Turbo Assembler

Turbo Assembler (sometimes shortened to the name of the executable, TASM) is an assembler for software development published by Borland in 1989. It runs on and produces code for 16- or 32-bit x86 MS-DOS and compatibles or Microsoft Windows. It can be used with Borland's other language products: Turbo Pascal, Turbo Basic, Turbo C, and Turbo C++. The Turbo Assembler package is bundled with Turbo Linker and is interoperable with Turbo Debugger.

Borland advertised Turbo Assembler as being 2-3 times faster than its primary competitor, Microsoft Macro Assembler (MASM). TASM can assemble source in a MASM-compatible mode or an ideal mode with a few enhancements. Object-Oriented programming was added in version 3. The last version of Turbo Assembler is 5.4, with files dated 1996 and patches up to 2010; it is still included with Delphi and C++Builder.

TASM itself is a 16-bit program. It will run on 16- and 32-bit versions of Windows, and produce code for the same versions, but it does not generate 64-bit x86 code. Turbo Assembler 5.0 (at least) also contains a 32-bit PE version of tasm called TASM32.EXE.

Example[edit]

A Turbo Assembler program that prints 'Merry Christmas!':

.model small .stack	100h .data msg	db "Merry christmas!",'$' .code main	proc     mov ax, SEG msg 	mov	ds, ax 	mov	dx, offset msg 	mov	ah, 9 	int	21h 	mov	ax, 4c00h 	int	21h main	endp end	main 

See also[edit]

• Comparison of assemblers
• A86 - contemporary of Turbo Assembler
• MASM - contemporary of Turbo Assembler
• FASM - More recent x86 assembler

References[edit]

Notes

• Swan, Tom (1989). Mastering Turbo Assembler. Carmel, Indiana: Howard W. Sams & Company, Hayden Books division of Macmillan Computer Publishing. ISBN 0-672-48435-8. 2nd Edition, 1995 ISBN 0-672-30526-7.

External links[edit]

• Mastering Turbo Assembler: Programming with Objects
• GUI Turbo Assembler (TASM) : A 64bit MuItilingual IDE for Assembly Language with TASM & TLINK by Lakhya Jyoti Nath