WELCOME TO TURBO ASSEMBLER VERSION 2.0
--------------------------------------
This README file contains important information about Turbo
Assembler Version 2.0. For the latest information about
Turbo Assembler 2.0, the accompanying programs, and the manual,
read this file in its entirety. The UPDATE.DOC file contains
information on the new features in Turbo Assembler version 2.0.
The HELPME!.DOC file answers many common Technical Support
questions.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
-----------------
1. How to Get Help
2. Installation
3. Important Notes
4. Files on the Disks
1. HOW TO GET HELP
-------------------
If you have any problems, please read this file, HELPME!.DOC,
UPDATE.DOC, and the Turbo Assembler manuals first. If you still
have a question and need assistance, help is available from the
following sources:
1. Type GO BOR on the CompuServe bulletin board system for
instant access to the Borland forums with their libraries of
technical information and answers to common questions.
If you are not a member of CompuServe, see the enclosed
special offer, and write for full details on how to receive
a free IntroPak containing a $15 credit toward your first
month's online charges.
2. Check with your local software dealer or users' group.
3. Write to us at the following address:
Borland International
Turbo Assembler Technical Support
1800 Green Hills Road
P.O. Box 660001
Scotts Valley, CA 95066-0001
Please remember to include your serial number or we will be
unable to process your letter.
4. If you have an urgent problem that cannot wait and you have
sent in the license agreement, you may call the Borland
Technical Support Department at (408) 438-5300 Monday through
Friday between the hours of 6 a.m. and 5 p.m. Pacific Time.
Please have the following information ready before calling:
a. Product name and serial number on your original
distribution disk. Please have your serial number ready
or we will be unable to process your call.
b. Product version number. The version number for Turbo
Assembler is displayed when you run the program.
c. Computer brand, model, and the brands and model numbers
of any additional hardware.
d. Operating system and version number. (The version number
can be determined by typing VER at the DOS prompt.)
e. Contents of your AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files.
2. INSTALLATION
----------------
You should read the rest of this README file to get further
information about this release before you do the installation.
The Turbo Assembler/INSTALLATION disk contains a program called
INSTALL.EXE that will assist you with the installation of Turbo
Assembler 2.0.
To start the installation, change your current drive to the one
that has the install program on it and type INSTALL. You will
be given instructions in a box at the bottom of the screen for
each prompt. For example, if you will be installing from drive
A:, type
A: <Enter>
INSTALL <Enter>
If you have difficulty reading the text displayed by the INSTALL
program, use the /B command-line parameter to force it to use
black and white colors:
a:install /B - Forces INSTALL into BW80 mode
Specifying the /B parameter may be necessary if you are using an
LCD screen or a system that has a color graphics adapter and a
monochrome or composite monitor.
Notes for installation:
INSTALL copies all Turbo Assembler files onto your hard disk
and puts them into subdirectories. The default subdirectories
are
Turbo Assembler Directory: C:\TASM
Examples Subdirectory: C:\TASM
By default, all files from the distribution disks are placed in
the Turbo Assembler Directory. If you would rather separate the
examples programs into their own subdirectory, edit the default
example files path before selecting START INSTALLATION.
The Turbo Assembler distribution disks contain several files
with a .ZIP file extension: TASM.ZIP, MANUAL.ZIP, etc. These
files contain one or more other files that have been compressed
and placed inside an archive. You can de-archive them yourself
by using the UNZIP.EXE utility. For example,
unzip /o tasm
unpacks all the files stored in the TASM.ZIP archive into the
current directory.
INSTALL gives you a choice of copying the .ZIP files intact or
de-archiving and copying all the individual files onto your hard
disk during the installation process.
3. IMPORTANT NOTES
-------------------
o Updated QUIRKS mode list
The following apply to QUIRKS mode:
1) NEAR or SHORT jumps are generated even if FAR is specified,
if source and destination segments are the same.
2) Type checking for some two-argument instructions is disabled,
for example, MOV ES,BYTEPTR is allowed.
3) Forces an EQU to an expression with PTR in it to be a text
macro.
4) Forces an EQU to an expression with : in it to be a
text macro.
5) Forces an EQU to an expression with OFFSET in it to be a text
macro.
6) Forces SHL operator to lose track of sign info.
7) Forces numeric equates (= or numeric EQU) to lose complex
expression information such as segment, fixup type.
8) Reduces priority of GLOBAL, UNION keywords so that they may
be overridden.
9) Causes warning instead of error to be generated if the second
argument is missing in a two-argument instruction.
10) Allows REPT without argument to be interpreted as REPT 0.
11) Disables test for extra stuff on line after IF conditional.
The following apply to QUIRKS with MASM51:
1) @@, @F, and @B are enabled.
2) Trailing language ID after NEAR or FAR in procedure
declaration is allowed.
3) All procedure symbols are published globally.
4) :: label definitions are allowed.
o MASM compatibility pass
Using TASM's /m command-line switch will generate a MASM-style
second pass (compatibility pass) when the following
constructions are present:
o IF1 and IF2 directives
o .ERR1 and .ERR2 directives
o ELSEIF1 and ELSEIF2 directives
o Forward references with IFDEF or IFNDEF
o Forward references with the .TYPE operator
o Recursively defined numbers (FOO=FOO+1)
o Forward-referenced or recursively defined text macros
(FOO CATSTR FOO,<1>)
o Forward referenced macros
The execution of the compatibility pass effectively disables
the advantages associated with Turbo Assembler's multiple pass
capabilities.
o Updated example files
The WHEREIS example file has been updated to reflect some of
the new TASM 2.0 features. In addition, IWHGLOBL.INC and
IWHEREIS.ASM in TAEXMPL1.ZIP and GLOBALS.INC in TAEXMPL2.ZIP
have been changed to remove the warning message "Global type
doesn't match symbol type."
o SMART/NOSMART directives
One of the optimizations that TASM 2.0 performs is to change
FAR calls to an address in the same segment into a PUSH CS
followed by a CALL NEAR. Any FAR procedures that have an
EXTRN definition declared inside a segment are considered to
be in that segment, and TASM will generate the PUSH CS, CALL
NEAR instructions for them. To avoid this, put a procedure's
EXTRN definition inside of a segment only if the procedure
is actually in that segment, or put NOSMART and SMART
directives around calls to the procedure in that segment.
o Turbo Assembler 2.0 Reference Guide corrections
P. 187 In the section titled "Examples," make the following
changes:
prog.exe: myprog.asm prog2.asm include\stdio.inc
tasm /t myprog.asm # Recompile myprog using Turbo Assembler
tasm /t prog2.asm # Recompile prog2 using Turbo Assembler
tlink myprog prog2, prog
Here are some better examples:
prog.exe: myprog.obj prog2.obj
tlink myprog prog2, prog
myprog.obj: myprog.asm include\stdio.inc
tasm myprog.asm
prog2.obj: prog2.asm include\stdio.inc
tasm prog2.asm
P. 196 The directives in Table D.1 should be uppercase.
P. 212 Ignore the second paragraph under the section "Turbo Link";
TASM does not call TLINK.
4. FILES ON THE DISK
---------------------
TURBO ASSEMBLER/INSTALLATION
----------------------------
INSTALL EXE - Turbo Assembler installation program
README COM - Reads this README
UNZIP EXE - Program to unzip the .ZIP files
TASM ZIP - Turbo Assembler 2.0 and Utilities
TASM EXE - Turbo Assembler 2.0
TLINK EXE - Borland Turbo Linker
MAKE EXE - Program for managing projects
GREP COM - Turbo GREP program
TCREF EXE - Turbo Assembler cross-reference utility
OBJXREF COM - Object file cross-reference utility
TOUCH COM - Program that updates a file's date and time
TLIB EXE - Borland Turbo Librarian
MANUAL ZIP - Turbo Assembler 2.0 Documentation files.
UPDATE DOC - Complete description of new TASM 2.0 features
UTIL DOC - Updated information on the TASM 2.0 utilities
HELPME! DOC - Text file with the answers to many common
questions. Please read HELPME!.DOC before
contacting Technical Support
BASIC DOC - Interfacing Turbo Assembler with Turbo Basic
PROLOG DOC - Interfacing Turbo Assembler with Turbo Prolog
MMACROS ZIP - MASM Mode Macros
BIOS INC - Equates representing the BIOS services
DOS INC - Equates representing the DOS services
KBD INC - Equates representing the IBM PC keyboard keystrokes
MBIOS MAC - Macros used to interface with the IBM PC BIOS.
MASM Mode
MDOS MAC - Macros to interface with DOS. MASM Mode
MMACROS MAC - General macros. MASM Mode
README - This file
TURBO ASSEMBLER/EXAMPLES
------------------------
TAEXMPL1 ZIP - Ideal mode example and macros
BIOS INC - Equates representing the BIOS services
BIOSMAC DOC - Documentation for macros implemented in ?BIOS.MAC
DEMO1 BAT - Batch file to make Whereis.exe
DOS INC - Equates representing the DOS services
DOSMAC DOC - Documentation for macros implemented in ?DOS.MAC
IASCIIZS ASM - Routine to display an ASCIIZ string
IBIOS MAC - Ideal mode macros used to interface with the
IBM PC BIOS
IBYTECPY ASM - Routine that copies an array of bytes from one
location to another
IDELCHAR ASM - Routine that deletes n characters from a
Pascal-style string starting at position i
IDOS INC - Type declarations used to interface with DOS
IDOS MAC - Macros to interface with DOS. Ideal Mode
IEXECDOS ASM - Routines to handle calling DOS to perform a
command on a file
IFINDBYT ASM - Routine that searches an array of bytes, looking
for a value; routine that returns the length of
an ASCIIZ string.
IFINDFIL ASM - Routine that does a recursive search of a hard disk
looking for a file
IFINDREP ASM - Routine that searches through an array of
bytes, replacing all instances of a value
with another value.
ILOCSTRG ASM - Routine that searches through memory looking
for the nth Pascal-style string
IMACROS MAC - General macros. Ideal Mode
IPARAM ASM - Routines to return the # of command-line
parameters and the contents of an individual
parameter
IPARSEFN ASM - Routine that parses a file name into Drive,
Path, and File spec
ISKPWHIT ASM - Routine to advance a pointer past any whitespace
in an array of bytes
IWHEREIS ASM - Main module for Whereis program
IWHGLOBL INC - Global declarations for Whereis
IWRITEPS ASM - Routine to display a Pascal-style string
KBD INC - Equates representing the IBM PC keyboard keystrokes
WHEREIS DOC - Documentation for Whereis file locator program
WHEREIS MAK - Make file for creating Whereis.exe using the Make
utility
WHUSAGE INC - Usage screen text
TAEXMPL2 ZIP - FILT and standard segmentation (SHOW87) examples
CONVERT1 INC - Converts from binary numbers to strings
CONVERT2 INC - Converts from floating point to integer numbers
DEMO3 BAT - Batch file to make Filt.exe text filter program
DEMO2 BAT - Batch file to build Show87
FILT ASM - Text filter main file
FILT DOC - Documentation file for Filt.exe text filter
program
FILT MAK - Make file for creating Filt.exe using the
make utility
FILT RSP - Linker response file for linking Filt.exe
GLOBALS INC - Declares procedures and symbols needed by
the modules of FILT
OBYTEHI ASM - Processes the current high byte value in AL
OBYTELOW ASM - Processes the current low byte value in AL
OBYTENRM ASM - Processes the current normal byte value in AL
OCMDNUM ASM - Parses the command line
OERREXIT ASM - Handles the printing of error messages
OFCREATE ASM - Creates or truncates a file; the file is opened
for writing
OFILALOC ASM - Allocates a read/write buffer
OFILCLOS ASM - Closes a file
OFILEFIL ASM - Fills a read buffer
OFILFREE ASM - Deallocates a read/write buffer
OFILREAD ASM - Reads from a file
OFILWRIT ASM - Writes to a file
OFLFLUSH ASM - Flushes the write buffer
OFOPENR ASM - Opens a file for reading
OFOPENW ASM - Opens a file for writing
OLOCASE ASM - Routine converts a letter to lowercase
OPARSCMD ASM - Parses the command line
OPRCBYTE ASM - Processes a byte
OPROCDOC ASM - Processes an entire document, one line at a time
OPROCLIN ASM - Processes a line
OSETOPTN ASM - Sets options for FILT
OSPACES ASM - Stores a specified number of spaces at
particular location
OSTORSPC ASM - Stores any currently stored spaces
OSTORTAB ASM - Stores a tab character if there are any spaces
to compress
OTABCLR ASM - Clears all tab stops
OTABNEXT ASM - Returns the number of spaces to the next tab stop
OTABRSET ASM - Sets tab stops every eight columns
OTABSET ASM - Sets a tab stop at a specified column location
OUPCASE ASM - Converts a letter to uppercase
SHOW87 ASM - Standard Segmentation Demo Program
SHOW87 DOC - Documentation for Show87 8087 register display
program
VIDEO1 INC - Routines to display text and control the screen
VIDEO2 INC - Routines to display formatted text strings
CHAPXMPL ZIP - Example Programs from the Manual
Note: This file is not automatically unzipped when Turbo Assembler
is installed to a hard disk. To unzip these files you
will first need to switch to the drive and
subdirectory containing this file and then give the
command
unzip /o chapxmpl
Example Pre-2.0 Doc 2.0 Doc
HELLO ASM - Pg 9 Pg 11
HELLO2 ASM - Pg 13 Pg 15
HELLOPRN ASM - Pg 15 Pg 17
REVERSE ASM - Pg 16 Pg 18
ECHOCHAR ASM - Pg 55 Pg 72
MODCHAR ASM - Pg 80 Pg 78
DELAY ASM - Pg 88 Pg 87
DSLYSTR ASM - Pg 109 Pg 105
USE_ES ASM - Pg 110 Pg 107
STDSEG ASM - Pg 115 Pg 111
STRINGS ASM - Pg 132 Pg 127
PRNTSTR ASM - Pg 175 Pg 163
CNTWORDS ASM - Pg 181 Pg 168
MAIN ASM - Pg 207 Pg 191
SUB1 ASM - Pg 208 Pg 191
PLUSONE C - Pg 282 Pg 262
SQRETBLE C - Pg 287 Pg 266
SQRTBLE2 C - Pg 287 Pg 266
STRINGUP C - Pg 293 Pg 271
DOTOTAL ASM - Pg 305 Pg 283
SHOWTOT C - Pg 306 Pg 284
DOTOTAL2 ASM - Pg 307 Pg 285
TOGLFLAG C - Pg 313 Pg 290
TOGFLAG ASM - Pg 313 Pg 290
COUNT ASM - Pg 327 Pg 304
CALLCT C - Pg 328 Pg 305
COUNTLG ASM - Pg 329 Pg 305
CALCAVG C - Pg 334 Pg 311
AVERAGE ASM - Pg 334 Pg 312
SAMPLE PAS - Pg 344 Pg 322
ASMPROC ASM - Pg 344 Pg 322
TSAMPLE PAS - Pg 345 Pg 323
HEXSTR ASM - Pg 357 Pg 334
HEXTEST PAS - Pg 358 Pg 336
XCHANGE ASM - Pg 360 Pg 337
XCHANGE PAS - Pg 361 Pg 338
ENVSTR ASM - Pg 362 Pg 340
ENVTEST PAS - Pg 364 Pg 342
SCROLLH PRO - Pg 387 see Prolog.doc
SCROL ASM - Pg 388 see Prolog.doc
MYPROLOG PRO - Pg 391 see Prolog.doc
MYASM ASM - Pg 391 see Prolog.doc
ADDPRO PRO - Pg 393 see Prolog.doc
ADD ASM - Pg 393 see Prolog.doc
SHOWMESS PRO - Pg 395 see Prolog.doc
FROM_ASM ASM - Pg 395 see Prolog.doc
SHOWNEW PRO - Pg 396 see Prolog.doc
FROM_NEW ASM - Pg 396 see Prolog.doc
FUNC PRO - Pg 398 see Prolog.doc
IFUNC ASM - Pg 398 see Prolog.doc
MULT_C&D ASM - Pg 469 Pg 404
PRIMES ASM - Pg 521 Pg 449
MASEXMPL ASM - Pg 548 Pg 476
IDLEXMPL ASM - Pg 549 Pg 477
THELP ZIP - Turbo Help files for Turbo Assembler 2.0
THELP COM - Borland Turbo Help
TASM TAH - Turbo Assembler Help text file
THELP DOC - Information about THELP.COM
TFEXMPL2 ZIP - Turbo Profiler example files
PRIME0 C
PRIME0 EXE
PRIME1 C
PRIME1 EXE
PRIME2 C
PRIME2 EXE
PRIME3 C
PRIME3 EXE
PRIME4 C
PRIME4 EXE
PRIME5 C
PRIME5 EXE
PRIME6 C
PRIME6 EXE
TFHELP ZIP - Turbo Help file for Turbo Profiler 1.0
TFHELP TFH
NOTE: If you have the 3.5" version of Turbo Assembler, you can
find all files on one disk.
