Who was the Masm32 original author?
Long ago I wrote "Masm32" and put it on a floppy for use of the employer but another technician put it on the internet without my consent. I've just looked through my floppies and there are 5 (1..5) of Masm 6.11 and 1 of Masm 6.14.zip. If someone looks at the original (I can't find it at this time) my email provider is on the disk, and is something like Cantec. I'll do some more searching for the original.
i am a little confused about what you are asking - lol
MASM is a Macro Assembler program, written by microsoft
i think they are up to version 11, now
MASM32 is a package of include files, libraries, utilities, examples, and help files
it was intended to be used with MASM, and even includes version 6.14 of the MASM assembler
however, it may be used with other MASM-compatible assemblers
that particular version of MASM is redistributable - most of us replace it with a newer version
as far as i know, Hutch is the original author
Quote from: alanji on October 08, 2012, 08:21:31 AM
Long ago I wrote "Masm32" ... Masm 6.14.zip.
Post it here, we'll compare against our versions. Just click on "Attachments and other options" at the bottom of the reply window. You can post zip archives only, and up to 512 kBytes.
Hi alanji,
it's not much to add to that what Dave has written. The masm32 package is what it is by the huge amount of enthusiastic work done by Hutch and some other volunteers.
Welcome to the forum.
Gunther
I did the original design work on the masm32 project in 1997 in conjunction with a friend of mine, Iczelion, the project was first released on the internet in early 1998 and supported on IRC. It has been maintained ever since. Over this period many friends and later forum members have contributed to the knowledge pool and example code that the current project contains. Apart from the Microsoft binaries and the specialised tool DumpPE, the project has no debt to any other source or origin and has its own stand alone licence to ensure that it always remains freeware.
It is wise for experienced programmers to use a later version of ML.EXE, some use the highly compatible JWASM and Pelle's assembler and tools are included with permission to ensure very up to date accessories such as the linker and resource compiler.
Steve,
thank you for that first hand information. Anyway, it was and it is a lot of work to maintain the project. I know what I'm talking about. But by the way, do you know about Iczelion's tutorials? So far as I know, these tutorials are translated into different languages and that could be a further knowledge source, especially for new assemly language programmers.
Gunther
Apologies please, I made a mistake. The Masm32 I spoke of was a collection of floating point functions written in assembler. The disks (floppies) that I have, are on closer examination just versions of Masm. I did own a disk (which I named MASM32) which contained these floating point functions (and is was highjacked by an associate and put on the Internet without my permission). Previously I had written these functions in 16-bit code, but when Microsoft updated to 32 bits (probably in the mid 70's) these functions were were easier to write.
If I am not wrong, Iczelion no longer maintains his tutorial set.
I sure hope that no member of this forum ever think that I would be that associate of yours who may have highjacked your floating point functions. :eusa_naughty: All the functions in the Fpu.lib were initially created from scratch and upgraded afterwards as need be.
Hi Alanji,
If you still can find the sources, I guess there are quite a number of members here who are curious to see them - in particular Raymond, who maintains the FPU tutorial (http://www.ray.masmcode.com/fpu.html) and qWord, author of SmplMath (http://sourceforge.net/projects/smplmath/) (a library of floating point macros).
Welcome to the Forum :icon14:
Hi Raymond,
Quote from: raymond on October 09, 2012, 05:19:32 AM
I sure hope that no member of this forum ever think that I would be that associate of yours who may have highjacked your floating point functions. :eusa_naughty: All the functions in the Fpu.lib were initially created from scratch and upgraded afterwards as need be.
and I would like to add: the entire FPU library is well written and rock solid. :t
Gunther
Thanks for those flowers. Much appreciated. ;)
You're welcome Raymond.
Gunther
if it is old 16-bit stuff, it would probably be obsolete, anyways
the FPU has changed considerably since the days of the 8087
Hi Dave,
Quote from: dedndave on October 10, 2012, 03:50:58 AM
if it is old 16-bit stuff, it would probably be obsolete, anyways
the FPU has changed considerably since the days of the 8087
moreover we've now multimedia registers, which are useable to do floating point operations. That has, of course, advantages, but also disadvantages. Anyway, the XMM registers are there and since the Sandy Bridge we've 256 bit wide YMM registers.
Hi Vortex,
Quote from: Vortex on October 09, 2012, 04:20:08 AM
If I am not wrong, Iczelion no longer maintains his tutorial set.
that's bad luck, I would say.
Gunther
Quote from: dedndave on October 10, 2012, 03:50:58 AM
the FPU has changed considerably since the days of the 8087
Sure (http://www.intel-assembler.it/portale/5/The-8087-Instruction-Set/A-one-line-description-of-x87-instructions.asp)? ;)
Hi Jochen,
Quote from: jj2007 on October 10, 2012, 09:19:51 AM
Quote from: dedndave on October 10, 2012, 03:50:58 AM
the FPU has changed considerably since the days of the 8087
Sure (http://www.intel-assembler.it/portale/5/The-8087-Instruction-Set/A-one-line-description-of-x87-instructions.asp)? ;)
without any doubt. Since the 80387 a bunch of new instructions are added, especially for the transzendental trigonometric functions. Furthermore, the 8087, 80287, and 80387 had an own sloat on board. Since the 80486 DX, the CPU and FPU are integrated at the same chip; so the entire thing needs a shorter bus protocol and has a lot of other advantages. That are not only minor changes.
Gunther
yah also - we don't have to mess with "affine" or "projective" infinity any more, either - lol
they simplified some of the initialization
it also seems like FWAIT got simpler - i could be mistaken on that one
Guys,
Iczelion retired about 10 years ago, wife, life, work etc .... He was a genuinely nice guy, an excellent programmer and a good brain for architecture.
Steve,
Quote from: hutch-- on October 10, 2012, 12:59:15 PM
Iczelion retired about 10 years ago, wife, life, work etc ....
it seems to be the walk of life.
Quote from: hutch-- on October 10, 2012, 12:59:15 PM
He was a genuinely nice guy, an excellent programmer and a good brain for architecture.
no doubt about that.
Gunther
Quote from: alanji on October 08, 2012, 08:21:31 AM
Who was the Masm32 original author?
Long ago I wrote "Masm32" and put it on a floppy for use of the employer but another technician put it on the internet without my consent. I've just looked through my floppies and there are 5 (1..5) of Masm 6.11 and 1 of Masm 6.14.zip. If someone looks at the original (I can't find it at this time) my email provider is on the disk, and is something like Cantec. I'll do some more searching for the original.
I have a file on my PC "c:\Utilities\Real Asm\REALASM1.zip" which is also available at..
http://www.programmersheaven.com/download/1374/download.aspx
Submitted BY: "Unknown"
I have contacted the website (yesterday) to ask them replace "Unknown" with my name "Alan Illeman".
RealAsm was written by me for 16-bit floating point arithmetic but when we all moved to 32-bit (year?) I rewrote these functions and called it Masm32.
I cannot currently find the Masm32 floppy, but will get back to you all.
I wish Iczelion would return back to programming but he has his own priorities in his life and this is natural.
Quote from: Vortex on October 11, 2012, 05:08:13 AM
I wish Iczelion would return back to programming but he has his own priorities in his life and this is natural.
It's a shame he took his tutorials down. I learned a lot from them and was still working through them when he took them down.
Hi Ryan,
Here is Iczelion's Win32 Assembly Homepage :
http://win32assembly.programminghorizon.com/index.html
Quote from: Vortex on October 11, 2012, 05:42:51 AM
Hi Ryan,
Here is Iczelion's Win32 Assembly Homepage :
http://win32assembly.programminghorizon.com/index.html (http://win32assembly.programminghorizon.com/index.html)
Thank you!
I believe the domain changed from the one I had bookmarked.
I'm just curious Sir alanji, this file inside your computer, real asm, what are the date of files?
Hi Vortex,
Quote from: Vortex on October 11, 2012, 05:42:51 AM
Hi Ryan,
Here is Iczelion's Win32 Assembly Homepage :
http://win32assembly.programminghorizon.com/index.html
I've bookmarked the site immediately. Thank you.
Gunther
Quote from: alanji on October 08, 2012, 08:21:31 AM
Who was the Masm32 original author?
Long ago I wrote "Masm32" and put it on a floppy for use of the employer but another technician put it on the internet without my consent. I've just looked through my floppies and there are 5 (1..5) of Masm 6.11 and 1 of Masm 6.14.zip. If someone looks at the original (I can't find it at this time) my email provider is on the disk, and is something like Cantec. I'll do some more searching for the original.
I've found the 16-bit version. Here's an example (ITOFT):
.386p
code32 segment para public use32
assume cs:code32, ds:code32, es:code32
include pmath.inc
;------------------------------------
; convert signed integer to a REAL4
;
; Returns eax = REAL4
;------------------------------------
s_struc struc
dd ? ; ebp
dd ? ; caller
integer dw ?
s_struc ends
retval = (size s_struc) - 8
itoft:
push ebp
mov ebp, esp
push bx esi edi
mov eax, 0
mov edi, REAL4BIAS + 15
mov bx, [ebp].integer
or bx, bx ; if integer == 0
jz exit ; return eax=0
mov esi, 0 ; assume sign = +
jg f1 ;
mov esi, 1 ; sign = -
neg bx
f1:
test bx, 8000h
jnz f2
dec edi ; bias--
shl bx, 1 ;
jmp s f1
f2:
movzx eax, bx ; integer
shl eax, 17 ; remove explicit 1
shrd eax, edi, 8 ; insert bias
shrd eax, esi, 1 ; insert sign
exit:
pop edi esi bx
pop ebp
ret retval
code32 ends
end
The files are all dated 1994. I found them on a floppy disk. At my age I'm a little past it. I concede that maybe someone else may have wriitten them too (smile).
Hello Sir alanji
I put myself in that era and remember that we use more arj instead of zip.
Searching by realasm1.arj give some results, but dates 93, bbs times.
back in the day, i wrote a 16-bit math library :P
that was before i knew anything about the 8087
i wrote it to be compatible with MS BASIC
unfortunately, "MS float" formats were not the same as the Intel/IEEE formats
so - the library would have to be completely re-written to be good for anything - lol
and, of course, it's 16-bit - so it would need to be updated to 32-bit, as well
Quote from: mineiro on November 09, 2012, 11:10:13 AM
Hello Sir alanji
I put myself in that era and remember that we use more arj instead of zip.
Searching by realasm1.arj give some results, but dates 93, bbs times.
What year did we move from 16-bit to 32-bit ?
You probably know the 32-bit Intel 80386 processor built in 1985. It took time to move to 32-bit.
Hello Sir alanji;
I does not know, dates from 1985,86 to 94, but in that time I was playing with Z80, 80386 was so expansive and I does not have money to buy one. My first pc contact was 286, a friend buy one but does not know how to walk over the system.
I was refering after read that somebody put your code around the net without your consense, and to you discover who was the first, the answer are over extint bbs. I like to read and study your code, or know your style of programming, I'm a bit nostalgic.
be in peace.