-1

I am trying to find a good IDE to debug masm16 application. Unfortunatly, debug tools for DOS which i found is very unconvinient for me. (or i was not able to understand how they works) Do you know a way to debug 16 bit masm applications using IDE for Windows?

P.S. I know how to compile and run masm16 applications but it is very complicated for me to debug them.

tank0412
  • 23
  • 7
  • Questions asking us to recommend or find a book, tool, software library, tutorial or other off-site resource are off-topic for Stack Overflow. – jmargolisvt Nov 29 '17 at 17:16
  • 2
    Some StackOverflow users that still play with 16-bit DOS stuff recommend Turbo Debugger. (IDK, I'm not one of them. [16-bit DOS is obsolete and a waste of time to learn if you don't already know it for historical reasons](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/34748733/drawing-a-character-in-vga-memory-with-gnu-c-inline-assembly/34918617#34918617)). There's also BOCHS (the x86 emulator) which has a built-in debugger, but that's probably better for debugging boot sectors. – Peter Cordes Nov 29 '17 at 17:36
  • 1
    If you don't want to use crappy DOS tools, don't develop for DOS. Learn 32-bit or 64-bit assembly. If you have Visual Studio, I think it has a fairly good debugger built-in which you can use for non-16-bit assembly. – Peter Cordes Nov 29 '17 at 17:38
  • 1
    There are no debug tools that work well from Windows but Turbo Debugger is a 16-bit application you can run from your 16-bit emulator (or Virtual Machine) that has an intuitive text mode user interface. The Turbo-C IDE which comes with turbo assembler is a very good environment to do 16-bit development and debugging. The IDE is typical text mode but works very well. The problem is acquiring these older tools and installing them in a virtual environment. – Michael Petch Nov 29 '17 at 18:22
  • 1
    Another option if you are using 32-bit version of Windows is to install 16-bit Visual C++ (1.52c is the last 16-bit version) to do assembler and C development. It is a GUI IDE and supports 16-bit debugging. – Michael Petch Nov 29 '17 at 18:27
  • @MichaelPetch - I'm not aware of a release of Visual C / C++ 1.52 that includes MASM, so I've had to get MASM 6.11 separately. I have found that Visual C / C++ 1.52 and Masm 6.11 can be combined into a common directory tree, taking the latest versions of any duplicate files. – rcgldr Dec 01 '17 at 16:21
  • @rcgldr That is true : I had forgotten that I use to install both products separately. – Michael Petch Dec 01 '17 at 16:23

2 Answers2

1

See if you can find a copy of Visual C / C++ 1.52c and Masm 6.11 (ML.EXE). The files can be combined into common directories (for example, using ...\bin for all executables). This tool set will include the source level debugger CodeView. You also get Programmer's Workbench, a text mode IDE. There's also h2inc, which will convert a c include file into a masm inc file.

If running 64 bit windows, you'll need something like DOSBOX or Virtual PC running XP in 32 bit mode, or MSDOS in 16 bit mode.

rcgldr
  • 27,407
  • 3
  • 36
  • 61
0

For 16 bit Dos, I would use GRDB (LadSoft). If you are on Windows XP, the old "debug" command should work too (Kernel debugger). For windows, I would try to find an old version of Visual c++ 1.5x vintage.

Hope that is helpful

MEHM-
  • 98
  • 5
  • `debug.exe` hasn't been updated in 40 years and is really not very nice to program in from what I've seen. I really wouldn't recommend it to anyone. – Peter Cordes Nov 30 '17 at 03:08