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14HIST.DOC
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1987-07-13
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CHAPTER 14 RELEASE HISTORY OF A86 14-1
V2.10 June 1986. Initial public release of the MSDOS version of
A86. The last previous version ran under the Xenix
operating system on the Altos series of computers.
Upgrades from that previous version included:
* cleaning up the command invocation to allow default
output files
* insertion of full error messages, not just number codes
* automatic removal of error messages upon reassembly
* addition of features for compatibility with Microsoft's
assembler (PTR, LABEL, PROC, etc.)
* provision for ignoring certain keywords, for
compatibility (ASSUME, PAGE, SUBTTL, PUBLIC, EXTRN,
etc.)
V2.11 June 1986. A very slight upgrade. The RADIX command was
added, a couple of minor bugs were fixed, and formfeeds
were put into the documentation.
V2.12 Test release for Alan Tschetter and Charlotte Wood
V2.13 July 1986. Quick-fix release for a user who wanted A86 to
run on his 256K machine. I had foolishly assumed that
everyone had 512K by now. This release erroneously
mentions a "-s" option in the blurb that you get when you
type "a86" by itself. No such option exists; I realized
that the small-memory adjustment could be made
automatically; and I forgot to remove the message.
V2.14 Test release for Andy Harrington
V2.15 August 1986. Implemented COMMENT directive for
compatibility; added floating-point instruction set and DQ
and DT directives; fixed bugs.
V2.16 August 1986. Made internal changes to accommodate forward-
referencing in D86's patch-memory mode.
V2.17 Test release for Wang
V2.18 November 1986. Fixed 3 bugs: (1) DB,DW,DD,DQ,DT
directives in structures or the data segment caused a byte
of memory to be written to the object buffer (or in short-
memory systems, possibly to the source buffer). I have
fixed this serious bug, and also rearranged things so that
any future bugs of the same type cannot affect the source
file. (2) "MOV AX,BX," -- the trailing comma was not
flagged, and caused spurious extra code to be generated.
(3) Named STRUC followed by unnamed ENDS did not work
correctly.
V2.90 March 1987. Test release for .OBJ support.
14-2
V3.00 April 1987. Major upgrade:
* added support for linkable .OBJ files
* added pagination and indexing to manual
* added long constants and floating-point constants
* added A86LIB library tool and A86 support
* added ability to forward-reference variables
* added ability to add to and index forward references
* added 286 protected-mode instructions
* added NEC-specific instructions
* added option not to insert errors in source
* added option for long forward JMP for local labels
* added switch for default decimal
* added "=" equate compatibility feature
* added double-quoted strings compatibility feature
* underscores allowed within numbers
* leading $ and ? allowed in symbols, for compatibility
* parentheses no long required for most DUP right operands
* less type-checking for pointer arithmetic; compatibility
* numerous minor bug fixes
V3.01 April 1987. Some bug fixes and minor enhancements:
* original file had been renamed to no extension, not OLD
* some forward-reference and OBJ operands didn't work
* file name reporting in undefineds-list was sometimes off
* wider display columns, for longer LIB source file names
* segment overrides outlawed in 3-operand MOV
* forward references outlawed in numeric-operand INC/DEC
* add support for near jumps between OBJ segments
* add "S" suppress-symtab and "C" case-sensitivity switches
V3.02 May 1987. Some bug fixes:
* Jc $+5 altered to be MASM-compatible
* MOV B[1+BX],0 now works
* fixed a serious bug: OBJ fixup records were not being
generated in some multiple-segment modules
V3.03 May 1987. Bug fixes:
* A previous bug-fix had caused A86 to issue errors for
MASM directives beginning with a period, that A86 should
ignore. An embarrassing side-effect was that when this
happened, all subsequent lines containing symbols had
errors, as well! V3.03 fixes all this.
* XREF did not recognize the double-quote mark for strings
14-3
V3.04 May 1987. Bug fix: if a forward reference to a variable
had an indexing register as well, then the indexing
register became part of the definition of the variable,
and appeared in subsequent usages of the variable, even
when not explicitly given.
V3.05 June 1987. Fixed a couple more OBJ bugs, and added the
following features for MASM compatibility:
* recognition of SEGMENT AT in non-OMF mode
* ignore END directive in non-OMF mode
V3.06 July 1987. Test release for Don Gilbert.
V3.07 July 1987. Fixed bugs and added features necessary for
Turbo C support (+c, +f, +F switches; ignore DGROUP:).
Generalized the environment variable to include macro
files. Added the ampersand feature. Made = compatible
with MASM.