15 Jul
2009
15 Jul
'09
9:51 a.m.
On Wed, 15 Jul 2009, Dave Dunfield wrote:
Just curious - I don't know if I ever saw a
Microsoft branded
version of MASM 1.0 - I have the complete IBM "Macro Assembler
by Microsoft" package, which is packaged in a pink PC format
binder with about an inch thickness of paper - I've saw a lot
of products in that era with much worse documentation.
Ahh, the days of mimeograph, or even ditto'd pages with a disk in a
zip-lock bag!
Although IBM sold it as a separate product, several OEMs just bundled it
with MS-DOS.
The manual states that it's "First Edition
(December 1981)
and the MASM executable spits out:
-----------------------------------------
The IBM Personal Computer MACRO Assembler
Version 1.00 (C)Copyright IBM Corp 1981
-----------------------------------------
Is this essentially the same assembler that is being discussed?
Yes
There are two assemblers in the package, ASM which is
without
macros and requires 64k and MASM which does support macros and
requires 96k - someone scoffed at this, but it seems reasonable
to provide a limited version for a very small memory footprint
system (many vendors did this in the days of limited memory).
It does state that if you have 96k you can run either assembler,
so I don't think it has anything to do with needing to architect
if differently for different amounts of memory.
ASM also had more terse error messages than MASM. No big deal with
experience, but frustrating for students.
We used this package a lot in some early PC product
development,
and I do recall that it was slow and had a number of quirks, but
One real fun item was the avalanche of "Phase Errors" whenever you had a
type mismatch with a forward reference.
we did produce a lot of working code with it. I also
recall that
when we upgraded to MASM 4 is was *much* better (in fact I still
have it installed and use it from time to time).
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com