Author Topic: Which debugger to use.  (Read 18301 times)

Dave Yeo

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Re: Which debugger to use.
« Reply #15 on: November 03, 2019, 07:09:58 pm »
Unluckily MS had pretty well full rights to the 32 bit code base. The WPS may be an exception but MS could use their own shell.
OTOH, IBM only had rights to Windows up to version 4, which is why Win95  was version 4.095. MS really didn't play nice back then.

RickCHodgin

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Re: Which debugger to use.
« Reply #16 on: November 05, 2019, 02:57:41 am »
Looks like it was meant to be compiled with C-Set/2, the precursor of VACPP. The CTRL-Z's are put in there by the editor, they're DOS EOF markers.
C-Set/2, http://www.edm2.com/index.php/IBM_C_Set/2 seems to be available at WinWorld, https://winworldpc.com/product/ibm-c-set/20

That worked.  It's compiling all of the .C files.  It's looking for masm386 to compile the assembly.

I've never seen a masm386.exe program.  Microsoft's Macro Assembler 6.x had a masm.exe program that translated the old command line to the new one used by ml.exe.

Any idea where to find masm386?

David Graser

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Re: Which debugger to use.
« Reply #17 on: November 05, 2019, 03:51:09 am »
Looks like it was meant to be compiled with C-Set/2, the precursor of VACPP. The CTRL-Z's are put in there by the editor, they're DOS EOF markers.
C-Set/2, http://www.edm2.com/index.php/IBM_C_Set/2 seems to be available at WinWorld, https://winworldpc.com/product/ibm-c-set/20

That worked.  It's compiling all of the .C files.  It's looking for masm386 to compile the assembly.

I've never seen a masm386.exe program.  Microsoft's Macro Assembler 6.x had a masm.exe program that translated the old command line to the new one used by ml.exe.

Any idea where to find masm386?

Hi Rick

Here is one I found.  However, it may be a later version than can be used.

https://cmeerw.org/prog/dm/rtl.html

There is an earlier version found on the following page dated 1989:

http://bytepointer.com/masm/index.htm



« Last Edit: November 05, 2019, 03:54:09 am by David Graser »

RickCHodgin

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Re: Which debugger to use.
« Reply #18 on: November 05, 2019, 04:34:52 am »
It's looking for masm386 to compile the assembly.  I've never seen a masm386.exe program.  Microsoft's Macro Assembler 6.x had a masm.exe program that translated the old command line to the new one used by ml.exe.
 Any idea where to find masm386?

Here is one I found.  However, it may be a later version than can be used.
https://cmeerw.org/prog/dm/rtl.html

There is an earlier version found on the following page dated 1989:
http://bytepointer.com/masm/index.htm

Hi, David! :-)

It looks the Digital Mars version is the same kind of command line / syntax converter.  And the Byte Pointer reference is for a Windows NT-based version.

Hmmm ...

RickCHodgin

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Re: Which debugger to use.
« Reply #19 on: November 05, 2019, 04:47:04 am »
That worked.  It's compiling all of the .C files.  It's looking for masm386 to compile the assembly.

I've never seen a masm386.exe program.  Microsoft's Macro Assembler 6.x had a masm.exe program that translated the old command line to the new one used by ml.exe.

Any idea where to find masm386?

In looking at the .asm files, they appear to be standard Microsoft Macro Assembler source code files.  It might be a 386-version of masm.exe that it's calling.

Anyone know where I can get an OS/2 version of Microsoft Macro Assembler?  I have a DOS-based version of 6.11D I bought back in the 90s.  I was able to copy it over, and it runs some of the binp\ files, but ml.exe only exists in the bin\ area, and it thinks it's a DOS program launching in a DOS shell, rather than OS/2 shell.

Dave Yeo

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Re: Which debugger to use.
« Reply #20 on: November 05, 2019, 05:43:22 am »
There's masm v6 and masm v5. As for masm386, it seems to have shipped with MS OS/2 ver2 and perhaps in some of the early v2 toolkits/sdks. Possibly the oldest NT one might run on OS/2 as well.
The current toolkit also contains masm2alp.exe which might work.

RickCHodgin

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Re: Which debugger to use.
« Reply #21 on: November 05, 2019, 06:11:39 am »
There's masm v6 and masm v5. As for masm386, it seems to have shipped with MS OS/2 ver2 and perhaps in some of the early v2 toolkits/sdks.

Do you mean it shipped in the actual OS/2 retail box with the 3.5" floppies?

I have 2.0 ... and the floppy images for it.  I'll take a look tomorrow.  Thank you!
« Last Edit: November 05, 2019, 06:13:41 am by Rick C. Hodgin »

Dave Yeo

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Re: Which debugger to use.
« Reply #22 on: November 05, 2019, 06:28:01 am »
Note I said MS OS/2 ver 2, a very rare beta that was never released as far as I know, not IBM OS/2 ver 2 which is what you likely have.

RickCHodgin

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Re: Which debugger to use.
« Reply #23 on: November 05, 2019, 12:22:43 pm »
Note I said MS OS/2 ver 2, a very rare beta that was never released as far as I know, not IBM OS/2 ver 2 which is what you likely have.

Yes.  Missed that. :-)

David Graser

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« Last Edit: November 05, 2019, 03:18:55 pm by David Graser »


RickCHodgin

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Re: Which debugger to use.
« Reply #26 on: November 06, 2019, 04:34:03 am »
There's masm v6 and masm v5. As for masm386, it seems to have shipped with MS OS/2 ver2 and perhaps in some of the early v2 toolkits/sdks. Possibly the oldest NT one might run on OS/2 as well.
The current toolkit also contains masm2alp.exe which might work.

I still haven't been able to find masm386.exe.  I've tried IBM Macro Assembler from 1987 up thru Microsoft's Macro Assembler 6.0b.  They only have masm.exe.

Dave Yeo

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Re: Which debugger to use.
« Reply #27 on: November 06, 2019, 04:39:18 am »
You may have to port the assembly to a different assembler, perhaps jwasm (fork of wasm, the Open Watcom assembler) which IIRC is fairly compatible to masm.

RickCHodgin

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Re: Which debugger to use.
« Reply #28 on: November 06, 2019, 04:52:56 am »
You may have to port the assembly to a different assembler, perhaps jwasm (fork of wasm, the Open Watcom assembler) which IIRC is fairly compatible to masm.

I was wondering if masm386.exe is just masm.exe renamed?  MASM 6.x supported .486 and .586 in (at least in DOS).

Have you used masm2alp?  And alp?

IBM's Assembly Language Processor might be interesting to look at.  I see it comes with VisualAge 4, as well as in several standalone forms.

I see also in my searching for masm386.exe that IBM's Macro Assembler back in 1987 included CodeView, and some of their ALP packages included a "cv.exe" as well (don't know if it was CodeView or not, but probably so based on file size).
« Last Edit: November 06, 2019, 05:01:45 am by Rick C. Hodgin »

Dave Yeo

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Re: Which debugger to use.
« Reply #29 on: November 06, 2019, 06:20:31 am »
My reading is that MASM 6 supported i386 (and I guess i486 etc) but did not support the flat memory model.
Never used masm2alp or alp. Not really a programmer and about all I've done is porting assembly, mostly involving nasm. Simple stuff like the other day changing ".section rodate" to ".data" in some AS assembly (actually with ifdefs). The MASM386 code might just need some syntax fixes to port to another similar assembler and I do notice even going from MASM 5 to MASM 6 seems to take some work, at least going by the documentation.