[Nasm-devel] Mere Lurking Ends

[Jonathan <jon...@gm...>]

Though I am working on a publication in C, NASM has been my
favorite tool, since I have yet to find a decent, 32-bit
debug.exe, and POSIX+UNIX+Linux+GNU-coreinetutils are way more
fun than DOS.  I hope to eventually be able to submit a rewrite
of NASM in NASM for my 16-bit XT with FreeDOS and my 32-bit P-III
with Linux with a 1600x1200, 32bit frame-buffer and my 64-bit AMD
with XP with Cygwin with X or Linux with X, in one self-contained
file with the file headers and enough of the standard C library.

However, if something is not written in C, it just isn't portable
enough to invest enough time into maintaining it.  I can still
use the source code for the standard library for the single, 360K
floppy machine as a good starting point for floating-point with a
machine with an optional FPU.  I just got side-tracked trying to
figure out how to write the little, "This program is not for DOS"
script in the 32-bit mode of NASM for the 16-bit mode of the O/S.

;Without making it too easy, we could arrive at something near...
.16bit  call .1 + 90h*65536 + 90h*256*65536
         db "This program does nops in sixteen bits..."
.1      pop  edx; ndisasm -b16 will translate edx to dx;
         inc  edx
         inc  edx
         mov  ah, 9
         int  21h
         mov  ah, 4Ch
         int  21h

I don't have any way of knowing what license would be the best
for such a thing, but everything that the developers of NASM have
done has been really good for aspiring developer-hobbyists such
as myself.  I really appreciate it, and I am going to do as much
as I can toward keeping the dust knocked off of your beautiful
sources.  It would be cool to have all kinds of additional things
in the contributed, non-maintained part.  NAGOA.inc of the RADIDE
or whatever (RASN?) and the whirlwind tutorial on the tiny ELF or
maybe a whole bunch of snippets...  HRM.  K.  I gotta go.  I just
wanted to have my name in here with the greats.  Thank you!