Successive versions of ML.EXE have been developed on a needs basis to include later Intel opcodes. The ML.EXE version supplied in the VCPP5 pack was ML.EXE version 6.15 which added support for the SSE2 Intel instruction set.
Emu8086 vs masm software#
In middle 2000 Microsoft re-integrated ML.EXE back into their VC98 commercial software development package with the processor pack as the downloadable file VCPP5.EXE which was licenced so that licenced end users of VC98 could redistribute the processor pack to other licenced end users of VC98 (VCPP5.EXE EULA) and all versions of Microsoft Visual C and Visual Studios have contained ML.EXE as a component since that time. With the release of the 6.14 patch, ML.EXE became a very reliable tool that supported Intel opcodes up to the early SSE instruction set.
Emu8086 vs masm drivers#
With the release of 32 bit versions of Windows with both the OEM win95 and WinNT version 4.0, Microsoft developed ML.EXE mainly for internal use as an operating system vendor and it was mainly available only through MSDN subscription for the development of device drivers but Microsoft developed patches for the last commercial version of ML.EXE that upgraded it from a 16 bit MZ executable to a proper 32 bit portable executable file that ran natively on the 32 bit Windows platforms. The last freestanding commercial version of the Mirosoft assembler was version 6.11d released in 1993 and retailed through the middle to late 1990s. Microsoft (R) Macro Assembler Version 6.00Ĭopyright (C) Microsoft Corp 1981-1991. The copyright string from the 1991 version of ML.EXE is as follows. The Microsoft Assembler has been in production since 1981 and is upgraded by Microsoft on a needs basis to reflect technology changes in both operating systems and processor hardware capacity.
Emu8086 vs masm code#
While recent versions of MASM only come with Visual Studio, its syntax is in widespread use in existing code and is also used as a guideline in the development of other assemblers, such as JWASM and Pelle's PoAsm assembler. This is because people often confuse the MASM and MASM32 licenses they are 2 unrelated projects. NOTE: Using MASM for operating system development is not prohibited in the license agreement although you may sometimes hear that. Version 6.11d was 32 bit object module capable using a specialised linker available in the WinNT 3.5 SDK but with the introduction of binary patches that upgraded version 6.11d, all later versions were 32 bit Portable Executable console mode application that produced both OMF and COFF object modules for 32 bit code. It is an archetypal MACRO assembler for the x86 PC market that is owned and maintained by a major operating system vendor and since the introduction of MASM version 6.0 in 1991 has had a powerful preprocessor that supports pseudo high level emulation of variety of high level constructions including loop code, conditional testing and has a semi-automated system of procedure creation and management available if required. While the name MASM has earlier usage as the Unisys OS 1100 Meta-Assembler, it is commonly understood in more recent years to refer to the Microsoft Macro Assembler. The Microsoft Macro Assembler is an x86 architecture assembler for MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows.