which one is better, TASM or FASM? also, ive been working with TASM some, and i know how to write a dos program in it, but is it possible to write an OS, that boots from a floppy? if someone could provide a "hello world" OS, or a small OS in TASM it would be greatly appreciated!! thanks

Hi, take a look at www.rdos.net

Older versions of SOLAR OS might serve that purpose (a small demo OS)
All Solar OS is written in TASM... If you need any help with using TASM for writting an OS you can asm me questions and i will guide you.

Latest versions of SOLAR OS can be found here:
http://www.hostileencounter.com/os_main.html

However I plan to finish writting my own TASM replacement in the future
(i allready have a somehow working SOL_ASM version)

However you have the sources of FASM and FASM is much more updated than TASM.

I think Pelaillo has already ported FASM on SOLAR OS
here: http://as.modshack.co.uk/en/index.html

TASM is more conventional, and - contrary to popular belief - _is_ updated with every new version of borland c++ builder (you can fetch/update your TASM 5.2 to 5.3, which was released in the newest borland c++ bundle, it fixes some bug fixes and issues). it's a lot cleaner and versatile for other things, but for things like OS, it'll probably save you _some_ trouble using NASM/FASM (you won't have to rip out the binary from the .com/.exes and whatnot - if that's what people do these days...)

Why not try yasm

I am not extracting binary from .com or .exe

Instead i do link .OBJ files generated by TASM with JLOC linker
It generates an absolute address located binary.

as i see it, tasm wasn't meant to generate 32bit binaries, it predicts that you use segments, memory models etc. which you must workaround to get desired result. Unlike FASM where you write what you want. Maybe I'm wrong, i wasn't using TASM that much.

TASM is able and designed to generate 32 bit windows applications just like MASM is.

His only problem is that it can not directly generate a flat binary to be used for OS development. But I use JLOC linker to solve this problem.

Ehh, i am almost 100% sure that i have produced flat binarys with TASM (without JLOC)..
Anyway, why have a discussion about TASM on a fasm board?

True, however i am interested ...
-How have you produced flat binary output files with TASM?

Becaus there is no board for tasm? I not consider the sf board a decent board for nasm users , dont know exactly for yasm, there are a lot of assemblers (some goods) that dosent have a board .

can't remember right now, i'll dig up my old tasm sources and check.. i'll be back..

Because is in the common interest. We are all for assembly programming so we can help each other regardless of personal preferences.

i use NASM mainly, but I use the FASM-Editor because of the highlighting. i use NASM, because most of the OS-Dev code is in NASM i think. but this board is still interessting for me. here's most time someone who can help me, give ideas or discuse about OS-Dev and the different methods. so i think it's not important which ASM you use. only if you use it, and how.

ok then..

Here is a part of my old OS, maybe it will help you. It is a boot loader, and a Loader, both are very reusable, and portable, even it use a ini file for the configuration. :

I dont know wich of the three to download .

Any of them

bubach, did you find those sources on how to produce a binary without needing jloc?

I have worked with TASM somewhile back. What I have read is that .com file is basically a binary file, which means is that you can rename it to a .bin file. I have done this with a few progs, and it worked as expected. The problem with TASM in 16 bit mode, is that you will run into file size problems on compilation, due to the .com file restraints. One of the reasons that I stopped using TASM is because of that problem, and the added headache when you have to start adding steps to get a binary file out of an .exe file. My philosophy is, the more steps you have added the bigger the headache gets when you have find a bug.