Hi,
On Sun, Sep 30, 2018 at 12:14 AM Random Liegh via Freedos-user
<freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> On 9/29/2018 3:09 PM, Rugxulo wrote:
> > On Sat, Sep 29, 2018 at 3:47 AM Random Liegh via Freedos-user
> > <freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> >> I'm not sure this has any value for FreeDOS beyond experimenting (can
> >> this be built by the VAL linker? seems doubtful) and possibly getting
> >> some ideas
> > Not sure why you think VAL is the main target or only 16-bit linker
> > worth using. There are probably a dozen of freely available linkers
> > that can target 16-bit OMF for DOS.
>
> Actually I was (and possibly still am) mixing up free tools. I confused
> val with the freeware arrowsoft assembler. If it's not actually a
> rebranded "masm" (as rumor at one time had it) it's probably fairly
> close in syntax. For that reason itwould be a good (if not best)
> candidate for being freely available and close in masm compatibility.
Arrowsoft 2.00c is indeed just a "hacked" MASM v4 (circa 1984? 16-bit
/ 286 only, if even fully that). I have no idea if it's truly
"freeware" but highly unlikely (depending on where it came from
originally, who owned the copyright, who had derivative or
redistribution rights or whatever). I wouldn't even know whom to ask.
It's almost ridiculous to even think about! MASM had lots of
variations and got redistributed a lot.
Arrowsoft was available on Simtel.net (well, v1) and many other sites
(Garbo?) for decades. No one ever complained. You'd think MS would've
noticed such an obvious MASM compatible "clone". Of course, none of us
noobs had any experience with ancient MASMs either. Most people only
used v5 (1987? 386 support) or v6 (1991? more powerful, better
syntax), if even that much.
IIRC, Arrowsoft's ASM.EXE needed a linker, so someone bundled it
(VALARROW.ZIP or whatever on Simtel.net) with other tools (X2B for
EXE2BIN, TED for editor, VAL for linker). Maybe that's what you're
remembering.
JWasm is a fork of OpenWatcom's WASM. It's meant to be (more) MASM
compatible, specifically v6. It also supports v5 syntax (-Zm).
OpenWatcom is OSI approved ("open source") but disliked by FSF as
"non-free". This is a weird exception since usually both OSI and FSF
agree on licensing. Anyways, JWasm is very good, free-ish, and doesn't
need a linker (but also supports OMF/OBJ). It also has a 16-bit
real-mode version (JWasmR.exe) and a 32-bit full version (JWasmD.exe)
and can even be recompiled with DJGPP (GCC), among many others. I'm
not in contact with him, but Japheth has a prerelease of a newer
version on Github (but implies "Windows only binary, use atop HX"
nowadays). My point is that we should prefer JWasm if we direly need
MASM syntax. (Otherwise, use whatever: NASM, YASM, FASM, etc.)
Here's some interesting links (huge understatement), even though I
don't even barely pretend to grok MASM syntax:
* https://github.com/Baron-von-Riedesel/JWasm
* https://sites.google.com/site/pcdosretro/masmhist
* http://bytepointer.com/masm/index.htm
* http://www.plantation-productions.com/Webster/www.artofasm.com/DOS/index.html
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