Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tektronix!tekgen!tekigm2!alanr
From: alanr@tekigm2.MEN.TEK.COM (Alan Rovner)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: More assembly questions about TSR development.
Message-ID: <4550@tekigm2.MEN.TEK.COM>
Date: 26 Apr 89 14:58:36 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Tektronix Inc., Beaverton, Or.
Lines: 30
Keywords:


Thanks to everyone who helped out with my previous questions regarding
assembly language issues.  But having crunched on that for awhile, I
have more questions regarding TSR development...

1.  Can a TSR be a .EXE file instead of a .COM file, at least during
development?  I use CodeView a lot to test the things I'm writing and it
only works with .EXE files.  If not, how does one go about testing their
TSRs?  Speaking of CodeView, is it possible to debug an Interrupt Service
Routine?  I don't think so, but I haven't explored it that closely.

2.  I've looked at a couple examples of working TSRs and noticed something
interesting.  They don't have a stack segment defined.  There is an
ASSUME CS:CODE,DS:CODE statement near the top but the stack isn't looked
at anywhere.  In fact, the linker gives a warning that the stack segment
is missing.  It doesn't seem to matter though, after running EXE2BIN it
works fine.  I'm a little confused about this.

3.  In order to do a TSR exit from a routine, one of the parameters needed
by DOS is the memory size to be reserved in 16-byte paragraphs.  I've seen
what look like tricky ways to determine this.  Is there an easy way to
find where the end of your code is and I guess divide that by 16 to get the
number of paragraphs?  I'm also a little confused about this too.

Thanks again for the help.  I can't seem to find any assembly gurus around
here.

Al Rovner
Tektronix Inc.
Vancouver, Wash.