4.1  WHAT IS THE MICROSOFT KNOWLEDGE BASE

The Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) is a collection of articles that is
maintained and used by the Microsoft Support personnel to answer
customer questions.  Included in the Knowledge Base are detailed how-to
articles, answers to technical support questions, bug lists, fix lists,
and documentation errors.  This Knowledge Base is available to all on
Microsoft's Internet Node.  An index of all the articles is available in
a file, index.txt.

4.2  HOW TO OBTAIN INDEX.TXT

    ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/developr/masm/kb/

This index still is available with the last entry dated Aug 96.

4.3  FILE FORMAT OF INDEX.TXT

The format of this file consists of three columns.

    Column One is the file type with the following meanings:
        FIX     - Bug Fix
        DOCERR  - Documentation Error
        INF     - Information
        PRB     - Problem
        BUG     - Bug

    Column Two is the path and file name in the following format:
        Qxxxyzz
    where:      The part, 'Qxxx', is Q followed by two or three numbers
                and represents the first subdirectory under the
                subdirectory,
            The part, 'y', is the next subdirectory under Qxxx, and
            The part, 'zz', when combined with .txt' is the filename.

    ****WARNING**** Some of the Qs are uppercase and some are lower
        case.  Unlike DOS, the filenames and directory names are case
        sensitive.

    Column Three is a short description of the file.

4.4  GETTING FILES

You can get all the files from the /developr/masm/kb directory without
navigating this very strange directory structure by using the path in
the get command.  As an example, let's say you want Q106399, a very
useful file if you use Visual C++ (see below).  Using the parsing rules
above, you can use the following get command:

    get q106/3/99.txt

4.5  HOW TO ACCESS USING WWW

Microsoft has removed the MASM option from the their www KB search.

4.6  SOME EXAMPLE FILES FROM THE MICROSOFT KNOWLEDGE BASE

Q86815  Mixed C and MASM with MASM Main Language, No C Run-Time
Q86816  Mixed C and MASM with MASM Main Language, C Run-Time
Q101264 Assembling Code Developed for MASM 5.x with MASM 6.x
Q106399 Using the Visual Workbench with MASM
Q110598 Spontaneous Assembly and MASM 6.11 Errors
Q123729 Accessing Command Line Arguments

I have found Q106399 particularly helpful since I am really upset that
Microsoft did not include direct support of MASM from within the Visual
Workbench.

Contributor: Raymond Moon, raymoon@moonware.dgsys.com
Last Changed: 9 Nov 96
------------------------------

Subject 5.  Pentium Instruction Macros

Macros that implement the new instructions available with the Pentium
processor are available from Intel.

    ftp://ftp.intel.com/pub/IAL/pentium/

The new macros are:
    CMPXCHG8B   - Compare and exchange eight bytes
    CPUID       - CPU Identification
    RDTSC       - Read Time Stamp Counter
    MOVTOCR4    - Move reg to CR4
    MOVFROMCR4  - Move CR4 to reg
    RDMSR       - Read Model Specific Register
    WRMSR       - Write Model Specific Register
    RSM         - Resume from SMM

Contributor: Raymond Moon, raymoon@moonware.dgsys.com
Last Changed: 8 Jan 95

------------------------------

Subject 6.  Microsoft’s MASM Newsgroup

Microsoft has create a whole family of newsgroups devoted to their
products.  One of these new newsgroups is devoted to MASM.  Its URL is

news:msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.masm

Contributor: Raymond Moon, raymoon@moonware.dgsys.com
Last Changed: 20 Apr 97

------------------------------

Subject 7.  MASM Information Available At www.microsoft.com     REVISED

Microsoft’s web site finally has a few pages to MASM.  This overview
page has links to the following areas: features, system requirements,
evaluation tools, standard, academic and volume pricing, FAQ, and
support policies.  The basic URL is:

    http://www.microsoft.com/catalog/display.asp?subid=22&site=239&pg=1

Contributor: Raymond Moon, raymoon@moonware.dgsys.com
Last Changed: 18 Mar 2000

------------------------------

Subject 8. How to Get the Patches for MASM 6.12, 6.13 and 6.14

There are patches available to patch MASM 6.11 to update for support
Pentium Pro and MMX instructions (Version 6.12) and AMD 3D instructions
(Version 6.13).  Numerous bug fixes have been added.  You do not need to
download each, ml613.exe contains everything to upgrade your 6.11, 6.11a
or 6.11d.  Again, these patches will not upgrade MASM 6.11c

    ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/softlib/mslfiles/
    ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/softlib/mslfiles/
    ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/softlib/mslfiles/

Contributor: Raymond Moon, raymoon@moonware.dgsys.com
Last Changed: 18 Mar 2000

------------------------------

Subject 9. MASM Free From Microsoft

9.1  WHERE TO GET MASM

MASM Version 6.11d is available on the Windows 98 Driver Developer Kit.
While the whole file is 18+ Meg file.  It can be downloaded in parts.
You will need two files.  The URLs are:

    http://www.microsoft.com/ddk/download/98/BINS_DDK.EXE (2.9 MBytes)
    http://www.microsoft.com/ddk/download/98/98SETUP.EXE  (1.9 MBytes)

After downloading each file, execute them to extract the files.  Then
run the setup program.  MASM is the ml.exe file in the 98ddk/bin/win98
directory.  It is version 6.11d that can be patched to 6.14.

9.2  WHAT THIS MASM IS NOT

This is not the same as purchasing MASM product.  The linker is 32 bit
and will not create 16-bit DOS programs.  Also, the Programmer’s Work
Bench nor CodeView for debugging are included in the full DDK.

NOTE: The linker that comes with the DDK will not produce 16-bit
applications for DOS.  To do this, you must have Microsoft’s Linker
version 5.63 that is available from Microsoft’s FTP site:

    ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/softlib/mslfiles/

9.3  JON KIRWAN MASM DOWNLOAD SITE

Jon Kirwan has a site that will walk you thorough downloading MASM and
other Microsoft tools that came with the commercial package (but not
all, as Microsoft has not released all of them). The URL to his site is:

    http://www.easystreet.com/~jkirwan/pctools.html

Contributor: Raymond Moon, raymoon@moonware.dgsys.com
Last Changed: 20 Feb 2000

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