Is there an assembler/editor for the PCjr?

[Tyrop]

Does anyone know of an editor that has an integrated compiler so that I would not have to keep saving and exiting to DOS to compile an assembly language program? If not, can anyone suggest the easiest way to write assembly language programs on the PCjr?

[Brutman]

Ugh, the silence is deafening .. we need more programmers!

MASM 2.0 definitely runs on the Jr, but it doesn't have an editor or integration of any type. Something like the IDE in Borland Turbo Pascal 3.0 would be great for the Jr, but I don't think it exists for an assembler. (Maybe the first version of TASM works?)

In general, I don't do my programming on the PCjr. I do it on a 386-40 because it's just so much more productive - VGA, big and fast hard drive, and lots of memory. Going back to the edit/compile cycle on a Jr would drive me nuts.


Mike

[Vorticon]

You may want to pick up a parallel zip drive on ebay. There is a DOS driver for it and it will allow you to use it as a virtual hard drive with up to three 32MB partitions. You should then be able to install and use MASM 5.1 or Borland Turbo Pascal 5/6 (the latter includes an assembler with a nice IDE interface). As Mike suggested, using a 386 would be the easy way out if you don't mind maintaining 2 systems.

Walid

[Brutman]

That driver (PalmZip) is so slow .... not much faster than the floppy drive, but at least you get 100MB with it.

On a related topic, I'd like to find a copy of Borland TASM 4 or 5, or something in that timeframe. Some of my DOS programming needs it. There are copies of TASM 5 on eBay, but they want retail prices for them. Does anybody know of a good source for a used copy with the original books?


Mike

[Tyrop]

Thanks for the responses! I think I have MASM 2.0 somewhere. What editor would you have used with it? Does MASM 5.1 have an editor? The oldest computer I have besides the PCjr (and an Atari 130XE) is a Pentium II running windows 98. It has a 5.25 floppy but I ran into the problems described by Mike when I used that drive to write to disks formatted on the PCjr. THey became unreadable. The parallel zip drive idea sounds like a good idea even if it is slow.

[Vorticon]

Yes, MASM 5.1 does have an editor. The external zip drive while slow is still quite usable and definitely expands the Jr's capabilities. Additional RAM wouldn't hurt either.

Walid