Turbo Assembler
| Turbo Assembler | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Borland |
| Initial release | 1989 |
| Stable release | 5.4
|
| Operating system | MS-DOS, Windows |
| Type | Assembler |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | Official webpage at the Wayback Machine (archived October 23, 2010) |
Turbo Assembler (TASM) is an assembler for software development published by Borland in 1989. It runs on and produces code for 16- or 32-bit x86 MS-DOS and compatibles for Microsoft Windows. It can be used with Borland's other language products: Turbo Pascal, Turbo Basic, Turbo C, and Turbo C++. The Turbo Assembler package is bundled with Turbo Linker and is interoperable with Turbo Debugger.
Borland advertised Turbo Assembler as being 2-3 times faster than its primary competitor, Microsoft Macro Assembler (MASM). TASM can assemble source in a MASM-compatible mode or an ideal mode with a few enhancements. Object-oriented programming was added in version 3. The last version of Turbo Assembler is 5.4, with files dated 1996 and patches up to 2010; it is still included with Delphi and C++Builder.
TASM itself is a 16-bit program. It will run on 16- and 32-bit versions of Windows, and produce code for the same versions, but it does not generate 64-bit x86 code. Turbo Assembler 5.0 (at least) also contains a 32-bit PE version of tasm called TASM32.EXE.