I'm new to assembly and I'm scanning the forum (and the net) for information on assembly in general and fasm in particular.

I've found links to decard.net regarding more extensive win32 include files and other articles, however the site seems to be unavailable so my question is this is permanent and if it is, if the files/articles are hosted somewhere else.

cheers
/michael

http://web.archive.org/web/20060212104616/http://www.decard.net/

The last scan of web archive is of February 12th 2006. Pretty old, or the site goes down long time ago or web archive stop scanning it.

GREAT !!

Thank's alot.

Need any of these?

i would like copy of my old tutorial please

Some of that stuff is inside Fresh IDE

http://fresh.flatassembler.net/

If you want the TAJGA FASM Tutorial

I have it, but no idea if it is outdated.

thanks...
for sure it's now outdated... it starts with DOS stuff.

I was right at a time that starting with DOS is better for assembly, but now i think that it's not good to push people back to DOS.

Well, Vista isn't even as gfx compatible with DOS demos (e.g. Hugi) as XP!

However, at least DOS is a common API, and stuff written for it will mostly run either in Windows or OS/2 or FreeDOS or DOSBox. (Or you could say PE .EXEs will run in HXRT or Wine or Windows ... or Linux will run on Linux or BSD or Cygwin.)

vid wrote:



This is an obsolete approach. Now you can no longer push "back" to DOS,
rather forward to DOS.



This is simply wrong. There is no DOS inside Windoze, and

http://board.flatassembler.net/topic.php?t=5626

you push people ^^^ into problems (there are MANY such topics
in various forums around)

Also .CHM is maybe not the preferred text format for DOS

Nowadays, DOS a a standalone alternative OS , not a toy inside Windoze

I got this from the link to the webarchive above.

But DOS is almost dead.

If somobody still be developing it, let say to be a 32 bit console OS, maybe some of us would be interested in it. But is a 16 bit downgraded unix like clon bad done.

Sorry for the CHM, i forgot other OSes users.

By the way 7-Zip is able to unpack CHM to it's original content files.

www.7-zip.org

DOS isn't dead, and there are 32-bit DOSes. Besides, FreeDOS 1.0 just came out fairly recently, and they still plan on adding more things. And don't forget various DJGPP lib/tool ports, HXRT, DOSLFN, MAME, and FASMD (among other things) that are still supported.

P.S. Yes, there are indeed quite a few projects that are dropping DOS support soon (or already have, like Raine or Crafty). This is due more to the developers losing interest and being too busy with other things (as well as their naive bias against DOS).

EDIT: Does DOSBox or DOSEMU count? Those two projects are reasons why DOS boot floppies aren't used as much (well, that plus some cpus don't have the drive!).

What you can do in DOS better than in Windows/Unix?

Even CPU's are optimized to execute 32-bit code, so DOS16 is not even faster than their windows or linux ports.

Even modest computers like 486 could execute a micro-frebsd wich requiere 4 mb of RAM.

In my opinion is better a unix shell than DOS.

I just see one thing in which DOS could have a roll today: EDUCATION.

1. Education, as first experience for kids programming logo.

2. Education to poor countries that can't affort big investments in new technology. (little usefull if $100 computer becomes massive)

3. Education of system internals and intel architecture, computer organization, and retated stuff in university studies.

None real world application, benefits from DOS today.

Of course if you like/love it that's fine, like Amiga or Atari fans.

And NTVDM ? Not for me



Some machines rather than CPU's. You can install DOS nervertheles from
a CD or with some luck USB drive. After formatting the 500 GB HD covered
with 1 (one !!!) NTFS partition over all the 500 GB

Considering the DRM/WGA/TCPA/HOG frustration on Vista

http://board.flatassembler.net/topic.php?t=6703

and dropping support for Windaube 98/ME (and 2K soon), DOS becomes
more and more an alternative There are already some apps working
on DOS but no longer on Win ME/98



Protect your privacy maybe



True. But there are 32-bit DOS apps and 32-bit DOS'es
Fater than Winux/Lindows ports



Like the QEMU test HD image ? And what can you do in it ?



OK. Last problem to solve: provide a black hole eating all the" old"
Vista-incompliant <2GHz machines

There is no privacy, especially if you use electronic devices.

And what can you do in DOS?

Vista is not everything, between DOS16 and Vista are many good cost/benefit options.

If i need an old OS, i certanly prefered windows 2000 or NT 4.0.

NT 4.0 boots in seconds and need just 16 mb of RAM. For many things is pretty stable and cool.

If need/wants directx and joystick support there is Windows 2000, i like it more than XP.

Many people are interested in extended support for it, so it's probably have some kind of support in the future.

The is also Unofficial ServicePack 5 for Windows 2000.

But DOS support is almost dead. AFAIK the DOS port is no longer de main develpment plataform of any project. MAME, Rain, and even FASM offer support for it, but it is not the main development plataform.

But i respect all of you that love DOS and want it alive forever. Just not my case.

yumka, you don't understand. No size fits all. Nothing "new" is better at everything. Compatibility fades because people just don't care (ahem, dash vs. bash anyone?). We would all still be using 486s (and comfortably, I might add) if developers would target them, but most OSes do NOT run (well, if at all) on a 486. My first 486 ran King's Quest 6 (an excellent commercial game, cost $1 mil to make), but 7 required a Pentium (and for no good reason either). It your old cpu still works, why throw it out??

People just don't care, they'd rather do things their way even if it only works on 10% of computers than work in multiple OSes. "Needs x and y and z" is usually unnecessary. Bad design, too many resources, not enough care I guess (IMO). Mouses, windows, networking, it's just layer upon layer upon layer (C++ or C's fault?? maybe, maybe not) which eventually bloats everything if not handled well. (I'm not saying everything is crap, but it could be much better.)

Who likes having to rely on GCC 3.x or MSVC Express for everything? (Bloat city!) Who wouldn't prefer that their older Pentium also ran XP? The whole "configure/make/install" thing can be a pain, and DLL hell is still a problem. Just because we have faster processors, more memory, and bigger storage doesn't mean we've truly advanced and learned from our mistakes.

I'm not talking about market share or business use or any of that garbage (but see Cash Register). I'm simply saying that DOS does some things and does them well. It is a "paradigm" (? ... see PocketDOS), not just a single product (e.g. MS-DOS). Windows or OS/2 are the continuing results of trying to commercially sell and improve it, as are a few other "distros". Can you make a useful Windows floppy boot disk? Can your preferred Linux distro these days run on a 486? No.

Runs on 16-bit cpus, non-graphical CLI, short filenames, no virtual memory ... Are we talking about DOS? Nope, Minix 2.x (which can run within DOS)! Surely I think "DOS" is as good as that is or was (way better apps, too: Arachne, Mpxplay, GCC/G++, VIM, VILE, GNU Emacs, OpenGEM, Scream Tracker, Impulse Tracker, Fast Tracker 2, SJGPlay, DOS Navigator, DOSLFN, DesqView, UHarc, Wolf3d, Doom, Quake, ROTT ($), Ken's Labyrinth, BioMenace, Duke3d ($?), Ardi's Executor (??), Pixel ($) image editor, etc. ... some of these are still sold!). Are these not "real world" enough? Are OSes other than "Windows/Unix" not valid these days?

Main development platform? It could be, how would you know otherwise? Just because something targets multiple OSes first doesn't mean any port is useless. The only port that is useless is either a broken one or a non-existant one. Not everyone ports to DOS, but that's their fault, not DOS's. DOS support ain't dead as long as DJGPP, OpenWatcom, FreeBASIC, FPC, HXRT, etc. still support it. (Way, WAY too many apps work w/ DJGPP to call DOS support "dead" ... unless you have an x64 port of Windows, then you're screwed without DOSBox or QEMU, BOCHS, etc.)

EDIT: "unix shell better than DOS"? What about 4DOS or the DJGPP ports of bash, Perl, Python, Lynx, p7zip, etc.? Do those not count? Ruby can multithread in DOS, too.

P.S. 700th post, this is! Good thing it shows my appreciation for DOS!

unfortunately, in some areas (lot of boring procedure calls) they can perform better than average assembly code.

I understand your point rugxulo, and of course there is people for everything. Not all need a DeepBlue.

But I hear DOS and remember the billions of crashes, reboots, freezes.
Many layers in NT technology are for making a fault tolerant OS, is not so bad. Win9x technology for me is a DOS extension. So the same sh*t.

But I agree that MS is in the wrong direction. I also hate bloatware. I don't like framework, new DirectX crap of many DLL's versions for D3D.

1 Gb OS is crap.

But in the long run your aproach will cost more than buy new hardware

Wise decisions buying hardware/software is some kind of art mixed with a litle of good lock

Just for example a 486 without power savings will cost more than a P3 just for electricity bills. I'll prefer to enjoy playing KingQuest 7 than paying extramoney to Enron or whatever comany name is.

You CAN have them if you want. With XP you can't - the booting and
re-storing/-install times are too long



If you don't use them and the power stuff works on your P3

I started with windows programming, I never learnt any DOS assembly . I know the basic idea of how to do DOS assembly, but practically, I've never needed to program for DOS.
I started learning assembly language using the ThunderVB addin for VB6 , allowing inline asm . Then I moved onto FASM
If I remember correctly I started programming in asm at the beginning of 2005.