GNUsim8085 is a graphical simulator, assembler and debugger for ASM code of Intel 8085 microprocessors. It is available for Linux and also for Windows. And although these Intel chips are not exactly current, they can be a good way to start to familiarize yourself with the architectures and assembly languages as they are much simpler than many current designs.
Of course, if you already have knowledge or want to start with something more current, you should know that they exist simulators Similar for, for example, ISA RISC-V. But in this article, I will focus on this free program that uses the "pre-x86" instruction set used by these CPUs ...
All the characteristics GNUSim8085 highlights are:
- It has a simple code editor that is capable of highlighting the assembly code syntax for these 8085 chips.
- It also helps to enter assembly language instructions with the correct arguments (see keypad).
- It allows you to easily see the content of the CPU registers while executing the code that you have generated.
- You can also see the content of the flags.
- You will even be able to see the stack, the main memory and the addresses of the I / O system.
- Contains decimal-hexadecimal converter and vice versa.
- As I mentioned before, it also allows debugging.
- You can run the program in ASM in steps.
- With a simple click you can turn the assembler into a listing with opcode.
- And its GUI is translated into several languages ... From it you can control and view everything, without using the command line.
With it you can begin to learn how the equipment works from within, and practice your ASM. And if you don't have any ASM code manual for 8085 chips, there are a multitude of resources on the web to learn. For example in GitHub You will even find files with different code examples to start with ...