DOS ain't dead

Tomasz Grysztar has released FASM version 1.67.28 on 06 November 2008.

Home page: http://flatassembler.net/
Download: http://flatassembler.net/download.php

Changes:
[+] Added EFI/EFIBOOT/EFIRUNTIME subsystem keywords for PE format (experimental feature, still needs to be tested).
[-] Fixed a bug in preprocessor which caused some problems with DISPLAY directive output in some cases.
[-] Fixed a bug that allowed to define a symbol named "eip" or "rip".
[-] Fixed a problem with assembling MOVQ RAX,XMM0 instruction.

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Forum admin

Tomasz Grysztar has released FASM version 1.67.29 on 15 November 2008.

Home page: http://flatassembler.net/
Download: http://flatassembler.net/download.php

Changes:
[+] Added optional symbolic information output, and a set of tools that extract various kinds of information from it.
[+] Allowed RVA operator to be used in COFF object format.
[-] Corrected the FIX directive to allow names of preprocessor's directives to be used as prioritized symbolic constant name.

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Know your limits.h

Tomasz Grysztar has released FASM version 1.67.30 on 8 February 2009

Home page: http://flatassembler.net/
Download: http://flatassembler.net/download.php

Changes:
[+] Added missing Intel SSE4 instructions.
[+] Added SSE4a (EXTRQ/INSERTQ/MOVNTSD/MOVNTSS) instructions.
[+] Added FSTENVW/FSTENVD/FSAVEW/FSAVED mnemonics.

Tomasz Grysztar has released FASM version 1.67.32 on 13 February 2009

Home page: http://flatassembler.net/
Download: http://flatassembler.net/download.php

Changes:

version 1.67.32 (Feb 13, 2009)

[+] Allowed single quote character to be put inside the number value,
to help improve long numbers readability.


version 1.67.31 (Feb 11, 2009)

[-] Fixed floating point converter to no longer generate NaN in some cases,
and corrected denormal numbers generation.

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Know your limits.h

> Tomasz Grysztar has released FASM version 1.67.32 on 13 February 2009

He's now updated FASMD to use .INI file (colors, environment vars).

version 1.67.34 (2009 Feb 22)

[-] Fixed small bug with DT directive far pointer syntax

version 1.67.33 (2009 Feb 20)

[+] Added ERR directive that allows to signalize error from the source

version 1.67.3xx (2009 Feb)

[-] deleted UNreal mode support in DOS commandline version
[+] added INI file support for DOS IDE
[-] fixed some bugs in DOS IDE

---
This is a LOGITECH mouse driver, but some software expect here
the following string:*** This is Copyright 1983 Microsoft ***

> version 1.67.3xx (2009 Feb)
>
> [-] deleted UNreal mode support in DOS commandline version

EDIT: Not trying to be off-topic, just thought this would explain the advantages and difficulties that Tomasz encountered developing FASM in this direction:

Just for the record, here's some historical tidbits for FASM:

> When processor is in real mode, fasm uses its unREAL engine to get
> into the fastest possible 32-bit environment. DPMI is used only when
> there's no way to use unREAL, that is when processor is in V86 mode
> (and under DPMI fasm is generally slower, though on modern computers
> it doesn't make any visible difference, but try it on some 386SX machine).

And this:

> I've got a bad news for the fasm's unREAL mode fans.
> As you may know, even though unREAL allows the 4 GB of data
> to be used in one segment, it still limits the code that can
> be run from one segment to 64 KB. And this is starting to
> become a problem, because fasm's code (with all the data
> - tables, etc. - already moved above) is almost 64 KB
> already, and is going to "break this barrier" soon.
> So I have two choices - either I will try to keep the unREAL
> version running somehow (it could be possible to move some
> parts of code to other segments, but still I would have to replace
> some parts of common core code particularly for this version - and
> I dislike it), or get rid of unREAL code and leave only the DPMI
> variant (this already happened with FASMD). What do you think?
>
> I'm OK with throwing away the unreal, but I won't provide DPMI
> host with fasm. I just feel it's not the way it should be.
> I would make it work just like FASMD does now.

And here:

> So it's the early Cyrix - I suspected so, since that explains
> the [32-bit real mode] incompatibility.

It also had compatibility issues with BOCHS and DOSBox due to this.

And (finally) here:

> The first approach I've used to achieve such mode was a bit
> different from current - it had universal interrupts handlers,
> that (thanks to some opcode-tricks) were able to detect whether
> they are executed as 16-bit or 32-bit code and jump to appropriate
> code. In current version I the IDTR is different for the 32-bit
> code, and so there is separate interrupt table for this mode.
> I've invented this solution after I realized that on all processors
> I could test the IDT base can be altered even for real mode, and
> it seems to be much more stable in my tests.

> version 1.67.34 (2009 Feb 22)
>
> [-] Fixed small bug with DT directive far pointer syntax

Refreshed again (March 2), and now FASMD support more .INI directives as well as File Browsing / Saving selector dialogs.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, the unreal FASM didn't seem barely much faster at all on my 486 Sx/25 than the DPMI version (only like two extra seconds less to assemble itself, 13 secs. vs. 15 w/ DPMI), so you'd really need a big project to notice a difference. And it's probably not worth the extra hassle to clean boot anyways. Still, a nifty hack for its time. And on my P166, slowest to fastest seemed to be: FASM + CWSDPMI, FASM + HDPMI32, FASM Win32 stubbed via WDOSX, FASM Win32 via HXRT. (Of course, the biggest speedup was running on a RAM disk instead of slow HD, e.g. 1 sec. vs. 3.5 or so.)

> version 1.67.35 (Mar 09, 2009)
>
> [-] Some internal code size reductions.
>
> [-] Discontinued "-d" switch implementation.

P.S. Tomasz claims to put the "flat real" hack back in for 1.68.

Silent update of 1.67.35. File selector in DOS IDE should be fully functional now.

---
This is a LOGITECH mouse driver, but some software expect here
the following string:*** This is Copyright 1983 Microsoft ***

> Silent update of 1.67.35. File selector in DOS IDE should be fully
> functional now.

Flat real mode hack is also back as well as reduced memory for IDE search and replace. (And the third-party PE COFF debug info tool has been updated too.)

> > Silent update of 1.67.35. File selector in DOS IDE should be fully
> > functional now.
>
> Flat real mode hack is also back as well as reduced memory for IDE search
> and replace. (And the third-party PE COFF
> debug info tool
> has been updated too.)

But -d is gone!?

According to How to avoid SUCK-ASM ? this option was "good". So I'm waiting for the newest propaganda tricks which will explain why it is considered "bad" again.

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MS-DOS forever!

> But -d is gone!?
>
> According to How to avoid SUCK-ASM ? this option was
> "good". So I'm waiting for the newest propaganda tricks which will explain
> why it is considered "bad" again.

Yes. Tomasz apparently felt guilty about violating his own SSSO principle. In theory, it could be severely misused, and I think he always wanted to avoid cmdline hell like TASM had (e.g. being unable to rebuild a project without the exact same cmdline switches, very arcane). Also, he mentioned he may provide some external emulation tool for vid, etc. to use. Anyways, personally, I think he wanted to save some more room to put back the flat real hack (which he likes a lot).

You don't really need -d, but it was useful if you'd rather define stuff on cmdline instead of editing (manually or automatically) your sources. It was only when vid showed Tomasz some really complex real-world project examples that he ever decided -d was worthwhile anyways (1.67.24).

I wrote:

> Silent update of 1.67.35.

Again updated. Now S&R works perfectly

Japheth wrote:

> But -d is gone!?
> waiting for the newest propaganda tricks which will explain

There will be none. Just a few silly points:

1. FASM is open source. Just SUB 1.67.34 from 1.67.35, get a patch, ADD to latest source, and compile your own version with -D reenabled

2. Even worse, since you failed to start using FASM after -D got added in 1.67.24 / 1.67.26 , you are now obviously unable to punish Tomasz by stopping using it after -D got kicked

3. Tomasz was that nice to you and Vid that he released an external hack providing not only -D but also -O -I and -L

4. Your great riddle from 1 year ago had been "fixed" ... but maybe you didn't even notice ? (or just notice and forget) ?

To sum it up, you are very unfair to Tomasz and FASM

---
This is a LOGITECH mouse driver, but some software expect here
the following string:*** This is Copyright 1983 Microsoft ***

> To sum it up, you are very unfair to Tomasz and FASM
>

Yes, I'm evil! You should have known this already - my good friend Lutscho did warn you ...

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MS-DOS forever!

> 2. Even worse, since you failed to start using FASM after -D got
> added in 1.67.24 / 1.67.26 , you are now obviously unable to punish
> Tomasz by stopping using it after -D got kicked

Where did he say he would start using FASM if it had the -D option?

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l

> > 2. Even worse, since you failed to start using FASM after -D got
> > added in 1.67.24 / 1.67.26 , you are now obviously unable to punish
> > Tomasz by stopping using it after -D got kicked
>
> Where did he say he would start using FASM if it had the -D option?

Obviously Japheth prefers MASM v6 / JWasm instead.

P.S. FASM is now at 1.67.37, soon coming 1.68 (since preliminary EFI support seems to work). He's fixed a tiny bug in SSE4 and IDE (plus sped up s/r). But, strangely, flat real is gone again. (I tested speed of it vs. HDPMI32, which showed like only 5% increase, so maybe he figured it wasn't worth it?? Can't say I honestly disagree....)

> P.S. FASM is now at 1.67.37, soon coming 1.68 (since preliminary EFI
> support seems to work).

Did you test ?

1.67.38 is out. The core changes are very minor (irrelevant for a DOS user), the important thing are fixes in the IDE , now the directory browsing and INI file should be fine, also the S&R memory hogginess got reduced (still not perfect), and recent regressions are fixed.

> But, strangely, flat real is gone again.

The fight must go on

P.S. @ all interested: when 1.68 is out please open a new thread rather than replying here ... maybe same for JAwasm 1.95 ?

---
This is a LOGITECH mouse driver, but some software expect here
the following string:*** This is Copyright 1983 Microsoft ***