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I'm in an Assembly class focusing on the intel 8086 architecture (all compiling / linking / execution comes from running DOS on win7 via DOS-Box).

I've finished programming the latest assignment, but as I have yet to program any program successfully the first time through, I am now stuck trying to debug my code.

I have visual studio 2010 and was wondering if there was some built in feature that would help me debug my assembly code, specifically, I'm looking to track the value of a variable.

Failing that, instructions pointing to a DOS-Box debugger (and instructions!) would be much appreciated. (I think I've been able to run codeview debug, but I couldn't figure out how to do what I was looking for).

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  • Can you post the code you have, will give it a try in free time? Commented Jul 5, 2010 at 22:13
  • the code is pretty complex, ~160 lines or so, so if you have a suggestion as to where to post it, I certainly shall, but I'm not going to clutter my question with it needlessly. Commented Jul 5, 2010 at 22:20
  • If you're in an Assembly class, does the teacher not recommend a toolset? Commented Jul 5, 2010 at 22:47

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You are generating 16-bit code, you have to break into a museum to find better tooling. Try Borland's, maybe the debugger included with Turbo C.

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I've never tried it, but I know people who used to rave about Watcom's compiler, which has since become open-source, including the assembler: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Watcom_Assembler
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Yes, indeed, you can use the debugger in VS to examine pretty much everything. Irvine's site has a section specifically on using the debugger here. You can examine registers, use the watch window, etc. He also has a guide for highlighting asm keywords if you need that.

Edit: as Hans pointed out, if you are using 16-bit instead of 32-bit protected, you'll need different tools. There are several choices, listed here.

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Borland's tools for DOS were called tasm, tlink, and tdebug.

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