🚀 go-pugleaf

Dave Roberts writes:
>
>I found the A86 assembler, by Eric Issacson, on Simtel.  I've played
>around with it a bit and it looks pretty good.  What do people think
>of this assembler.  The author's attitude seems to certainly be very
>strong, so I could see that this might generate some strong responses,
>one way or another.
>
>It seems to assemble really fast, but Eric sure doesn't seem to like
>MASM.  If I started using this thing, what is my exposure on MASM
>compatibility?  Is it supported very well?  Is there a version that
>support 386 opcodes?  Can I link my object modules with Borland's,
>Microsoft's or Mix's products (above)?  Is it worth registering?

I've been a registered used of A86 since 1988 and it is an excellent
product.  Some people have a thing against Mr. Isaacson's "attitude"
but I agree with him in almost all cases, so this has never bothered
me.  In fact, I applaud his changes to and simplifications of things
which have been blindly perpetuated by every other company.

A86 can create either COM files (linking is not necessary) or OBJ
files.  The OBJ files are linkable with every language I've tried:
Turbo C, Turbo Pascal, and Stony Brook Pascal+.  No problems.

There is a downside to this, though.  If you buy a Borland product,
which most people seem to these days, A86 is usable but doesn't
integrate well into the "Borland scheme of things."  That is, you
can't use A86 to process the assembly code produced by Turbo C
(rarely necessary with 3.0).  A86's error reporting scheme
doesn't work with the Borland IDE unless you write your own filter
or find a PD one somewhere.  A86 object files don't contain
line number information usable with Turbo Debugger.  Overall, though
I hate to say it, Turbo Assembler is a much better match.

Too bad though.  TASM is not a nice package for someone just needing
a simple assembler.  There are way too many options, the "programmer's
guide" is poorly written, and there are two significantly different
modes--a major aspect of TASM--which are given very short shrift in
the manuals.  ft A86 were given a *slight* update, then I would
heartily reccomend it (and I still do in many cases).  But it
doesn't seem like there are any plans to do this.

--
James Hague   
exuhag@exu.ericsson.s