Assemblers

uBug12 provides the capability to work with not just one, but several assemblers.  This allows legacy code to be maintained, while still providing for the ability to develop software for the newest MCU devices from Freescale.  The assemblers available are: AS12, ASM12, and HSW12ASM.

AS12 was originally written by Karl Lunt, and then extended later by Tom Almy and Eric Engler.  It only runs under Windows, but is already included as part of the uBug12 package.  It has been used extensively over the past decade in writing HC12 assembly code.  However it does not handle the additional instructions that are part of the S12X series of processors.

ASM12 is part of the MiniIDE package available from MGTEK.  To get the executable, you can use the INSTALL ASM12 command to assist in downloading and installing MiniIDE.  uBug12 will then copy the executable so that it can call it directly.  There is a version for Linux, but it does not include online documentation.  Also, ASM12 does not handle the extended S12X instruction set.

HSW12ASM is written by Dirk Heisswolf, and is included as part of uBug12.  Since it is written in Perl, it will work on any platform that has a Perl interpreter installed.  For Windows systems, the INSTALL PERL command will help install the open source Strawberry Perl interpreter.  HSW12ASM does fully support the HCS12, the extended S12X instruction set, and the XGATE processor instructions.  It also includes the capability to handle macros, and has been modified by Dirk to work with the uBug12 environment.

Any of these assemblers can be invoked from the uBug12 command line by simply typing in the name of the assembler, followed by the full path to the source file, and any other options allowed by that assembler.  You can use the HELP ASSEMBLERS command to provide you with this information from uBug12.  However you can also use HELP with the name of the assembler to bring up that assembler's help information directly, as written by their authors.