Re: TASM revisited


k_jh77@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Hello all!

Just one quick survey. Suppose that I have a modified source code for
Borland's Turbo Assembler 32bit version. Do you think that it would be
beneficial to port it to for example to Linux or FreeBSD?

Because that would be relatively simple. Just replace those ca. 20
operating system interface primitives in the assembler, and
reassembling the whole package, maybe using FASM or NASM, or what have
you. Textual conversion of sources would take some time (currently MASM
syntax), but it's nothing special. Of course it still would produce an
OMF modules for 80x86 architectures. But at least it would run on Linux
and variants.

If we don't consider TASM's current copyright situation (which belongs
to Paradigm), what do you think in general? I think it's abandonware,
YMMV. I have spent my last two years disassembling and reverse
engineering this wonderful assembler, and now it is in a point where I
have a pretty much full specs for it's inner workings, commented all
it's ca. 2000 functions, it's data structures, the whole 75000 lines of
assembly, and the byproduct is what some might call a source code.

I'm just interested in general, what do you think about TASM? Would you
use it if it was updated with latest instructions and if it works under
Linux or something?


Well, abandonware or otherwise, I wouldn't want to be the one posting
that code. That's a lawsuit waiting to happen. :-(

Yes, it would be cool to port it to *nix. But simply modifying a
disassembled source listing is a sure copyright violation in every
sense of the word.

What would be *better* is for you to create specifications for a
TASM-work-alike based on your reverse engineering and get a different
team to implement those specs (i.e., clean-room reverse engineering).
I don't know of there are enough people willing to put in that kind of
effort around here (75KLOC is a *lot* of code to write, test, debug,
and document), but you might try. The NASM project started up with
less.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde

.

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