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)

Note

SjASMPlus does not recognise instructions that operate on the high or low half of the IX and IY registers in the default form used by SkoolKit (e.g. LD A,IXl). A workaround is to write the ASM file in lower case using the --lower option of skool2asm.py.

Note

z80asm does not recognise binary constants in the form supported by SkoolKit (e.g. %10101010). If your skool file contains any such constants, the % characters will have to be replaced by @ (e.g. @10101010) after conversion to ASM format.

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 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 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 bin2tap.py utility, included with SkoolKit:

$ bin2tap.py game.bin

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