Hey guys, I just bought a TI-84+SE from ebay and I would really like to learn z80 assembly.

I currently know of the 28 day tutorial thing but do you guys have any tips to get me started?

I think I can handle assembly since it wont be my first language and I think I'm a quick learner.

Also quick question.  Isn't assembly an interpreted language, so do you need to modify the text file before sending it to the calculator?  What I'm trying to say is that there is no compiler or something like that right?

CoBB's tutorial is pretty good: http://sgate.emt.bme.hu/patai/publications/z80guide/

Other than that, here's what i wrote at Cemetech:
Some things that can be helpful to understand to be able to start writing fun games quickly:
-indirection
-what buffers are and why/how to use them
-direct input
-tilemapping
-how the LCD is mapped: 1 byte = 8 pixels. This complicates drawing individual pixels a bit but means your sprites will be much smaller in size.
-bit shifting commands, absolutely necessary once you want to start making games that scroll smoothly and also very useful for optimizing
-storing and accessing data in tables

Assembly uses an assembler, i use spasm. Essentially you just run the source file through spasm and it outputs a .8xp. The assembly mnemonics correspond directly with the z80s commands, the assembler just converts the mnemonics into assembly opcodes (hex) as well as making a lot of other things easier for you, for example calculating addresses so you don't need to count how many bytes there are to jump to the right address and lots more.

If you have any questions, please ask! I don't think it's as difficult as people think (it was my first language, after English) it just takes a little while to get used to thinking differently.

Alright.  I was told by a couple people to use the DoorsCS sdk as my assembler.  Can someone help me out with that?

What do I need to run it?  I noticed that inside the tasm folder there was a .py file.  Does that mean that I need to install python to run this?  If I do which version is recommended?

(it was my first language, after English)

I thought it was the other way around??

Anyway I think both ASM and BASIC are incredibly hard if you get very used to the opposite and are the kind of person to have serious troubles adapting to changes that drastic. (Like any other change for that matter). Another problem was Asm in 28 days, because when it was written it didn't take into account that there are people who can only learn languages with examples of programs that actually do stuff and animated screenshots of the programs in action. The TI-BASIC section of the 83+ manual had a similar problem, but not as bad. This is why some people prefered ASMGuru approach, but sadly it's TI-82 STATS/83-only. Thankfully, Hot_Dog's ASM guide for the absolute beginner fixed that gap, though, along with Axe which acts as a bridge between BASIC and ASM sort-of.

Hot_Dog's tutorials was what finally nailed in certain concepts for me, like registers and flags. I know enough of the basics to understand assembly, at least.

Well I didn't say no programming BASIC at all, but rather that if you program it for several months intensively and get too used to it, then you might have problems if you are the kind of person to have troubles getting rid of certain habits.

It depends of your preferences. Spasm used to be much more popular until Doors CS7 SDK (which uses Brass) arrived. Kerm have really tried hard to convince people to go with the latter so today more people use that one. You might want to wait until someone with more experience tells the pros *and* cons of each, though, to make your choice.

Some people still use TASM, though, since that's all we had from 1999 to 2006 (back when ASM was at its peak), but it's very rudimentary, buggy and it doesn't run on 64-bit OSes.

Here: http://benryves.com/products/brass