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I'm trying to build the recently released Infinity Game Boy Color source code on my macOS El Capitan box. The original development environment was a Windows box, and I'm trying to modify the build scripts to work on Mac/Unix. I'm having trouble finding the source or a Unix binary of one of the project's dependencies, TASM v3.2. The link in the project's readme directs me to a win32 binary, and I can't seem to find a Unix binary on ticalc.org.

Was TASM ever available for Unix or macOS? Is the source code or any Unix binaries still available?

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  • Related Meta: Can I ask and answer questions related to the Infinity Game Boy Color source code?
    – JAL
    Aug 15, 2016 at 21:09
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    I have a licensed copy of TASM source but I am not sure I can release it, I can build a current version on Windows however under Visual Studio 2012 if that is of any help to you. I have been trying to contact Thomas as well to see if he would be okay with me putting the source for TASM (Telmark Assembler) on Git as a public repository, so if anyone knows how to contact him, let me know.
    – jess_askey
    Jan 19, 2017 at 0:22
  • @jess_askey wow, great to know that it still builds! I would be very interested in the source.
    – JAL
    Jan 19, 2017 at 13:00
  • I'd change refs to "Mac OS" to "OS X" on this site. Just for clarity. I know you stated the release name which made it sesewhat obvious. But on Retro the distinction is an important one.
    – user12
    Jan 19, 2017 at 19:40
  • How much assembler code does the project have that needs to be processed by TASM?
    – Thorbjørn Ravn Andersen
    Jan 24, 2017 at 9:14

3 Answers 3

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According to the release notes which accompany version 3.2, the Telemark Assembler was available for Linux starting with version 3.1. This included source code, which I'd imagine shouldn't be too hard to port to macOS. I get the impression this was only provided to registered users though, so obtaining it now may be rather difficult! (As pointed out by JAL, the original download page explicitly mentions that the shareware version is for DOS — although version 3.2 no longer runs under DOS, it's a 32-bit Windows binary.) Contacting the author directly might be worth trying; as JAL found out though, the listed ACM address no longer works.

The binary included in release 3.2 runs fine with Wine, so that may be one option to get a build running on a Mac. The Infinity source code builds its own instruction set table (99, see tasm99.tab — I'm assuming the full file is generated during the build), so replacement assemblers such as bergen (which claims to be a Telemark-compatible Z80 assembler) won't work unless they support the Telemark table format.

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  • Sent an email to Thomas Anderson's address in the readme, great idea. Will let you know if I hear anything back. Thanks.
    – JAL
    Aug 15, 2016 at 22:25
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    Aaand the mailer daemon rejected the email: User unknown; rejecting (in reply to RCPT TO command).
    – JAL
    Aug 15, 2016 at 22:26
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    Found the author's site via the wayback machine, it looks like you're right, only the DOS version was provided as shareware: web.archive.org/web/20090505050936/http://home.comcast.net/…
    – JAL
    Aug 15, 2016 at 22:30
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I found a port of version 3.2 for the Macintosh (OS 10.6+, Intel, 1998 version for OS9 / Classic) called OrgAsm, binary only.

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    This answer is useful, but would be even more useful if you gave some information from the page.
    – wizzwizz4 ♦
    Aug 16, 2016 at 8:56
  • @wizzwizz4: what kind of information would be useful? It seems to be a straightforward port, with additional integration into some environment I don't know anything about, so I can't summarize that. If you've some suggestions, I'll be happy to integrate them in the answer.
    – dirkt
    Aug 16, 2016 at 9:32
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    What it's ported from (UNIX version 3.2), what platform it's been ported to (OS 10.6+, Intel, 1998 version for OS9 / Classic), which processor families it supports (too many for this comment), etc.. Extra information that would help people reading your answer determine whether this tool is useful for them.
    – wizzwizz4 ♦
    Aug 16, 2016 at 10:06
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    Agreed with @wizzwizz4, this is a borderline link-only answer. Org-ASM might work for my needs if it is indeed a direct port of TASM. Thanks, I'll take a look.
    – JAL
    Aug 16, 2016 at 14:01
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    @JAL I almost flagged it, then I remembered that I'd be dealing with it if I did that. :-)
    – wizzwizz4 ♦
    Aug 16, 2016 at 16:54
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I've made a little more progress on this:

Thanks to an archive of halcyon.com from 2000, I am able to see that there was in fact a shareware version of TASM for Linux released, at least of version 3.1.

I found a mirror of tasm31.taz on FileGate, but binary does not work on my architecture:

➜  ~ tar -xzf tasm31.taz
➜  ~ ./tasm
zsh: exec format error: ./tasm
➜  ~ file tasm
tasm: Linux/i386 demand-paged executable (QMAGIC)

This should work on i386 machines, but not on any modern Mac platform. Still investigating...

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    That's an a.out executable. It won't even work on many modern Linux x86 systems -- distros frequently don't include support for it in their kernels.
    – Mark
    Oct 5, 2016 at 21:34
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    And while it doesn't work on modern Linux machines (I tried), objdump understands it, and it has symbols. So with a bit of effort (disassemble into source, assemble into ELF executable), one should be able to convert it into something that should run on modern i386.
    – dirkt
    Jan 19, 2017 at 10:11

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