Usage

Emulator

The program called astro8 serves multiple purposes.

Emulates machine code just like the real hardware
Compiles Armstrong into assembly
Assembles assembly into machine code and stores it into an .AEXE binary file for easy redistribution

To run your code or a program, type astro8 followed by the path of the file:

> astro8 ./main.asm

> astro8 ./main.armstrong

The type of file will be automatically determined as Armstrong, Assembly, or AstroEXE. You don’t need to specify which one it is, unless you are trying to only compile without running it.

You may also provide extra options like so:

Usage: astro8 [options] <path>

List of options:

*Option*	*Description*
`-h, --help`	Display this help menu
`--version`	Display the current version
`-c, --compile`	Only compile and assemble Armstrong code to .ASM. Will not start emulator.
`-a, --assemble`	Only assemble assembly code into AEXE. Will not start emulator.
`-r, --run`	Run an already assembled program in AstroEXE format (program.AEXE)
`-nk, --nokeyboard`	Disable the keyboard input
`-wb, --webcam`	Enable webcam (uses default, only works on Windows)
`-nm, --nomouse`	Disable the mouse input
`-v, --verbose`	Write extra data to console for better debugging
`-vv, --superverbose`	Write a lot of extra data to console for even better debugging
`-cm, --classicmode`	Run Emulator in classic mode, using slow but realistic microcode instead of high performance
`-f, --freq <value>`	Override the default CPU target frequency with your own. Default = 16 higher = faster {: .note .caps}High frequencies may be too hard to reach for some cpus
`--imagemode [frames]`	Don’t render anything, instead capture [frames] number of frames, which is 10 by default, and save to disk

Logisim

Along with the emulator, you can look at the actual circuit design for the system and even run your programs in it.

Currently a work in progress due to recent major upgrades

Compile/Assemble your program using Astro8-Emulator. It will save the machine code to a file called program_machine_code automatically. This file is located directly next to the Astro8-Emulator executable.
Open the file called cpu-circuit.circ in the newest version of Logisim Evolution
Locate the RAM area, and find the one called MEMORY
Right-click on it, and click Load Image...
In the file view that just appeared, locate your compiled program file directly next to the Astro8-Emulator executable, and click Open
Press play, and it should run.