i960 assembly

tangodownNZ · Apr 9, 2026

Does anybody know of an assembler for an i960kb cpu. I am trying to write instructions for Daytona USA.
I tried "GNU binutils supports the i960" using wsl on my pc. But I just get errors as it is no longer supported.
Any help would be great. Thanks

biggestsonicfan · Apr 11, 2026

So you have a few options here:

Easiest: Install CTOOLS 6.0 and set the "intel960/bin" directory to your environment "PATH" in Windows.
Difficult: Build binutils 2.16.1a using last supported 32-bit Cygwin and use the repo archive to install the necessary dependencies.

Be warned that assembling a Model2 game from a disassembly is going to take a lot of trial and error before you can get something bootable. You will need to clean up a lot of code and make sure you have correct MEMA/MEMB displacements.

tangodownNZ · Apr 11, 2026

Thank you @biggestsonicfan
I was going to install Windows 95 onto an old machine because I read that CTOOLS 6.0 will not run on a modern Windows 11 system. Or run it on a virtual machine, which I don't want to do. Can you please advise further, thank you.
I am using ida pro to look at the instructions and bytes. I search for the instruction I need and get the bytes. I just could not find cmpibg r4 , r5 but I found it now. But no doubt I will get stuck again. That is why I want to start looking at CTOOLS. Thanks again

Darksoft · Apr 11, 2026

GCC 2.95.3: Older versions of GCC supported the i960 architecture. Modern efforts to support the i960 SBC (Single Board Computer) use GCC 2.95.3 with binutils 2.21.1 in Docker environments.

Here is a link to CTOOLS documentation
https://intel-vintage-developer.eu5.org/DESIGN/I960/MANUALS/485544.HTM
https://datasheets.chipdb.org/Intel/80960/manuals/65123003.PDF

Darksoft · Apr 11, 2026

https://web.archive.org/web/2019072...developer.eu5.org/DESIGN/I960/SWSUP/INDEX.HTM

biggestsonicfan · Apr 26, 2026

tangodownNZ said:
Thank you @biggestsonicfan
I was going to install Windows 95 onto an old machine because I read that CTOOLS 6.0 will not run on a modern Windows 11 system. Or run it on a virtual machine, which I don't want to do. Can you please advise further, thank you.

I use CTOOLS 6.0 just fine on Windows 11! If you have any troubleshooting just ask away here!

Darksoft said:
GCC 2.95.3: Older versions of GCC supported the i960 architecture. Modern efforts to support the i960 SBC (Single Board Computer) use GCC 2.95.3 with binutils 2.21.1 in Docker environments.

Here is a link to CTOOLS documentation
https://intel-vintage-developer.eu5.org/DESIGN/I960/MANUALS/485544.HTM
https://datasheets.chipdb.org/Intel/80960/manuals/65123003.PDF

Oh that's true, I forgot about the git repo of modern single board i960 system. I haven't used a docker system to build 80960 assembly so your mileage may vary.