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A fundamental introduction to x86 assembly programming

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Re: A fundamental introduction to x86 assembly programming

#11

Post by rashkov »

VonGuard wrote: post #7

Anytime I see anything names my-asm or mini.asm or anything like that, it instantly yanks me back to college. We had this awesome teacher who had been at DEC for decades and taught at night. He'd bring in chunks of core memory, and tell us all about the old days in between course work. God I loved that class.

I'm reading Hackers by Stephen Levy right now and DEC's pdp computer era as described seems like a real golden age. I'd enjoy more history book recommendations along this line if anyone knows of some

Re: A fundamental introduction to x86 assembly programming

#12

Post by zatkin »

I'm planning on writing a calculator in x86 assembly, so this will probably be a good starting point for me. I want to do this to grasp a better understanding of assembly. I currently am looking to develop on my MacBook Pro. Does anyone have more resources and/or suggestions? Thank you.

Re: A fundamental introduction to x86 assembly programming

#13

Post by wmu »

tbirdz wrote: post #10
eugenekolo2 wrote: post #5

Am I the only one who feels the "intro to x86" market is oversaturated?

Seconding this. Is there even any advanced x86_64 assembly language material out there besides the AMD and Intel reference manuals?

Probably no. I think when you reach some level of understanding, you'll use manuals. Then you know what you're looking for. :)

Re: A fundamental introduction to x86 assembly programming

#14

Post by userbinator »

zatkin wrote: post #12

I'm planning on writing a calculator in x86 assembly, so this will probably be a good starting point for me. I want to do this to grasp a better understanding of assembly. I currently am looking to develop on my MacBook Pro. Does anyone have more resources and/or suggestions? Thank you.

That is a little vague. What type of calculator exactly? A GUI one, or just an expression parser/evaluator? For the latter, you might find this interesting:

http://www.hugi.scene.org/compo/compoold.htm#compo4

Re: A fundamental introduction to x86 assembly programming

#15

Post by wmu »

> The way the x87 FP stack works is a bit weird, and these days it’s better to do floating-point arithmetic using xmm registers

x87 allows to do calculations in extended precision, i.e. word width is 80 bits. SSE is limited to double precision (64-bit words). Also FPU has some advanced math instructions, like sin, cos, tan, exp, etc., and these operations will be available in AVX512F.

Re: A fundamental introduction to x86 assembly programming

#16

Post by userbinator »

gravypod wrote: post #9

Is there something like SPARC or other RISC architectures?

Yes there are... I wouldn't recommend starting with SPARC Asm though, it's nowhere near as fun as a CISC like x86, nor as easy as MIPS (which tends to be the "boring" go-to architecture CS courses use.) ARM is more interesting than MIPS and easier than x86.

Re: A fundamental introduction to x86 assembly programming

#17

Post by mafribe »

someoneElse123 wrote: post #3

This is a nice fundamental introduction, but where would I go to see how to actually run code?

I wonder if there is a nice and easy to use x86 simulator like the MARS simulator for MIPS [1]? Some place where I can run (step through) little x86 assembly programs study their effect of the each register.

[1] http://courses.missouristate.edu/KenVollmar/MARS/

Re: A fundamental introduction to x86 assembly programming

#19

Post by Timethy »

rashkov wrote: post #11
VonGuard wrote: post #7

Anytime I see anything names my-asm or mini.asm or anything like that, it instantly yanks me back to college. We had this awesome teacher who had been at DEC for decades and taught at night. He'd bring in chunks of core memory, and tell us all about the old days in between course work. God I loved that class.

I'm reading Hackers by Stephen Levy right now and DEC's pdp computer era as described seems like a real golden age. I'd enjoy more history book recommendations along this line if anyone knows of some

Sunburst the Ascent of Sun Microsystems. Terrific stories, so many lessons.

Re: A fundamental introduction to x86 assembly programming

#20

Post by jacalata »

rashkov wrote: post #11
VonGuard wrote: post #7

Anytime I see anything names my-asm or mini.asm or anything like that, it instantly yanks me back to college. We had this awesome teacher who had been at DEC for decades and taught at night. He'd bring in chunks of core memory, and tell us all about the old days in between course work. God I loved that class.

I'm reading Hackers by Stephen Levy right now and DEC's pdp computer era as described seems like a real golden age. I'd enjoy more history book recommendations along this line if anyone knows of some

The Soul of a New Machine, about building the first Data General machines.
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