Beautiful stuff, thanks a lot for this. Laser Genius caused a hype back in the 80's in ZX Spectrum articles in computer magazines. But HiSoft Devpac was more optimized for ZX 48K and strictly ram-based work. Yes, many people had to handle asm coding without floppy drive. C64 version of Laser Genius wasn't hyped that much, but then again - I think Andrew Braybrook used LG for his 8-bit games development, explained in the Diary of a game articles. But most of all, LG was an important part of the notable Ocean / Oasis LASER Basic "suite" of coding tools, and White Lightning based on Forth. LG's is probably related to Machine Lightning, part of the previous Oasis packages. Coming with 10K of game creation library, compatible to mentioned BASIC/FORTH environments. But crucial feature was - these programs were friendly for tape users, even including TURBO load/save routines, and tape based L-BASIC compiler as well! I still have to sit down and properly dive into all of these.
Thanks for the info! The tape feature really struck out to me. I would love to track down T64 images of the 2 tapes mentioned in the manual and see what it was like to build software on just a C64 and a single tape drive. The fact that you can get this kind of powerful development environment up and running with just a tape drive to me is really interesting. Can you recommend any links about the history of LG-64 or even Laser Genius in general? I would love to read more about the history of the product; especially the authors of it. I've only been playing around with it for about 6-9 months off and on, and just absolutely love it; it's in my top 3 assemblers for the C64 (Not in any order: Turbo Macro Pro, Merlin-64 and Laser Genius). In my circle of friends, we all had a c64 and a single drive; and for magazines it was Compute!s Gazzette and Run. If you could share some info of where I can Andrew's work; I would greatly appreciate it. It sounds like a great read.
Back in the days I loved using Profi ASM 64, abridged version, occupying just 4K of RAM, and utilizing standard C64 editor. Mixing BASIC lines and assembly sections, and commentaries - as much as I liked. I also kept Monitor 49152, also 4K, for all system manipulation tasks. Finally, there was always trusty Turbo 250, small turbo tape utility, stashed into tape buffer ram - waiting for
This video is great! Love your style and pace. Also thank you for the repo, links to the disks, and so on. Subbed! This assembler seems pretty sweet. Question - do the @ symbol command things that you're doing like @$ load as part of the GENASM program? Or do you have some kind of extension/cart? Thanks again :)
They @ commands are part of the assembler. They are very similar to your typical JiffyDOS / Epyx Fast Load, Commodore DOS WEDGE @ commands. Thanks! I'm glad you like the content, much appreciated.
Good tutorial. Just one note: it isn’t necessary to push your Y register since you are resetting it to 0 anyway. It wastes a few cycles, but at least it isn’t in an area where it would be noticed.
Great question, love both of these assemblers for different reasons. In context: I enjoy programming on the C64 with what I consider a typical setup of the 1980s, which for me was a C64, 2 drives, maybe an REU or GeoRAM (I know Iknow, GeoRAM is 1990s... but it's so fun to program) TMP: Full Screen Editor, Better Pseudo Opts (.block is awesome for isolating labels) and I like the way it handles .importing include files better. With an REU, the memory limitations disappear. But without an REU, the memory constraints are tight and it does not have a built-in monitor. Laser Genius: Built in monitor, and trace feature are great. I love the ability to relocate the assembler and source code memory to the needs of the current project. Being able to load assets and relocate them in memory while working on code is really useful. But it's editor is not great; and you can't do full line comments. Having just 16 characters for comments in 40 columns is really tight. (I know you can go to 56 chars if your printing it out, but they look terrible when your programming on the 40 columns screen) I'll definitely be using TMP in some upcoming videos though. I want to make sure I retain my skills both assemblers. Thanks for the question!
@@MyDeveloperThoughts Laser Genius is a brilliant package IMO. Have you tried the Monitor / Analyser? It is an extremely powerful debugger with an integrated FORTH environment (LOAD"MON",8). However there are 2 things that I don't like about it, first - it is memory resident, so you're restricted in what areas of memory you can use. Second - only 40 columns. If only this package was available on the C128 in 80 column mode! I used this loads back in the day and still use it often today. It's my go to machine code / assembly package. Nice to see you also like it.
@@johnwatson4801 When I learned the basics of the Laser Genius Assembler a few months ago, I took a detour to learn Forth (I chose the VIC-20 version of Forth because it was really interesting to me) because of the Analyzer feature in Laser. I'm looking forward to learning how to use the Analyzer hopefully in the not too far distant future.
Never heard of this "Laser Genius" back in the day. Why the hell wouldn't you use Turbo Assembler 6.0 or the Turbo Macro Pro (modern version of the Turbo Assembler), which is still the de facto standard?????
It was a pleasure to watch, keep it coming!
A stellar tutorial! Thank you!
You are very knowledgeable
Amazing delivery! Thanks.
Amazing video. Thank you so much for making it.
Done the tutorial! Works!
Beautiful stuff, thanks a lot for this.
Laser Genius caused a hype back in the 80's in ZX Spectrum articles in computer magazines. But HiSoft Devpac was more optimized for ZX 48K and strictly ram-based work. Yes, many people had to handle asm coding without floppy drive.
C64 version of Laser Genius wasn't hyped that much, but then again - I think Andrew Braybrook used LG for his 8-bit games development, explained in the Diary of a game articles.
But most of all, LG was an important part of the notable Ocean / Oasis LASER Basic "suite" of coding tools, and White Lightning based on Forth. LG's is probably related to Machine Lightning, part of the previous Oasis packages. Coming with 10K of game creation library, compatible to mentioned BASIC/FORTH environments.
But crucial feature was - these programs were friendly for tape users, even including TURBO load/save routines, and tape based L-BASIC compiler as well! I still have to sit down and properly dive into all of these.
Thanks for the info!
The tape feature really struck out to me. I would love to track down T64 images of the 2 tapes mentioned in the manual and see what it was like to build software on just a C64 and a single tape drive. The fact that you can get this kind of powerful development environment up and running with just a tape drive to me is really interesting.
Can you recommend any links about the history of LG-64 or even Laser Genius in general? I would love to read more about the history of the product; especially the authors of it. I've only been playing around with it for about 6-9 months off and on, and just absolutely love it; it's in my top 3 assemblers for the C64 (Not in any order: Turbo Macro Pro, Merlin-64 and Laser Genius).
In my circle of friends, we all had a c64 and a single drive; and for magazines it was Compute!s Gazzette and Run. If you could share some info of where I can Andrew's work; I would greatly appreciate it. It sounds like a great read.
@@MyDeveloperThoughts , file&docs repository of ZX vesion of Laser Genius.
Back in the days I loved using Profi ASM 64, abridged version, occupying just 4K of RAM, and utilizing standard C64 editor. Mixing BASIC lines and assembly sections, and commentaries - as much as I liked. I also kept Monitor 49152, also 4K, for all system manipulation tasks.
Finally, there was always trusty Turbo 250, small turbo tape utility, stashed into tape buffer ram - waiting for
The Ferrari pic is mislabeled. The picture is of a Lamborghini Countach. Other than that, great tutorial!
Just want to say, I'm loving all the content on this channel! particularly your C128 videos 👍 Fantastic stuff! Subscribed 👍
Thanks!!
This video is great! Love your style and pace. Also thank you for the repo, links to the disks, and so on. Subbed! This assembler seems pretty sweet. Question - do the @ symbol command things that you're doing like @$ load as part of the GENASM program? Or do you have some kind of extension/cart? Thanks again :)
They @ commands are part of the assembler.
They are very similar to your typical JiffyDOS / Epyx Fast Load, Commodore DOS WEDGE @ commands.
Thanks! I'm glad you like the content, much appreciated.
Great video, thanks!
Great video! Thank you.
Good tutorial. Just one note: it isn’t necessary to push your Y register since you are resetting it to 0 anyway. It wastes a few cycles, but at least it isn’t in an area where it would be noticed.
Good catch! Thanks!
holy crap! not what I expected. who would like to buy my koala pad?
👍👍👍👍👍👍🕹🕹🕹🕹🕹🕹
Aha! So you do prefer LaserGenius over Turbo Macro Pro?
Great question, love both of these assemblers for different reasons.
In context: I enjoy programming on the C64 with what I consider a typical setup of the 1980s, which for me was a C64, 2 drives, maybe an REU or GeoRAM (I know Iknow, GeoRAM is 1990s... but it's so fun to program)
TMP: Full Screen Editor, Better Pseudo Opts (.block is awesome for isolating labels) and I like the way it handles .importing include files better.
With an REU, the memory limitations disappear. But without an REU, the memory constraints are tight and it does not have a built-in monitor.
Laser Genius: Built in monitor, and trace feature are great. I love the ability to relocate the assembler and source code memory to the needs of the current project. Being able to load assets and relocate them in memory while working on code is really useful.
But it's editor is not great; and you can't do full line comments. Having just 16 characters for comments in 40 columns is really tight. (I know you can go to 56 chars if your printing it out, but they look terrible when your programming on the 40 columns screen)
I'll definitely be using TMP in some upcoming videos though. I want to make sure I retain my skills both assemblers.
Thanks for the question!
@@MyDeveloperThoughts Laser Genius is a brilliant package IMO. Have you tried the Monitor / Analyser? It is an extremely powerful debugger with an integrated FORTH environment (LOAD"MON",8). However there are 2 things that I don't like about it, first - it is memory resident, so you're restricted in what areas of memory you can use. Second - only 40 columns. If only this package was available on the C128 in 80 column mode!
I used this loads back in the day and still use it often today. It's my go to machine code / assembly package. Nice to see you also like it.
@@johnwatson4801 When I learned the basics of the Laser Genius Assembler a few months ago, I took a detour to learn Forth (I chose the VIC-20 version of Forth because it was really interesting to me) because of the Analyzer feature in Laser. I'm looking forward to learning how to use the Analyzer hopefully in the not too far distant future.
Are there docs for Laser Genius you have somewhere?
There is a PDF of scanned manual: commodore.software/downloads/download/211-application-manuals/13910-laser-genius-assembler-manual
I just added a link to them in the Video Description.
I also added the link and the PDF for the manual to the GitHub repo.
Thanks! I added that link to this video's description.
Never heard of this "Laser Genius" back in the day. Why the hell wouldn't you use Turbo Assembler 6.0 or the Turbo Macro Pro (modern version of the Turbo Assembler), which is still the de facto standard?????
There's already a series using Turbo Macro Pro on the channel. Also Merlin; also MADS; also FAST; etc 😁