Re: Best way to Assemble an 8086 PC-BIOS

"monahanz" <monahan@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1322abec-67d9-4d95-984f-c90a4f65c47e@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

[...]
Digital Research ASM86 assembler
[...]
Try doing things under CPM86 on my S-100 system.
[...]
I was also thinking perhaps I could assemble the code as a .BIN file.
[...]
[...] desire is to do things in my Windows 7 (64bit) system.


I'm not familiar with ASM86, but from a quick search it looks like MASM to
me. I think it should be fairly easy to convert the ASM86 syntax to MASM.
From there, it's easy to convert to NASM.

NASM and MASM should run fine in Windows. NASM also works in DOS.
Current versions of NASM support Intel hex, Motorola S-records, and
"flat-form binary files". One of those formats should work. The first two
formats are for E/PROMs.

Frank Kotler ported a small program called "seemem" from ASM86 to NASM.
I'm unable to locate his current website. He is one of the current
moderator's for comp.lang.asm.x86. He also posts to alt.lang.asm. You
could try a post to either group and ask to see his port, but make sure it's
an assembly question on clax. You might also ask either group about the
best way to convert ASM86, or the other ASM86 issues you mentioned.
Alt.os.development might be able to help with the cross compiling
environments.

Steve Dubrovich uses CP/M. He'd be the one to ask about it. He posted here
recently, and posts to alt.lang.asm and alt.os.development. E.g., he might
know if the DOS version of NASM runs on CP/M ... Redirect to his website:
http://tinyurl.com/3g9lt6n

Personally, I'd recommend DOS (real mode 16-bit, e.g., MS-DOS, IBM DOS,
FreeDOS, DR-DOS etc) and NASM. But, I've not used NASM to create an
EEPROM image. NASM has support for ROM images. You should be able to use
FreeDOS or OpenDOS/DR-DOS as your DOS. Both DOS and NASM will easily fit
onto a 1.44MB floppy, or almost any USB stick or DOS disk partition. DOS
emulation in a Windows console is just fine if you have Win98/SE/ME. DOS
emulation in a Windows console has been diminished after XP and supposedly
is unavailable in 64-bit Win7. Use the Windows version of NASM for recent
versions Windows.
http://www.freedos.org/
http://www.drdosprojects.de/


Rod Pemberton


.

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