Question #5

Question #5:

Research in the net the most recent assembler. Describe its history, nature and applications. Evaluate this assembler from its predecessor.

ANSWER:

1.) VIC-20

The VIC-20 debuted in June of 1980 at the Computer Electronics Show but its development started almost by accident two years earlier. Commodore engineered and manufactured the "Video Interface Chip 6506" or VIC1 for the video game market which was beginning to collapse. After not being able to sell the chip, Commodore developed the VIC-20 as an inexpensive home computer. Between early 1981, when the VIC actually hit store shelves, and the first few months of 1985, when the last VIC production line was shut down, it had sold more than 2.5 million units. It had an very impressive peak daily production of 9000 units and was the worlds first computer to sell more than 1 million units.There are reports that during its development it was called the MicroPET. and there is a lot of debate over the origins "20" portion of the VIC-20 name. The Commodore Executive responsible for the VIC's development, and the author of The Home Computers Wars, Michael Tomczyk, stated repeatedly that he choose the name simply because he thought it "sounded good". The assembler supported the usual symbolic addressing and the definition of character strings or hex strings. It also allowed address expressions which could be combined with addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, logical AND, logical OR, and exponentiation operators.

reference:
*http://www.commodore.ca/products/vic20/commodore_vic-20.htm