Sim8 Loader

When you press the "Load" button on the front panel, the Sim8 "Loader" starts up. A load file is a series of lines each of which specifies a single (byte) value to be loaded into a specific Sim8 memory location.

First comes the location, then a ":", and then the value. For example:

000:100
001:200
002:300

Would load the value 100 into memory location zero, 200 into location 1, and 300 into location 2.

A line that starts with a "!" is a command to the loader. These commands can be used to control the "radix" of the load file (that is, whether the location and value fields are specified in Hex, Decimal, or Binary.)

For example:

!locdec - indicates that the locations are specified in decimal
!valhex - indicates that the values are in hex
!bin - says that both location and value fields are in binary

Most of the example programs have their locations in decimal and their values in binary. This is because the instructions are easier to read in binary.

Lines that start with a "#" are comments, and are ignored by the loader.

Example:

# This program counts from 1 to 10
!locdec
!valbin
#       lda     0
000:00011100
001:00000000
#loop   add     1
002:00111100
003:00000001
#       out
004:11110001
#       cmp     10
005:10101100
006:00001010
#       jlt     loop
007:00001101
008:00000010
#       halt
009:11111111