Saying “Hello” with Macrosoft

Following the model of Eric Shepherd’s “Some Assembly Required: Hello World” article on A2Central and my last post on the Mindcraft Assembler, I’d like to present the traditional “Hello World” program for 8-bit Apple II using Macrosoft.

Macrosoft allows the programmer to achieve machine language speed with a familiar BASIC-like syntax.  Technically, Macrosoft is a macro library for the Mindcraft Assembler.

First, follow the directions included with Macrosoft to create a working disk with The Assembler and Macrosoft.  Next, just like last week’s tutorial, slide the disk into your drive and run the BOOT.SYSTEM program.  Press “E” to enter the editor.  Press “enter” once to get a “!” insert mode prompt.  Type in the following program.  Case does matter, so watch the capitalization.  Also, make sure to begin each line with a space; otherwise, the assembler will interpret your entry as a label.  Notice that, except for a few extra “boilerplate” lines, the program appears similar to BASIC.

USE MACROSOFT.3.1
UEN
MUL
BEGIN $2000
PRINT "Hello world."
CLEANUP
END

Press the “Escape” key and enter “Hello” for the “Save Pathname.”  Press “A” to assemble to program.  If you get errors, return to the editor and correct them.

Finally, press “!” to exit back to BASIC.  Change to the directory containing the HELLO program and type “BRUN HELLO”.