2.3 Raw Object Code.

Sometimes you may need to assemble a MIXAL program into a raw sequence of bytes, without composing a proper load deck. In particular, this becomes necessary if you wish to develop your own loading routine. The ‘--raw-output’ (‘-r’) allows you to do that. When called with this option, mixal outputs assembled code as is, without converting it to object card format and without prefixing it with loader routine. Currently this option assumes that the produced code will be read using device 16 (card reader), so the output byte stream is formatted in blocks of 16 words (80 bytes) delimited by newlines.

A particularly interesting implementation of this feature would be to produce a loader code for another type of input device, e.g. to load programs from magnetic tapes or disks. This, however, requires some further work on mixsim and will be implemented in future versions of the package.