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MSDOS 4.0 (Announce)

posted by kerravon E-mail, Sydney, Free World South, 29.04.2025, 11:50

> > Which is why I said "add" support - because NE support
> > is not already in this version.
>
> I don't see what the point is. You could as well add "NE support" to the
> FreeDOS kernel.
FreeDOS is more restrictive than MIT license.

> > > > The above seems to have switched from masm to nasm though. I would
> > > prefer
> > > > to stay compatible with Microsoft tools.
> > >
> > > Yes, I'm porting things to NASM and WarpLink step by step.
> >
> > > NASM is free software with sources,
> >
> > So is jwasm.
>
> JWasm is encumbered by the Sybase license. It's OSI "open source" but not
> FSF "free software".
I don't subscribe to the FSF definition of "free".

So basically this is a license dispute.

> The OpenWatcom relicensing effort isn't fulfilled yet,
> and even if it were JWasm contributors would also need to agree:
> https://github.com/Baron-von-Riedesel/JWasm/issues/20
Which is why all of these things suck and I don't
want to get involved.

> > And as86. If you're porting the code anyway,
> > why not to something that will still work on masm?
>
> as86 appears to be incompatible to
> MASM. For instance, immediate operands need a # prefix.

Name clash.

as86 as shipped on the PDOS/386 disk.

https://github.com/robertapengelly/as86

It's a subset of masm and completely public domain.

This is what I see as the future - enhancing this
public domain assembler so that it gets closer to
be able to do things like assemble MSDOS 4.0 source code.

> > > unlike the MASM that ships with the
> > > 2024 April MS-DOS v4 release. So therefore I think NASM is better.
> >
> > I personally don't want to involved in a non-standard
> > language.
>
> I don't see how NASM is "non-standard", unless you want to define a
> "standard" as just whatever dialect has the single largest existing code
> base or whatever tool has been the single most popular choice at one point
> in time.
Yes, Microsoft has always set the standard in this
area. Actually, I consider whatever works on masm,
wasm, jwasm and as86 to be "standard".

> > But if I'm just a user then I don't really care. I just
> > need NE support to work.
>
> I don't see a need for it,
It provides a way for AHINCR and AHSHIFT to be specified.
MZ can't do that unless you provide an extension one way
or another. And if you're going to do that anyway, may
as well do NE. Or at least, perhaps it should be an option.

> nor do I know how exactly this support should work.
Exactly what I want to know too. That's why I'm asking
about the MT version. Even binary should be sufficient
to find out what NE does.

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