.. _supportedAssemblers:

Supported assemblers
====================

If you want to use SkoolKit to generate an ASM version of your disassembly, you
will need to use a supported assembler. At the time of writing, the assemblers
listed below are known to work with the ASM format generated by `skool2asm.py`:

* pasmo_ (v0.5.3)
* SjASMPlus_ (v1.07-rc7)
* z80asm, the assembler distributed with z88dk_ (v1.8)

.. _pasmo: http://pasmo.speccy.org/
.. _SjASMPlus: http://sjasmplus.sourceforge.net/
.. _z88dk: http://www.z88dk.org/

The following sections give examples of how to use each of these assemblers to
create binary (raw memory) files or tape files that can be used with an
emulator.

pasmo
-----
First, create an ASM version of the disassembly::

  $ skool2asm.py game.skool > game.asm

Then use `pasmo` to create a binary file thus::

  $ pasmo game.asm game.bin

To create a TAP file from `game.bin`, use the :ref:`bin2tap.py` utility,
included with SkoolKit::

  $ bin2tap.py game.bin

The resultant TAP file, `game.tap`, can then be loaded into an emulator.

SjASMPlus
---------
First, create an ASM version of the disassembly::

  $ skool2asm.py game.skool > game.asm

Then create a file called `game.sjasm` with the following contents::

  ; SjASMPlus source file for game.asm
    device zxspectrum48
    include game.asm
    savebin "game.bin",ORG,LENGTH

replacing ``ORG`` and ``LENGTH`` with the origin address and the length of the
assembled program. Now run `sjasmplus` on this source file::

  $ sjasmplus game.sjasm

and a binary file called `game.bin` will be created.

To create a TAP file from `game.bin`, use the :ref:`bin2tap.py` utility,
included with SkoolKit::

  $ bin2tap.py game.bin

The resultant TAP file, `game.tap`, can then be loaded into an emulator.

z80asm (z88dk)
--------------
First, create an ASM version of the disassembly::

  $ skool2asm.py game.skool > game.asm

Then use `z80asm` to create a binary file thus::

  $ z80asm -rORG -b game.asm

replacing ``ORG`` with the origin address (in hexadecimal notation) of the
program.

To create a TAP file from `game.bin`, use the :ref:`bin2tap.py` utility,
included with SkoolKit::

  $ bin2tap.py game.bin

The resultant TAP file, `game.tap`, can then be loaded into an emulator.