IDE and Assembler for 8086/88

I generally use nasm (see here) and gdb for any assembler-related development nowadays. I used to use a86 and d86 but they suffer from the problems that:

  • they cost money so, in terms of bang per buck, nasm is infinitely better, literally so, since the buck denominator is zero :-)
  • they run only under Windows.
  • they don't support the latest chips.

I'm not too fussed about an IDE since I use Vim for editing, along with makefiles or cmd files for assembling it all.


I suggest emu8086. It has got IDE too, and it has some good example of assembly programming language.


For Windows (almost any version) I recommend EasyCode from Ramon Sala. It has an integrated visual IDE to create your apps and plenty of manuals from the creator's own hand. I spent some time flirting with the -also- very good Radasm but EasyCode is still developed as for 2012 with bug fixes and the like.