format ELF dwarf executable code16 ;error section 'test' executable readable writeable at 0x14B1172C align 1 ;no error ;section 'test' executable readable writeable at 0x1000 align 1 ldr r3, [labelname] bx  r3 ;align 4 labelname dw 1

flat assembler for ARM version 1.70.02 (1306211 kilobytes memory)
b.asm [12]:
ldr r3, [labelname]
error: value out of range.