🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <9393@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> c164-bd@cordelia.UUCP (John D. Mitchell) writes:
>If they can produce an assembler that's as fast as the current version
>of TASM and is as easy to use then I'll check it out.  No more
>quirky bugs, inconsistent macros, etc.  (Good luck! :-)
>

Disclaimer:  I'm one of the worst M-Soft bashers around...but...

I can work around the bugs in MASM 5.1.  The bugs in TASM 2.0 are show-stoppers
to me.  I can't use it.  Just don't try and use TASM (or TLINK) with USE32
code, 32-bit equates, or 32-bit variables.  TASM simply, and without warning
clears the upper 16-bits.  For example:

PromBase	equ	0FFFC0000h
FOO		DD	PromBase + FOO2		; TLINK truncates as 00000206h
						;   in the LINK process.
FOO1		DW	PromBase MOD 10000h	; Tasm BARFS with an error
FOO2		DW	PromBase / 10000h	; Tasm BARFS with an error

If you're doing any type of 32-bit code, or protected mode programming where
you would like all your descriptor tables to be built dynamically, then TASM
won't be able to do it.  These are total show-stoppers.  I've called Borland,
and got a guy on tech-support that said something like:  "If our engineers
determine this to be an error, they MIGHT fix it...depending on how serious
they think it is."

Speed is nothing without proper functionality.

Hey, I've got the fastest computer in the world!  It does an infinite loop in
just 3.2 seconds!


-- 
"Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only."  Mat. 4:10
Robert Collins                 UUCP:  ...!sun!altos86!rcollins
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