How did SID86.EXE from DR-DOS differ from DEBUG.EXE from MS-DOS?

[bugthis]

How did SID86 from DR-DOS differ from DEBUG.EXE from MS-DOS?

Was it better?
Easier to use?
More powerful?

I found this manual, and I also have a DR-DOS version, but I haven't tested it yet and I would like to know what the differences between these two debuggers were and if there were any significant differences.
http://www.cpm.z80.de/manuals/SID86_User_Guide.txt

[Gunther]

bugthis,

How did SID86 from DR-DOS differ from DEBUG.EXE from MS-DOS?

I've never used SID86. But Digital Research mostly produced very good software compared to MS.

However, if you are looking for a really powerful debugger for DOS, you should definitely check out Japhet's website. There you will find DEBUGX.COM, together with a manual,
which can be used to debug programs in protected mode. This doesn't work with SID86 or DEBUG.

I hope my answer has been helpful to you.

[bugthis]

Thank you for your answer. I agree, DR software was often better than the one from MS. And i know debugx.com i use it in FreeDOS.

If anyone else who has used SID86 on a daily basis answers, an answer would be great.

[bugthis]

From my other thread, I found that SID86 seems to support symbolic debugging, a feature MS-DOS's DEBUG.EXE does not offer:

http://masm32.com/board/index.php?topic=10773.msg119611#msg119611

SID-86  is a powerful symbolic debugger designed for use with the CP/M-86 and
MP/M-86 operating systems. It expands on the features of the standard CP/M-86
debugger,  DDT-86,  allowing users to test and debug  programs interactively.
SID-86  includes  symbolic  assembly and  disassembly,  expressions involving
hexadecimal,  decimal, ASCII, and symbolic values, permanent breakpoints with
pass  counts,  and trace without call. You should be familiar with  the Intel
8086  processor,  ASM-86  and  the CP/M-86 or  MP/M-86  operating  system, as
described in the "CP/M-86 Operating System System Guide" or "MP/M-86 Operating
System System Guide".

http://www.cpm.z80.de/manuals/SID86_User_Guide.txt

Another advantage of SID86.EXE i personaly like better is the register output of the Flag registers.
It's more readable in my opinion.

MS-DOS's DEBUG.EXE always changes the meaning of the flag register's output.
It doesn't use outputs like IF=0 and IF=1
instead it uses words to the set bit value like EI for 1 and DI for 0. This means that you must first learn the abbreviations and then also know which flag they belong to. Unfortunately, this is very cumbersome.
https://thestarman.pcministry.com/asm/debug/8086REGs.htm#FLAGS

SID86 does it better in my opinion. It just uses a line of '-' characters for all flags and if one flag at the right position is set from 0 to 1, the corresponding '-' char is just changed to the first letter of the flag name.
Example:

Code Select Expand


#x
           AX   BX   CX   DX   SP   BP   SI   DI   CS   DS   SS   ES   IP
--I------ 0000 0000 0000 0000 015A 0000 0000 0000 1CC1 1CC8 0AFB 1CC8 0046
CMP    AL,FF

Here it's easily obvious, that the interrrupt flag IF is set. See letter 'I'.

[mineiro]

Most softwares to ms-dos became abandonware, you probably can get that for free these days.

[bugthis]

Most softwares to ms-dos became abandonware, you probably can get that for free these days.

Well, abandonware doesn't make them legal.

I have a legally bought license of DR-DOS 3.41 and MS-DOS 6.2 but for the rest i need to use Free Software. In many cases the latter is better anyway with a few exceptions like FreeDOS 1.3 is not able to run Windows 3.1 in 386 enhanced mode.
And the open sourced MS-DOS 1.0 is just too old and usually not better than MS-DOS 6.2.

[mineiro]

Well, abandonware doesn't make them legal.

I fully agree with you.
I refer to something like:
https://www.pcjs.org/software/pcx86/lang/microsoft/masm/4.00/