Copyright (C) 2004-2009 by Anton Treuenfels

• General Description
• HXA Features
• New in v0.162
• Documentation
• Download
• Contact Information

The Hobby Cross Assembler (HXA) is a macro assembler capable of producing absolute output files in raw binary and Intel hexadecimal formats. HXA is straightforward to use for simple programs but also includes optional features intended to make it easier to handle more advanced projects. HXA is designed to be fairly portable between various processors, and is GPL-licensed freeware.

Variants of HXA know very much about real processors but very little about real computers. Details such as ROM routines, I/O locations and file formats must be explicitly provided in source code for each real computer HXA is required to work with. Fortunately in most cases this need only be done once and the information placed in one or more include files.

Currently Supported Processors

• T_XX Family : an imaginary series of test processors
• 6502 Family : 6502, 65C02, R65C02, W65C02S and W65C816S

Currently Supported Operating Systems

• MS-DOS 2.1 or higher

Labels

• numeric and string types
• global , local , variable and branch target sub-types

Expressions

• signed 32-bit algebraic expression evaluation including nested sets of parentheses
• operands include labels, numbers , program counter , characters , strings and regular expressions
• decimal, hexadecimal and binary numbers in both Motorola and Intel formats recognized
• characters and strings can include escape sequences
• operators include arithmetic, logical, string and regular expression pattern matching
• logical, numeric and string functions

Pseudo Opcodes

• BIT-- , RBIT-- , SBIT-- and UBIT-- numeric data storage pseudo ops allow selection of number of bytes, byte order and range-checking of values stored
• MACRO..ENDMACRO , REPEAT..ENDREPEAT and WHILE..ENDWHILE blocks with automatic local label scoping and no fixed limit on nesting depth
• IF..ELSEIF..ELSE..ENDIF conditional assembly blocks with no fixed limit on nesting depth
• INCLUDE multiple source files with no fixed limit on nesting depth
• customize HXA by redefining character set translation , status and error message texts and pseudo opcode names
• supports monolithic and segmented programming styles
• output raw binary and Intel hexadecimal absolute object files
• and many others...

All Versions

Extended

• the MACRO (in the preferred form), --SEGMENT , --TIMER and UNDEF pseudo ops now optionally accept string expressions which evaluate to global-style names as well as literal global-style names

HXA65 Version

no changes

A complete list of all changes in v0.162 can be found in the implementation documentation.

HXA is extensively documented, but not all documentation is on-line. Links to the documents not included here won't work :( However what is here might be enough to decide whether or not HXA is for you.

Available on-line

• Main Documentation - comprehensive user manual covering all the non-processor-specific portions of HXA
• General Test List - brief descriptions of hundreds of non-processer-specific tests of HXA. The tests themselves also double as numerous examples of what HXA does and does not like
• General Demo List - brief descriptions of all non-processor-specific demonstrations of HXA
• HXA_T - manual covering the imaginary "T_XX"-family test processor variant
• HXA65 - manual covering the 6502-family processor variant
• Source Description : overviews of version history, source language, overall design and modification to accept other assembly languages

ZIP File Contents

• All documention of HXA and its processor-specific variants, including test and demo programs
• All processor-specific stand-alone executable variants
• All source code

Available HXA Releases

• HXA V0.162 : February 2009
• HXA v0.161 : July 2008
• HXA v0.160 : February 2008

Notes:

• in general the most recently released version is the "best". Earlier versions are mainly useful only for study and peformance comparison purposes
• the releases are zipped by PKZIP 2.04g. Use the "-d" option of PKUNZIP to re-create the directory structure of the releases

Questions, comments, requests and bug reports

Snail-mail

• Anton Treuenfels
• 5248 Horizon Dr
• Fridley MN 55421

E-mail

hxa@earthlink.net