BillW wrote...

>On Monday, Mar 1, 2004, at 17:00 US/Pacific, Dave Dilatush wrote:
>
>> Correct me if I'm wrong, but I get a sense here that you may be
>> conflating use of the linker itself (i.e., working with
>> relocatable code) with massive use of macros
>
>No (but that too.)  Mostly, I'm considering explicit knowlege of which
>"registers" are available for use as variables, vs which are "special"
>to be relatively important to understanding the architecture(s).  At
>least for PICs.  Less so when they're in different address spaces.

Yeah that knowledge is important; but I just don't see where
using the linker makes any difference in how much you learn about
the architecture.

>And doesn't it hide both bank and page switching as well?

Uh... no, it doesn't.  You use BANKSEL and PAGESEL directives to
do it, and the linker inserts the appropriate BCF/BSF STATUS, RPx
instructions into the code for you; but frankly, to me at least,
that's an absolute, unqualified blessing: IMHO, banking and
paging are the two most annoying aspects of PICs- and the most
troublesome- by far.

Dave D.

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