My information is coming from here. The assignment asks for a program that reads in no more than 20 characters, converts those characters to upper case, and then prints the input as capitals.
I have no idea how to access the input from int21/AH=0ah. I really can't ask a more precise question unless I understand what is linked above. Can someone explain? Also, I'm using TASM if that makes any difference. Also, I'm testing this on freedos.
UPDATE1:
Alright, thanks to your help, I believe I understand how the interrupt needs to be set up and behaves.
Setup: I have to designate a ds:dx where I want this buffer to exist
I have to set ds:dx to 20 (which sets the max number of characters the buffer can hold)
I have to set ds:dx+1 to 0 (which I think somehow set a min number of characters to read in)
Actually call int21/AH=0ah, which will go to ds:dx and interpret the preset bytes. It will halt the program while it waits for input
int21/AH=0ah will fill from ds:dx+2+n with my input (where n is the number of characters input including '\r')
My question is now, how do I do this. I've just looked through the x86 Assembly Language Reference again, but haven't been able to find anything helpful yet.
Code I've got so far
assume cs:code,ds:code
code segment
start:
mov ax,code ;moves code segment into reg AX
mov ds,ax ;makes ds point to code segment
mov ah,0ah
int 21h
mov ax,1234h ;breakpoint
mov ah,9
mov dx,offset message
int 21h
endNow:
;;;;;;;;;;ends program;;;;;;;;;;
mov ah,0 ;terminate program
int 21h ;program ends
message db 'Hello world!!!',13,10,'$'
code ends
end start
That DOS function retrieves a buffer with user input. See this table. It seems that program is using that call to pause execution waiting for the user to resume the program.
Edit: I just reread the question. I thought you were only asking what the function call did in your given source. If you want to read input of no more than 20 characters, you first need memory to store it. Add something like this:
bufferSize db 21 ; 20 char + RETURN
inputLength db 0 ; number of read characters
buffer db 21 DUP(0) ; actual buffer
Then fill the buffer:
mov ax, cs
mov ds, ax ; ensure cs == ds
mov dx, offset bufferSize ; load our pointer to the beginning of the structure
mov ah, 0Ah ; GetLine function
int 21h
How to convert to uppercase is left to the reader.