[Solved] Jumping back 1000 lines

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In x86 you don’t need a cascading sequence of jumps, since jmp can jump over the whole segment. Just a conditional jump like jne has a limited range. So you can change an errorneous conditional jump to a combination of an unconditional near jump and a conditional short jump:

As an example, change

.MODEL small
.STACK 1000h

.CODE
main:

top:
    mov ax, 1
    jmp bottom


ORG 1000h               ; A big block between top and bottom

bottom:
    cmp ax, 0

    je top              ; **Error** Relative jump out of range by 0F85h bytes

    mov ax, 4C00h       ; Return 0
    int 21h

END main

to

.MODEL small
.STACK 1000h

.CODE
main:

top:
    mov ax, 1
    jmp bottom


ORG 1000h               ; A big block between top and bottom

bottom:
    cmp ax, 0

    jne skip            ; Short conditional jump
    jmp top             ; Near unconditional jump
    skip:

    mov ax, 4C00h       ; Return 0
    int 21h

END main

TASM can do that automagically for you. Place a “JUMPS” at the beginning (or where you need it) of the file:

JUMPS

.MODEL small
.STACK 1000h

.CODE
main:

top:
    mov ax, 1
    jmp bottom


ORG 1000h               ; A big block between top and bottom

bottom:
    cmp ax, 0

    je top              ; TASM will change this line to a JNE-JMP combination

    mov ax, 4C00h       ; Return 0
    int 21h

END main

The 80386 instruction set (ISA) has an instruction for a near conditional jump. If your emulator supports the 80386 ISA (DOSBox does), you can tell TASM to use it. Insert a .386 directive:

.MODEL small
.386                    ; Use 80386 instruction set
.STACK 1000h

.CODE
main:

top:
    mov ax, 1
    jmp bottom


ORG 1000h               ; A huge block between top and bottom

bottom:
    cmp ax, 0

    je top              ; Correct jump because of '.386'

    mov ax, 4C00h       ; Return 0
    int 21h

END main

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solved Jumping back 1000 lines