pushbx wiki

Early May work - created

ecm (ecm@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-05-11T16:49:53+00:00

Early May work 2026-05-10 IntList For the capital-P L command (add all matching hyperlinked entries to preserved edit files list), resume the hyperlink search at the prior match rather than starting anew. This reduces the time for capital-P L "21.4402" (which adds 32 entries) from more than 4s to about 1.7s.

When 0 paragraphs free is not the same as 0 paragraphs free - created

ecm (ecm@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-05-08T16:58:21+00:00

When 0 paragraphs free is not the same as 0 paragraphs free Recently I returned to lDOS's memory allocation code that handles LMCBs and UMCBs. I'd intended to determine the amount of changes needed in order to make the allocation more compatible to MS-DOS v5, as in coalescing all free blocks in (only) the area being scanned. In particular, with COMPAT=NOCOLLECTALLMCBS, lDOS would end the scan early if a first fit match was found. MS-DOS would scan to the end of the area even for first fit. (For…

April/May work - created

ecm (ecm@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-05-03T16:29:05+00:00

April/May work 2026-05-03 lDOS kernel * Replace entries in the int 21h DISPATCH table for user stack functions (33h, 50h, 51h, 62h, 64h) by servernoop which acts like a DOS v1 style error (AL = 00h, CF unchanged). This avoids the inevitable crash if one of these functions is called from a server call (int 21h function 5D00h).

Late April work - created

ecm (ecm@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-04-28T18:56:23+00:00

Late April work 2026-04-26 lDebug * For loader MOVE commands and N EXT installation, detect "no EBDA present" if MEMDISK installed itself below an EBDA. This appears to be correct. * Document MEMDISK EBDA fixes in the news-r11 section of the manual. tractest/convlist.pl * Improve use with gcc-compiled FreeDOS kernel, recognise .ptext and IB sections to set gccsections variable. Also, only dump hash_section_file_offsets once.

Mid April work on IntList and the list - created

ecm (ecm@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-04-19T16:10:30+00:00

Mid April work on IntList and the list 2026-04-19 webecm * Mention that TracList is written in perl. * Add section and news item for IntList. This refers to the new IntList only repo. IntList * Update the commandline with commands Space, Enter, Backtick, and Tab. * Refactor the big hyperlink regexp pattern and share it for all four users. Based on suggestions on perlmonks.org * Treat SF= as a register in hyperlinks, match it to REG = HEX subfn HEX

Early April work on IntList, lDOS boot, lDebug - created

ecm (ecm@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-04-12T16:07:50+00:00

Early April work on IntList, lDOS boot, lDebug 2026-04-12 This week I got IntList into a state where it does most things I want it to do. tractest/intlist.pl * Highlight potential links. * Highlight references to tables too. * Allow marking the first link using Tab. * Allow to tab through visible links. * Cycle back to first visible link after the last one. * Re-calculate firstlinkline every time the pane is redrawn.

Early April work on the list, lDOS boot/instsect - created

ecm (ecm@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-04-06T15:10:08+00:00

Early April work on the list, lDOS boot/instsect 2026-04-06 This week I contributed some to "the list", a project for updating Ralf Brown's Interrupt List. The RBIL was last updated on 2000-07-16. lDOS kernel * In the manual note that patldos is available both as an 8086 NASM DOS program and as a C program.

Late March work on the debugger and kernel - created

ecm (ecm@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-04-03T19:09:58+00:00

Late March work on the debugger and kernel 2026-03-29 This week I also finished my stackoverflow.com Q&A and companion blog post on NASM label delta arithmetic. I have espoused the use of this for years, but there wasn't a canonical explanation to refer to yet. BTTR Software bootmgr After seeing it listed

What is a debugger and how can it help me diagnose problems?

ecm (ecm@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-03-30T09:28:43+00:00

What is a debugger and how can it help me diagnose problems? 2014-08-19 answerRaedwald linkspam

Comments on label delta arithmetic - created

ecm (ecm@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-03-28T13:25:24+00:00

Comments on label delta arithmetic Today I posted a stackoverflow question and answer on how to do arbitrary calculations on assembly language labels, How can I do arbitrary calculations on assembly language labels?. As a companion to that question, here is a collection of comments in which I have referred to label delta arithmetic before.

LZ-style match copy in a window-sized circular buffer - created

ecm (ecm@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-03-28T10:27:22+00:00

LZ-style match copy in a window-sized circular buffer I consider this code "a small masterpiece of 8086 assembler programming", unlike LZEXE's online depacker which buffers the entire depacked data. This code enables streaming decompression with a buffer exactly the size of the match window, for arbitrarily large streams of data.

Late mid March work on lDebug &c - created

ecm (ecm@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-03-22T17:57:58+00:00

Late mid March work on lDebug &c 2026-03-22 WarpLink Emit a THEADR (Translator Header Record) to the wllist object file, to conform to the specs and not use a stale filename in the Module column of the .map file segpart list. Reference to the OMF guide is in the changeset message. tractest

Early mid March work on several bits and bobs - created

ecm (ecm@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-03-15T17:40:05+00:00

Early mid March work on several bits and bobs 2026-03-15 patchini * Extract lib.asm from patldos assembly language port * Move the cut function into lib.asm * Extract msg.asm from patldos * Re-use lib.asm in patchqry.asm * Add option define _INCLUDEPATCHQRY for patldos.asm * Extract messages from patchqry.asm into msg.asm * Add sections to assembly language sources (CODE, DATA, and BSS) * Enable assembling both tools together * Call patchqry as a subfunction from patldos.asm…

Early March work on lDebug, WarpLink, ident86, and patchini - created

ecm (ecm@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-03-09T18:43:41+00:00

Early March work on lDebug, WarpLink, ident86, and patchini 2026-03-08 This week I uploaded a new branch to the lDebug repo, updating the sources to build with a makefile that assembles multiple object files, then links them using the WarpLink linker.

Late February (+ early March) work on WarpLink - created

ecm (ecm@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-03-04T17:14:00+00:00

Late February (+ early March) work on WarpLink 2026-03-01 WarpLink * Bugfix, read back the tempwllist structure after the innermost loop may have run, to update it with twlListUsed set to twlUsedListItem. * Fix to preserve the ?collectfunction across the call to the innermost loop. This bug took me more than 60 minutes to properly diagnose. * Fix repeated wllist entry crossing the boundary of a LEDATA block. The prior code assumed that the LEDATA boundary would always coincide with a te…

Alignment calculation in three instructions - created

ecm (ecm@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-02-27T17:11:42+00:00

Alignment calculation in three instructions Found in a 2025-08-29 changeset of the ecm fork of WarpLink: mov bx, [alignment_table + bx] ; bx = alignment mask and ax, bx neg ax and ax, bx and neg and. That's odd. I assume it works because I would have worked it out at the time but it's not intuitive.

Late mid February work on WarpLink - created

ecm (ecm@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-02-25T16:53:47+00:00

Late mid February work on WarpLink 2026-02-22 lDebug A new lDebug release, r10, has been uploaded. As part of the release three changesets were created: * LSM update and indicating the r10 release date in the manual's News chapter. * Branch named for release10. * Uncomment the r11 future news section in the manual. Also, the release is now listed as a news item on the ecm webpage. WarpLink

Recent WarpLink tests - created

ecm (ecm@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-02-16T14:03:36+00:00

Recent WarpLink tests These tests were written to test several of the wlcalc and wllist features during their development. They're all stored in The scriptlets The basic assemble and link scriptlet looks like this (as of the most recent WarpLink revision - some of the switches require a newer revision than others). It assembles the test object file, then links it using the local

Early mid February extensions to WarpLink - created

ecm (ecm@undisclosed.example.com) — 2026-02-15T21:44:37+00:00

Early mid February extensions to WarpLink This is not actually a regulation Sunday blog post as I didn't prepare it on the HP 95LX, due to the place I usually write these being closed for the carnival days. This week I prepared some new extensions to the WarpLink OMF linker, most of which was originally written in 1989 through 1993, and released to the public domain in 1999. I have been working on WarpLink since 2023.

blog:pushbx:2025:core04_blogo.png - created

ecm (ecm@undisclosed.example.com) — 2025-11-04T16:41:44+00:00