Turbo Debugger

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Turbo Debugger 1.0 (1989) debugging a "hello, world" assembler program
Turbo Debugger 1.0 (1989) debugging a "hello, world" assembler program

Turbo Debugger was a machine-level debugger for MS-DOS executables sold by Borland. In its prime, this tool provided a typical full-screen debugger with powerful capabilities for watching the execution of instructions, monitoring machine registers, etc. Later versions are able to step through source code that includes debug information, that was compiled with Borland compilers.[1]

Originally, Turbo Debugger was a stand-alone product introduced in 1989,[2] along with Turbo Assembler and the second version of Turbo C. Later, all three of these products were folded into the Borland C++ suite of products for MS-DOS. This suite, aimed at professional software developers, merged the Turbo C integrated development environment with several other tools such as a debugger, stand-alone assembler, profiler, etc. After the popularity of MS Windows ended the era of MS-DOS software development, Turbo Debugger was folded into the Turbo Assembler package, which was targeted towards low-level software developers such as device driver writers. For many years after the end of the MS-DOS era, Borland supplied Turbo Debugger with the last console-mode Borland C++ application development environment, version 5, and with Turbo Assembler 5.0. For many years both of these products were sold even though active development stopped on them. With Borland's reorganization of their development tools as CodeGear, all references to Borland C++ and Turbo Assembler vanished from their web site, marking the end of the Turbo Debugger era. The current debuggers in products such as C++ Builder[3] are based on the Windows debugger introduced with the first Borland C++ version for Windows.

[edit] Turbo Debugger and emulation

The original 1.0 release of Turbo Debugger runs in MS-DOS emulation (DOSBox; DOSEMU; Windows 95, 2000, etc.) The later versions attempt to control the underlying machine in a way not allowed by the host operating system (in which the emulator is running) and therefore do not work.[4]

[edit] References

  1. ^ This paragraph is based on actual use of Turbo Debugger in an MS-DOS emulator. See illustration.
  2. ^ See this ad
  3. ^ C++Builder product page
  4. ^ This paragraph is based on running the actual debugger in DOS emulators.
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