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Welcome to the Cat Machine wiki!

Cat Machine is a project that defines a 32bit CPU architecture, implements it in a VM, and implements an assembler for a custom assembly language. The inspiration behind this project is old consoles, the idea is that you can write a game or application using our ASM and then run it with a limited CPU clock rate to simulate poor hardware, this means that you can focus on optimisation knowing that it will mean something.

Installing the toolchain

The compiler, assembler, and launcher are currently installed as .NET global tools:

dotnet tool install --global CatMachine.Catnip.Compiler
dotnet tool install --global CatMachine.CatAssembler
dotnet tool install --global CatMachine.Launcher

After installing, use:

• nipcompile to compile Catnip sources
• catasm to assemble .cat sources
• catlaunch to run and debug ROMs

The VM

The VM allows configuring the CPU cycles per second, the available memory, and the available debugging tools. You pass the VM a ROM file, which is then loaded into memory and execution begins at address 0.

The Assembly

The assembler supports most modern assembler features like assemble-time constants and expressions, #include, macros, reserving and defining raw data, including raw data files, etc. Every assembled ROM is paired with a JSON debug-symbol file so debuggers and other tooling can show source lines and symbolic addresses.