A86 assembler package   V3.05        June 5, 1987
D86 debugger package    V2.24        June 5, 1987
Both entire packages are Copyright (C)1986-1987 Eric Isaacson.
All rights reserved.

This NEW305.ARC package is for those who have already downloaded 
one of the complete packages V3.00 through V3.04 of A86, and want 
to make the minor upgrade to V3.05.  The terms and conditions 
found in Chapter 1 of the full A86 package apply to this package 
as well.  This document tells you what you need to know about 
V3.05. 

The package also includes D86 V2.24, for those who have the 
entire V2.22 or V2.23 packages.



New Features

I changed the display of source file names from 5-per-line to
4-per-line, to accommodate the longer path names derived from 
A86.LIB libraries.

I've added recognition of SEGMENT AT in non-OMF mode, for MASM-
compatibility.  The directive "segname SEGMENT AT atvalue" is 
interpreted as if it were the directives "segname EQU atvalue" 
followed by "STRUC".

I've also added a couple of switches, at a user's request:

+C  causes the assembler to be sensitive to upper- vs. lower-case
    for all symbols, so that routines with lower-case names can 
    be created for linking to C programs.  WARNING: I provide 
    only limited support for this right now.  In particular, if 
    you use this option, you MUST give all built-in symbol names 
    in ALL CAPS.  And D86 doesn't recognize this yet-- although 
    D86 will correctly disassemble symbols containing lower-case 
    letters, you won't be able to refer to such symbols in D86 
    commands, because D86 will convert your references to all-
    upper-case.

-C  causes A86 to ignore upper- vs. lower-case in all symbol 
    names.

+S  suppresses the creation of the symbol-table (.SYM) file in 
    normal (no errors) assembly.  This is overridden if you give 
    an explicit symbols-file name in the invocation line.

-S  causes the symbol-table file to be created in all cases.


Bug fixes

There have also been the inevitable bugs discovered just after a 
major release.  Bugs fixed are: 

1. In V3.00 only, not in earlier versions, an erroneous source 
file was renamed to no extension, instead of a .OLD or .ERR 
extension as the assembler claimed.  A benign but highly 
embarrassing bug!

2. If a macro parameter occurred at the beginning of a line, 
then any following blanks were completely eliminated from the 
macro definition.  The definition should (and now does) reduce a 
sequence of blanks to one blank, not none.

3. The BOUND, Shift-rotate, and many 87 instructions did not 
accept size-specifiers in relocatable and/or forward-reference 
operands.

4. Near JMPs and CALLs between logical segments in OBJ mode were 
not supported in all cases.

5. If there were = or # operands in the invocation, and there 
were undefined symbols in subsequent source file names, then A86 
got the file names wrong in the undefined symbols listing.  A86 
also got the listing wrong for undefined symbols from library 
files.

6. Segment-override operators in 3-operand MOV instructions 
produced unexpected results.  I now outlaw this.

7. INC FOO,2 where FOO is relocatable or undefined didn't produce 
the correct code.  I've outlawed this as well: you probably want 
ADD FOO,2 anyway.

8. JMP $+5 is now MASM-compatible.

9. MOV B[1+BX],0 now assembles successfully.

10. There was a serious bug in versions 3.00 and 3.01, that 
caused fixup records not to be generated under certain conditions 
when modules had more than one segment being assembled.  This has 
been corrected.

11. There was a bug in Versions 3.00 through 3.02, in which MASM 
directive beginning with a period that should be ignored by A86 
were instead flagged with an error.  An embarrassing side-effect 
was that all subsequent new symbols caused an error also.

12. XREF 3.00 did not recognize double-quoted strings, and 
processed their contents as symbol references.

13. If a forward reference to a label had an indexing register, 
the register became part of the label's definition.

14. _TEXT declared in a GROUP directive misbehaved.

15. Certain classes of forward references to different segments 
in OBJ mode did not assemble correctly.

New D86 features

D86 V2.24 now supports the Sanyo 500 and 555 and the Tandy 2000 
computers.

There is also an embellishment to the memory window command: if 
you key in a digit and the cursor moves to an existing memory 
window that you didn't intend to reset, you can hit the ESC key.  
The existing window will be saved.