Looking back at Devpac 3 - Amiga Assembler, Linker & Debugger

In this video I take a look at "Devpac 3" by Hisoft. An Assember, Linker & Debugger for the Amiga computer. Used to make your own software for the Amiga using 68000 assembly language.
0:00 What is Devpac?
0:48 Unboxing?
3:40 The Manual
5:51 Loading the tutorial
7:30 The demo.s source
8:24 Following the Tutorial
9:47 Assemble!
10:52 Debugging
17:24 Success
17:58 A flick through the manual
19:36 Conclusion
Links:
• Installing Devpac 3 As... - Devpac 3 Hard Drive Install Video

[@MrJozza65]

As a professional software dev, I quite miss the days when you got a nice spiral bound lay-flat manual and could learn every aspect of a dev language. Although it's easier to get results nowadays with all the frameworks and libraries available, I did enjoy the early days of Amiga, IBM and PIC assembler and C/C++ programming.

[@DavePoo2]

Yeah, that manual is really well written and very well thought out, right down to the fact you can lay it flat (like I did in the video). It still amazes me how good it is for such old software. Visual Studio may have lots of language support and it does have a very good C++ compiler, but the day-to-day work in it sucks due to crashes and hangs and general sluggishness. They were simpler times back then, but at least the software was simpler to match.

[@ScottLahteine]

This brings back some memories. I programmed two full games in DevPac between 1988 and 1991 and it was a very pleasant experience. I only wish I still had the sources so I could fix all the things in those games that still bug me today.

[@DavePoo2]

Yeah, it is a really good program for its era. I wish we had more source code for these old games open sourced. I feel like some sources may have been lost (like yours? Was it Bill & Ted?). But I suspect much of it still exists, stored on floppy disks maybe, under a bed somewhere? It would be great to be able to go back and do AGA remasters of some of the real classics, without having to dissasemble the game.

[@ScottLahteine]

@@DavePoo2 Alas, the only source archive for “Dino Wars” and “Bill ‘n’ Ted” would be in the hands of Capstone (defunct) or OTWP (mostly deceased). The code part might not be too hard to recover, but getting something out that can compile and run would take months.

[@DavePoo2]

Bogus!

[@StefanHolmes]

Wish I’d kept my original box of this. Really enjoyed using it. The manual and pocket reference were excellent. Back then you were also able to go onto Motorola’s website and order every single reference book for every one of their CPUs, FPUs and MMUs and they would just send them to you. For free.

[@DavePoo2]

Seems like Motorola really were keen on you getting to grips with their CPUs to do that.

[@jezgomez]

This was great and transported me back to the days when I was struggling along trying (and mostly failing) to learn 68K. A big part of the thrill was trying to get something, anything, working :-D This also made me recall Jez San and his compiler, Argasm.

[@vbarr67]

Thanks, I use Devpack on the Atari ST and I want to start programming the Amiga (where I'm a total noob), this is actually a nice introduction!

[@DavePoo2]

For a more modern approach, check out the VS Code plugin from Bartman. You can code in C)C++ on modern computer with very good debugging and profiling tools.

[@ChrisM541]

Really interesting look at the excellent assembler. For myself, I was well into using Asm-One (another excellent and popular assembler) waay back in the day.

[@mart4videos]

Loved seeing this - thanks. I was 13 when I tried Devpac 2 from the Amiga Format cover disc and remember being utterly fascinated by it all 😃

[@ScoopexUs]

The error is actually that it moves the 4 characters 'dos.' as a longword into an address register instead of an address. The 4 characters are located at an even address, so this will not generate an address error and work on all Amigas. This non-address happens to be even, because the '.' character is at an even offset in the ASCII table. IDK why the manual mentions an odd address error, because the pointer supplied to OpenLibrary is just a pointer to a string, and that string can certainly start on an odd address on all Amigas. Replacing move.l with lea is the fix, as you show.

[@Turrican]

I wish I had been able to learn assembly back in the day

[@DavePoo2]

It's never too late. Although these days I'd probably just recommend learning C instead and then learn how to read assembly for debugging.

[@spencerdavies4666]

Loved Devpac 3, XDebug, HiSoft Basic, HiSoft C, etc, on my Atari TT...

[@DavePoo2]

Yeah, I forgot to mention in the vid that this software was available for more than just the Amiga.

[@fredsmith1970]

I think I had one of the earlier versions of devpac on my A500 - though never really used it. Back in the late 80's I always wanted to learn 68000 assembly, having learned z80 on the Spectrum and the CPC464, though never spent enough time on it (I may have been at the pub.)

[@DavePoo2]

You could have spent all your time learning 68000 machine code, and instead you wasted it by going to the pub and having fun.

[@ms-ex8em]

with this Devpac 2 or 3 can u program the Amiga (a big game or program) software etc? thanks..........

[@DavePoo2]

You can, and that is how it was done back in the day. Nowadays there are options for doing it on the PC, see the Amiga VSCode extension which would allow you to develop in C using modern tools and emulation.

[@mp-lv8bw]

I used this assembler because I can't afford a C compiler for the Amiga back in the day

[@DavePoo2]

Not sure how good the old C compilers were back in the day. With memory and CPU so tight, you wouldn't want a C compiler that would waste a single byte or CPU cycle. So maybe you made the right choice?

[@RasVoja]

Not a coder, but could look to it :)

[@DavePoo2]

There might be places to learn 68000 machine language online somewhere if you are interested in that kind of thing. It's not a processor that is made anymore, but you can still learn how software and hardware works by learning to program it.

[@RasVoja]

@@DavePoo2 Not interested, but updated CanDO and AMOS bight be my level

[@Rob_III]

I still have my copy too! i.imgur.com/taBIz8O.png

[@DavePoo2]

Nice work! Keep your disks safe in that wallet!