DOS ain't dead

masm without tiny (Announce)

posted by kerravon , Ligao, Free World North, 29.01.2026, 21:54

I have a boot sector (not MBR) written in assembler.

It works with various assemblers, and you can see it here:

https://sourceforge.net/p/pdos/gitcode/ci/master/tree/src/pbootsec.asm

I want to use the freely-available MASM 5.1. But I found it doesn't have the "tiny" memory model.

What are the implications for a bootloader if I am forced to use "small"? It didn't work at runtime when I used "small", although it did build. I was testing by booting from a floppy image using qemu.

What changes would be advised for this code so that it can work with MASM 5.1 as well as the other assemblers that it already works with?

Thanks. Paul.

Complete thread:

• masm without tiny - kerravon, 29.01.2026, 21:54 (Announce)
  • masm without tiny - usotsuki, 29.01.2026, 22:06
    • masm without tiny - kerravon, 29.01.2026, 23:33
      • masm without tiny - andrewbird, 29.01.2026, 23:52
        • masm without tiny - kerravon, 30.01.2026, 00:40