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To me, Brass seemed much more complicated. Spasm is super fast, has powerful macro support, and can compile about anything easily (except maybe nostub TI-83 programs). Brass has lots of features and seems to be good for organizing your code. Use whichever one you like, i chose Spasm because it's faster and more lightweight, plus your code can be compiled on Linux/Windows/Mac. If you use certain features of Brass you might be limited to Windows, unless you want to reformat the file to be "spasm-compatible". Actually, my claim that Spasm is faster is based off of when i used Brass several years ago, so that might not be correct anymore. I don't know if Brass has seen much development since then but it's still a very powerful assembler (i think it can even rle compress your data for you). I just know that Spasm can compile a 40kb (final on-calc size) project importing lots of .bmps in the blink of an eye, which you'd realize how amazing that is if you'd ever used TASM before And i don't think anyone still uses TASM anymore, it's a pain just to get it to run and the other alternatives (namely, Brass and Spasm) are much more convenient and feature-rich.As to which one to use? You pick, it'll probably be the first one you get working. DJ_O says most people use Brass nowadays, and maybe that's true, but apart from Kerm and probably Benryves, i don't really know of anyone else. Maybe it's because a lot of the assembly programmers i speak to don't use Windows and have no other choice or maybe because the format feels closer to what we were used to with TASM or maybe just 'cuz it's so straightforward, i dunno. If you're going to start a huge project you might like some features of one over the other that let you organize your code more easily, but really it's not going to make that much of a difference: the assembled output will be exactly the same using both assemblers
ASM in 28 days is a nice starting point, you don't have to know anything in ASM before learning with it.Also quick answer : assembly is a compiled language (assembled in fact), so you have to compile your *.z80 files into *.8xp files before sending them to your calc (everything's explained in ASM in 28 days) . An alternative is to use the on-calc assembler Mimas to edit and assemble your programs directly on-calc.
Mimas isn't as featureful, though, and has the same problems with program corruption Axe does. Not their fault, but be careful when you only have source files on one volatile device.
DCS7 lets you do it too, just not from the homescreen.