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MSDOS 4.0 -- MASM as standard (Announce)

posted by kerravon E-mail, Sydney, Free World South, 30.04.2025, 16:17

> > Are you saying that MS BASIC doesn't even supported the
> > first version of the ISO standard?
>
> I don't think they ever did (or intended to), no.
Well that would be a reason to not use BASIC then -
people are unwilling or unable to support the
standard.

> > > I would not hold their work up as a good example of standard anything
> >
> > I am not aware of any part of the ISO/IEC 9899:1990
> > standard that Microsoft violates in any of their
> > compilers since Microsoft C 6.0. Perhaps you could
> > show me an example?
>
> C is different for them (but not by much). For a long time they ignored C99
> in lieu of C++.
I said C90, not C99. PDPCLIB doesn't support any of
C99 at all.

Another reason to not use C99 at all.

C90 is the lingua franca of the world of computers.

You can write an entire OS in nothing other than C90.
Portable anywhere.

(assumes the existence of a suitable BIOS though, or
a layer above that to turn unsuitable BIOSes into
suitable BIOSes, hence why I use the term "pseudobios")

> > > > Actually, I consider whatever works on masm, wasm, jwasm and as86
> > > > to be "standard".
> >
> > I should have included "tasm", which is still
> > available commercially and supported.
>
> It's not supported in the sense of modern features (64-bit) or being
The discussion at hand is about MSDOS 4.0 source code.
64-bit is not a consideration.

> actively maintained.
Perhaps no-one has reported any bugs in it, because
it is working fine? You're not asking for change for
the sake of change, are you?

> I think Wikipedia implies it hasn't been updated since
> 2002.
All bugs that affected anyone ironed out by 2002,
rock solid stable for 23 years - not one bug that
anyone can point to. Sounds like a winner to me.

> At least my copy of TASM32 5.3 is dated 2000 (but I got it in 2007).
> They may bundle it with their C++ Builder, not sure, but it's not
> "supported", AFAIK.
Depends on your definition of "support" I guess. If
you don't have any bugs to report, and the vendor
thus doesn't fix any reported bugs, that may meet
your definition of "unsupported".

And perhaps that is the exact rub. Modern software
is so full of bugs and people put out new beta
releases that replace one set of bugs that may not
affect you with a new set of bugs that may, and
there is a constant scramble to get the latest bug
fixes for your Android phone or whatever because
everything is permanently broken.

No-one is bothering to sit down and get something
stable. Except the owners of tasm, apparently.

I like this guy's take on the situation:

https://www.quora.com/Why-did-you-leave-a-job-as-a-software-engineer/answer/Jeff-Sturm-2

> JWasm is quite a bit better than Wasm.
Sure. Which is why if you're going to port the MSDOS 4.0
source code - ie remove Microsoft features that don't
exist elsewhere - jwasm could have been the new target.
Or the (apparent) gold standard bug-free tasm. Or a
subset of all 3.

BFN. Paul.

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