RPi Pico assembler

@darup

Posted by: @darup

@frogandtoad 

On the IDE. I am not a fan of this type of tool. It masks a lot of what is done by the compiler, linker and assembler. I like to know what is happening. It has always made debugging easier for me since I have a better idea of who is doing what to whom. Granted an IDE is faster in many cases. For now I will avoid the IDE until I better understand how it is all put together as I visit assembler programming.

No worries, I did see that you mentioned it in your OP... it was more for the others here that I know have previous assembly experience and interests.

Cheers

A setback!  The 4-Channel relay arrived this morning, as expected (30 Apr).  It was shipped in a plastic bag.  The relays and the "pin'd" Pico were in expected ESD packaging.  Whomever was assigned to package for shipping did the expected-Unexpected:  They put the relay and the Pico in a plastic shipping bag.  It took about 12 days to get from FL to here.  In the meantime, since the pins on the relay board and the pins on the "pin'd" Pico were unprotected, in rigid-packaging, the pins penetrated the ESD packaging and the plastic shipping bag.  So, even in ESD packaging, the Pico was probably compromised because its pins were exposed during its lengthy journey.  Additionally, the pins, on both pieces, were bentSeriously in various directions suggesting straightening would, at best, result in possibly broken pins or pins that could not be sufficiently straightened.

The good news?  Not that I really wanted; nor did I require the time; I now have considerably more days to futz with the Pico SDK to include the compiler, linker, and the GNU assembler. 

My Delay:  The expected arrival date for the replacement relayBoard and the RPiPico is c.a. May 26.

@darup What are the relays for, and mechanical old school, or SSR or MOSFET

Two of the channels are tentatively to be used, along with a temperature sensor, to switch between summer cooling and winter heating - maybe EMERGENCY-heat and HOLD-temperature based on time-of-day which means by implication the necessity of an RTC or internet access and NTP -- maybe both?

This is just to give me a reason to become acquainted with the Pico SDK and assembler.  There are both COTS and Hobby choices that already exist.  They will not give me the experience I need to become familiar with the SDK.

I will also have to deal with a 1-wire sensor for temperature in what I put together as well as the relay on/off when the temperature arrives at determined points of heat or cool.

The other two relays:  one will operate a ceiling fan where clockwise and counterclockwise rotation choice based on seasonal temperatore to stir the air in the proper direction.  Speed of rotation and the light fixture I think will be in the mix, too.

And ... !

It will be a step by step project.  I have no schematic for the relay board.  I will have to figure that out.  The Pico and the SDK have tons of documentation that I am still sorting through.  I have a few scrawled diagrams of what I think I want (spouse is over seeing the impact on appearance and placement).

This is a rather general summary of my intent.  It is likely the project will change and evolve as I get more into what I can do; capable of doing; and the effects of what I have not forseen.

I like things, relays, that I can see work that give me an appreciation for what I have done. I can use what I learned to improve my next project!  I also will have a better grasp of, "How to ask the question about the information I seek for something unknown to me."

Have I given you a reply that answers what you asked?

@darup Yep, just curious, sounds interesting.

@zander 

Okay, "in conversation, use non-BLUE-Rectangle" adding to conversation use BLUE-Rectangle.

I am certain I am gonna Screw this up most terribly! (?)

@darup AH, I just learned something. Yes that meaning is technically right, although the Leave a Reply can only apply to the original post as all others will have a reply to a specific post non blue button.

@zander 

I think assembler and even machine language is far more simpler than this replyThing

@darup AGREED!

@darup What does the machine language and assembler most resemble?

@zander 

My bias leans me in the direction of these two computer languages not for resembling anything tangible; rather how I got into this programming profession.

Directly, I could just say:

Machine language is the talk as close to the "iron" as can be gotten: a mere dictionary of just two elements consisting of a ZERO and a ONE whose syntax is a highly organized arrangement of groups of these two elements -- no more; no less!

Assembly language is just an alias for the element-groups used to construct a human legible book-of-information and instructions to direct and control the activities of hardware components connected to devices that should do useful things based on the story in the book-of-information.  The book-of-information has as its alias the word:  "programming!"

inDirectly:

I'd just left Turkey to resume my life in the lower-48 with something like 300+ college creditHours that needed to be used. I found a place with a computerLab where I browsed over the shoulders of folks rythmically pressing Model 33 & KSR teletype keys.  I was totally fascinated by the "stunt" box.  I was asked in due time to give help to those writing compilers.  I had no clue about Recursive Descent Compilers and a lot of other strange terms; what needed to be done made sense and I could give them assistance.  Jumping forward, somewhat, in time, I landed a job in programming - FORTRAN; though I was not limited to doing just that. I had an opportunity to be asked when anything went wrong, "What was I doing!" by the head systems tech in the computer department mostly because I did some things that I was told could not be done - that is another story.  Due to my ability to get into the mind of a computer and my annoying skills to get into trouble landed me in a planning position where there were AT&T 3b20 computers as well as PDP-8 and PDP-11 and bigger and bigger iron to include IBM and Multics from Honeywell plus some more.  My crowning moment was with the AT&T 3b20 and unix system 5 release 3 (or somewhere around there).

At this moment, with no knowledge of unix, a 3b20, or any of that I was given a login and a password.  My question one day was to ask how to remove all the stuff in my login that I did not want: unbeknown to me I had administrator privileges; I was given the command at root of rm -r *.* which at the press of the return/enter key I made my mark in a multi-million dollar business production machine that began my love of assembler and machine language!

So specificially what do assembler and machine language resemble:  a challenge to a 20-something year-old to keep a job that stuck through a career.

"Yes!", I did get the "dead" and totaly devoid-of-anything 3b20 up and running.  In the process I learned machine language, I became an expert assembly language programmer and about a year later I was sent to the Labs to learn the operating system where I was formerly excused and returned to my company because I kept interferring with an instructor who knew book learning but absolutely zero about the operating system and how to build it from scratch.

Posted by: @zander

What does the machine language and assembler most resemble?

So now your know it was my life for many years until I was ported into econometric modeling position and a few other gameChanging avocations that became vocations.

Probably not the answer you might have been expecting.  It is the only one I have.  Of course it could have been an entry line into an amusing joke, too?

BTW, you still have not shared how you know about "NOT!" "inserting an 18650 butt-end first!" Other than, of course, that you did it.

@darup I know about the 18650 because a couple days ago I did it wrong and kaboom.

Your early experience is very similar to mine with the exception that I was also trained on the microcode and hardware.