pbg@cs.brown.edu (Peter Galvin) (05/04/91)
I just received an add from Microsoft for Masm 6.0. It's an upgrade offer, and would cost me $75 to go from 5.1. This is the first I've heard of 6.0. Does anyone know if it is out yet? What it's list price is? Thanks. -- --Peter ------------------------------------------ -------------------------------- Peter Baer Galvin (401) 863-7623 Systems Manager, Brown Univ. Comp. Sci. pbg@cs.brown.edu Box 1910 (115 Waterman Street) uunet!brunix!pbg Providence, RI 02912 (02906) pbg@browncs.bitnet
jgay@digi.lonestar.org (john gay) (05/06/91)
From article <PBG.91May3142006@bob.cs.brown.edu>, by pbg@cs.brown.edu (Peter Galvin): > I just received an add from Microsoft for Masm 6.0. It's an upgrade > offer, and would cost me $75 to go from 5.1. This is the first I've > heard of 6.0. Does anyone know if it is out yet? What it's list > price is? Thanks. I just got my offer also. Since I originally paid about $65 for masm 5.1 I very seriously doubt that I will upgrade. I saw a headline about 6.0 coming out, but have not had the time to read the article - don't know what the upgrade gets me (also haven't read the stuff with the upgrade offer - just enough to get the price). I will probably "upgrade" to tasm anyway - all the rest of my tools are going that way, mainly because the quality of micros*ft stuff is going | while the price is going ^. V | john gay.
dcdeno@panisse.berkeley.edu (D. Curtis Deno) (05/08/91)
>From article <PBG.91May3142006@bob.cs.brown.edu>, by pbg@cs.brown.edu (Peter Galvin): >> I just received an add from Microsoft for Masm 6.0. It's an upgrade >> offer, and would cost me $75 to go from 5.1. This is the first I've >> heard of 6.0. Does anyone know if it is out yet? What it's list >> price is? Thanks. > >I just got my offer also. Since I originally paid about $65 for masm 5.1 >I very seriously doubt that I will upgrade. I saw a headline about 6.0 >coming out, but have not had the time to read the article - don't know what >the upgrade gets me (also haven't read the stuff with the upgrade offer - >just enough to get the price). I will probably "upgrade" to tasm anyway - >all the rest of my tools are going that way, mainly because the quality I attended the MASM 6.0 public/press unveiling at the San Jose Convention Center on 4/30/91 (part of some sort of Corporate Developers Conference put on by Microsoft). As luck would have it, I got MASM 6.0 for a door prize that night. Its up on my 386 system now. A careful read of the upgrade glossy covers the main improvements/changes. On the plus side, if you already work with MS C 6.00A and PWB 1.1 (the integrated development environment) MASM nows joins C 6.00 and BASIC 7.0 with good on-line help, examples, documentation. I smiled when during the question period Microsoft admitted that omitting the printed docs with C 6.0 was a mistake ("we heard you" the man explained). The other major goodie for me is the strong integration of a mixed C/MASM programming environment. C prototypes and structures now have direct MASM counterparts and MASM 6.0 can translate a .h file to a .inc file. They were also excited about the sparsity of NOPs due to a n-pass assembler that could arrange things better. The near/far conditional jump restrictions of the Intel architecture they claimed to have overcome by reordering the conditional test and jumps. Although MASM 6.0 can work with 32-bit addresses and has 486 specific support, it does not come with a DOS extender or linker to permit true flat 32-bit code executables by itself. The MASM 6.0 package includes the same PWB 1.1 as in the MS C 6.00A upgrade, but does offer a more recent set of utilities: the linker, CodeView, and the smartdrive/ramdrive/himem group. I installed the DOS only stuff with examples and full help docs and it ate up about 4Mb, though I could trim about 0.5-1 Mb in redundant stuff from C 6.00, Windows 3.0, ... I'm not crazy about programming in assembler anymore. I have found that inline assembler works very well for me. I don't need the new, expanded MACRO extensions in MASM 6.0 that offer high level conditional constructs like C or Pascal. All in all, I'm glad to have it. The upgrade price of $75 is about what I could justify, but I'm sure your mileage will vary. -- Curt Deno dcdeno@united.Berkeley.EDU grad student and part-time software developer
rcollins@altos86.Altos.COM (Robert Collins) (05/09/91)
In article <1991May6.164522.8695@digi.lonestar.org> jgay@digi.lonestar.org (john gay) writes: >I will probably "upgrade" to tasm anyway - >all the rest of my tools are going that way, mainly because the quality >of micros*ft stuff is going | while the price is going ^. > V | > I will certainly not try and defend MS, because I am probably considered an MS basher. However, I was a beta tester on MASM 6.0, for whatever that is worth. If you are going to use TASM to do 32-bit code, or use 32-bit equates, think again. TASM is (totally) messed up in these areas. I called Borland about it, and they weren't concerned about fixing it. In fact, they didn't even commit to looking at it in future versions (current V2.0). In fact, if you are planning to use TASM for ANY protected mode stuff, where you need to build relocatable code for descriptor table accesses, TASM simply has too many bugs to even work around. MASM 6.0 isn't without its bugs. I still know a few that are going into production. But at least it is useable, and I can work around all (but one) of the bugs that I know about. If you need '386 or '486 stuff, TASM doesn't support it correctly...too many bugs. If you plan to use TASM for generic, 8088 code, then you probably won't have a problem. Borland LINK is a different story. I like it very much, and think they did a marvelous job on it. Unfortunately, I can't use it because it too has some bugs, relative to 32-bit segments, that can't be worked around. So, all the hype about Borland, and their supposedly great TASM is probably by people that don't do assembly language programming for a living...especially in 32-bit protected mode. P.S. One thing that totally turns me off about a product that claims to be 100% compatible, is when the first thing I try, fails, and can't be reconciled. This has happened with both TASM and TLINK. -- "Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only." Mat. 4:10 Robert Collins UUCP: ...!sun!altos86!rcollins HOME: (408) 225-8002 WORK: (408) 432-6200 x4356