need nasm on a disk 5.25

[chriscx1]

hello

As I don't have a serial wire to transfer files from my modern PC to old one (8086), I need NASM on a floppy disk 5.25

If someone could send me it

I will be very happy

thanks
Chris

[Frank Kotler]

I'm afraid you may have a real problem here, Chris. I do not have a functioning 5.25" floppy drive. I have a 3.5" drive, and that's a rare bird. I'm down to one readable disk for that.

You've got an actual 8086? With an actual 5.25" drive? Functioning? Running DOS, I presume? What version? Have you got interlnk and intersvr? If you can come up with a "nul modem" cable, that might be a plausible way to transfer files to your valuable antique.

Recent versions of Nasm, nominally for "dos" are in fact built for 32-bit "extended" dos. Won't run on an 8086. The last version of Nasm that ran on a 16-bit machine would be 98.? I don't recall the exact version. The last time I tried to run Nasm on a 16-bit machine - an 8088, actually - it crashed. I think it may actually have required an 80286. Not sure on that.

Up until fairly recently, we carried some really old versions of Nasm here, but when I just looked we don't seem to go back beyond 0.99. Dunno what happened there. So you may have a problem finding a build that will run on an 8086 even if you can find a way to transfer it. Are you in a position to compile Nasm yourself on your oldie, if we can come up with suitable source and a way to transfer it? I may have some pretty old versions on my machine - no guarantee.

I would suggest that you "cross assemble" on your modern machine, and transfer to your 8086 either with interlnk/intersvr or find a 5.25" drive for your modern machine. Nasm's output should run on the old machine no problem - if you do it right.

If you want to assemble on your old machine and can't get Nasm to run on it. Eric Isaacson's A86 might work, or an assembler called "arrow" - or maybe you can find versions of Masm/Tasm old enough to work. Good luck with it!

Best,
Frank

[rkhb]

...we don't seem to go back beyond 0.99...

I'm attaching nasm-0.98.39-Dos16.zip. I hope it helps a little 

viele grüße
ralph

[Frank Kotler]

Thanks, Ralph! I see your helpful answers over on SO, don't I?

Does that help you any, Chris? Apparently 5.25 drives are still available...

Best,
Frank

[rkhb]

I see your helpful answers over on SO, don't I?

Yeah, not so helpful as I wish due to my horrible English 

I see a problem with the 5.25" issue. As far as I remember the first PC had 360 kb drives and the later 1,2M drives and floppies showed some incompatibilities. @chriscx1: When you ask someone to produce a 5.25" floppy you should also mention the format.

viele grüße
ralph

[ben321]

I may be mistaken, but I don't think that there's any version of nasm.exe that will run on any version of DOS (it's a Windows program), let alone an ancient version of DOS (newer versions of DOS like 6.22 won't even run on an 8088 or 8086). You're talking like early 1980s computer technology here. Your best bet would be to find an a copy of a very old assembler that would have existed around the time that those computers were new. I think some of the oldest 80xx CPUs weren't even 16bit CPUs. They were 8bit CPUs, like other computers that existed at the time (like the Commodore64, Apple IIe, etc). So even something compiled in 16bit mode with NASM still probably wouldn't run on such ancient PCs.