Turbo Debugger
Encyclopedia
Borland
Borland Software Corporation is a software company first headquartered in Scotts Valley, California, Cupertino, California and finally Austin, Texas. It is now a Micro Focus subsidiary. It was founded in 1983 by Niels Jensen, Ole Henriksen, Mogens Glad and Philippe Kahn.-The 1980s:...
. This tool was a full-screen debugger displaying both TP or TC source and corresponding assembly-language instructions, with powerful capabilities for setting breakpoints, watching the execution of instructions, monitoring machine registers, etc. TD could be used for programs not generated by Borland compilers, but without showing source statements; it was by no means the only debugger available for non-Borland executables, and not a significant general-purpose debugger.
Although Borland's Turbo Pascal
Turbo Pascal
Turbo Pascal is a software development system that includes a compiler and an integrated development environment for the Pascal programming language running on CP/M, CP/M-86, and DOS, developed by Borland under Philippe Kahn's leadership...
(TP) had useful single-stepping and conditional breakpoint facilities, the need for a more powerful debugger became apparent when TP started to be used for serious development. Initially a separate company, Turbopower, produced a debugger, T-Debug, and also their Turbo Analyst and Overlay Manager for Turbo Pascal for TP versions 1-3. Turbopower released T-Debug Plus 4.0 for TP 4.0 in 1988, but by then Borland's Turbo Debugger had been announced.
The original Turbo Debugger was a stand-alone product introduced in 1989, along with Turbo Assembler
Turbo Assembler
Turbo Assembler is an assembler package developed by Borland which runs on and produces code for 16- or 32-bit x86 MS-DOS or Microsoft Windows. It can be used with Borland's high-level language compilers, such as Turbo Pascal, Turbo Basic and Turbo C. The Turbo Assembler package is bundled with...
and the second version of Turbo C.
To use Turbo Debugger with source display, programs, or relevant parts of programs, had to be compiled with TP or TC with a conditional directive set which added debugging information to the compiled executable, which related source statements and corresponding machine code. The debugger would then be started (TD did not debug within the development IDE). After debugging the program would be recompiled without debugging information to reduce its size.
Later Turbo Debugger, the stand-alone Turbo Assembler
Turbo Assembler
Turbo Assembler is an assembler package developed by Borland which runs on and produces code for 16- or 32-bit x86 MS-DOS or Microsoft Windows. It can be used with Borland's high-level language compilers, such as Turbo Pascal, Turbo Basic and Turbo C. The Turbo Assembler package is bundled with...
(TASM), and Turbo Profiler were included with the compilers in the professional Borland Pascal and Borland C++
Borland C++
Borland C++ is a C and C++ programming environment for MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows. It was the successor to Turbo C++, and included a better debugger, the Turbo Debugger, which was written in protected mode DOS....
versions of the more restricted Turbo Pascal and Turbo C++ suites for MS-DOS
MS-DOS
MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...
. After the popularity of Microsoft Windows ended the era of MS-DOS software development, Turbo Debugger was bundled with TASM for low-level software
Low-level programming language
In computer science, a low-level programming language is a programming language that provides little or no abstraction from a computer's instruction set architecture. Generally this refers to either machine code or assembly language...
development. 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. The debuggers in later products such as C++ Builder and Delphi are based on the the Windows debugger introduced with the first Borland C++ and Pascal versions for Windows.
The final version of Turbo Debugger came with several versions of the debugger program: TD.EXE was the basic debugger; TD286.EXE ran in protected mode, and TD386.EXE was a virtual debugger which used the TDH386.SYS device driver to communicate with TD.EXE. The TDH386.SYS driver also added breakpoints supported in hardware by the 386 and later processors to all three debugger programs. TD386 allowed some extra breakpoints that the other debuggers did not (I/O access breaks, ranges greater than 16 bytes, and so on). There was also a debugger for Windows 3 (TDW.EXE). Remote debugging was supported.
Most of the information in the paragraph above, and much more, is to be found in documentation files supplied with Turbo Debugger, in particular "TURBO DEBUGGER TIPS AND HINTS", HELPME!.TD and "USING THE HARDWARE DEBUGGING FEATURES", HDWDEBUG.TD.
Turbo Debugger and emulation
The original 1.0 release of Turbo Debugger for MS-DOS will run under simple MS-DOS emulators (DOSEMUDOSEMU
DOSEMU, alternatively rendered dosemu, is a compatibility layer software package that enables MS-DOS systems, DOS clones such as FreeDOS, and DOS software to run under Linux on x86-based PCs ....
, in an MS-DOS Window in Windows 95
Windows 95
Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented graphical user interface-based operating system. It was released on August 24, 1995 by Microsoft, and was a significant progression from the company's previous Windows products...
, 2000
Windows 2000
Windows 2000 is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, business desktops, laptops, and servers. Windows 2000 was released to manufacturing on 15 December 1999 and launched to retail on 17 February 2000. It is the successor to Windows NT 4.0, and is the...
, 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.
The last MS-DOS version of TD.EXE, 3.2, does run successfully in the 32-bit Windows XP
Windows XP
Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...
NTVDM
Virtual DOS machine
Virtual DOS machine is Microsoft's technology that allows running legacy DOS and 16-bit Windows programs on Intel 80386 or higher computers when there is already another operating system running and controlling the hardware.-Overview:...
(i.e., in a DOS window, invoked with CMD.EXE), but TD286.EXE and TD386.EXE do not. Hardware breakpoints supported by the 386 and later processors are available if TDH386.SYS is loaded by including "DEVICE=