Amiga Coders' Club Special (ACC) 


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   I bought ACC from Megadisc several months ago.  The listing on the
  catalogue disk said ACC was 'A COMPLETE DEVPAC-GENAM REPLACEMENT
  ASSEMBLER'.  This is basically true, but the listing doesn't mention that
  ACC is actually a front-end for A68k (v2.61), the public domain assembler
  by Charle Gibbs.  The linker used is BLink 6.7 from the Software
  Distillery.  There is a later version of A68k (2.71) on Fish disk 521, and
  Blink 6.9 on Amigan 14.

   After the initial disappointment of finding that the disk didn't have a
  new assembler, I decided to look through the rest of the disk for anything
  else of interest.


   ACC comes with a directory of includes which are slightly better than what
  can be generated from the FDs on the Extras disk, but they only cover the
  routines in the Amiga's shared libraries, not the various structures
  defined in Commodore's includes, and thus won't let you assemble much more
  than the example code on the disk.

   There is a directory called 'source' which contains source code for a
  number of examples.  Nearly all of them assemble easily with ACC as set up,
  but the demo of using amiga.lib is a problem, because although the docs say
  amiga.lib is in the LIBS: directory (strange place for a LINK library!), it
  isn't.  It doesn't like small.lib from Amigan 14, though it might work with
  one of the other small.libs available.

   The 'docs' directory contains the manuals for A68k, BLink and ACC.  There
  is also a pretty good tutorial on getting started with using ACC, but it
  makes no claims on teaching assembler itself.

   The last directory of importance is called 'Other' and contains Objector,
  which converts raw files into object files for linking things like graphics
  and music with programs, and its instructions.


   ACC itself does a fair job as a front-end for A68k.  It makes assembling
  source code into an executable fairly easy unless you need to link in
  another object module.  The real problem comes when you need to link with
  more than one link library or more than one object module.  As far as I can
  see, it's impossible.

   When ACC has finished assembling and/or linking, it gives you a chance to
  read BLink's output, and asks you to press the left mouse button to
  continue.  I sometimes like to do other things while keeping the message on
  the screen, (after all, what's multitasking for?) and this often requires
  the use of the mouse.  However, as soon as I use the left mouse button, I
  lose the message from BLink, so instead I have to use the LeftAlt-LeftAmiga
  combination, which can be annoying at times.  Moreover, ACC uses a
  continous loop to check for the button, which chews up processor time
  badly. It would be much better if ACC let Intuition do the job efficiently
  and just on ACC's window rather than the entire system, or, better still,
  use that thing called a 'keyboard'.


   In one of the doc files, the author, Mark Meany, asks owners to send in a
  registration form, and says that he will give updates to registered owners.
  He also offers to give them free copies of ACC's source-code (for Devpac),
  and a disk full of source code compilable with ACC.  Thinking that
  source-code could make my purchase of ACC worthwhile after all, I printed
  out the registration form, and sent the form, a couple of international
  reply coupons and two disks with a letter asking for ACC's source-code and
  the other disk.  Months later, long after I had thought it lost forever, it
  finally arrived home again, after a fruitless journey: the post office had
  ticked 'GONE AWAY'.

   Before my disks came back, I wrote to our Editor to ask if I could get the
  disks from Megadisc, but Tim told me to check out the Licenseware section,
  presumably for the ACC monthly club disks.  It's a pity the author named
  his program after the Amiga Coders' Club, because the club disks are almost
  completely unrelated to ACC the program, and don't have source code for ACC
  the program.  Also, I doubt that it is very easy to assemble the (often
  Devpac) source on the club disks with A68k, so the connection between ACC
  the program and ACC the club is a very thin one.

   Overall, I can't help but feel that ACC was a waste of money. It turned
  out to be less than a 'COMPLETE DEVPAC-GENAM REPLACEMENT', and I'm quite
  happy to use A68k from the CLI.  I don't use ACC any more, and a recent
  Amiga Format coverdisk was the real Devpac 2, for cheaper than ACC!

   I bought ACC in the hope of being able to assemble some of the source code
  on my collection of PD disks, but ACC gave me no help there (and neither
  does the coverdisk Devpac, since it has no Commodore includes).  What I
  should have done was spend $30.00 on the Amiga Developer's Kit version 2.0,
  and I would have all of the Commodore includes, both for assemblers like
  A68k and for my collection of public domain C compilers, and the AutoDocs,
  which are a great help if you have no other Amiga programming reference
  material.  Not all of the utilities in the 2.0 kit work under 1.3, but most
  do, and the AutoDocs always tell you if a function has bugs, or doesn't
  exist, under 1.3.

   Basically, ACC did not turn out to be what I was after.  ACC turned out to
  be not so much an assembler as an editor.  If Mark Meany hadn't 'GONE
  AWAY', and had registered me for updates, and had given me the source-code
  for ACC and examples for free, as stated in the documentation, I would
  probably feel like I had my money's worth.  However since I didn't get
  that, ACC seems less than worthwhile.  Such is life.


   ACC is $15.00, and postage is $3.00. (Or was once!)


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