X86 assembly doesn’t have to be scary
blog.benjojo.co.uk
X86 assembly doesn’t have to be scary
1–10 of 129 posts
Re: X86 assembly doesn’t have to be scary
#2I love the built-in demos!
Re: X86 assembly doesn’t have to be scary
#3If your intention is to avoid scaring newbies off, I'm not sure if 16bit real mode, PC boot process, BIOS services and all that arcana that follows is the best place to begin.
Re: X86 assembly doesn’t have to be scary
#4If your intention is to avoid scaring newbies off, I'm not sure if 16bit real mode, PC boot process, BIOS services and all that arcana that follows is the best place to begin.
That arcana felt liberating coming from a Timex 2068.
Different times, I know.
Re: X86 assembly doesn’t have to be scary
#5If your intention is to avoid scaring newbies off, I'm not sure if 16bit real mode, PC boot process, BIOS services and all that arcana that follows is the best place to begin.
Why not? If they're determined enough, they'll get it. I learned a lot back in the day by spending many hours with the book PC Intern and some other book on x86 Assembler.
Granted, I had a little experience with assembler on a C=64, but, I learned _that_ in a similar way.
Re: X86 assembly doesn’t have to be scary
#6Loved the article.
Then one can follow up with some MS-DOS classics.
https://www.amazon.com/Peter-Nortons-Assembly-Language-Book/...
https://www.amazon.com/Advanced-S-DOS-Programming-Microsoft-...
https://www.amazon.com/Peter-Norton-Programmers-Bible-progra...
https://www.amazon.de/PC-Intern-Programming-Encyclopedia-Dev...
Re: X86 assembly doesn’t have to be scary
#7If your intention is to avoid scaring newbies off, I'm not sure if 16bit real mode, PC boot process, BIOS services and all that arcana that follows is the best place to begin.
That arcana felt liberating coming from a Timex 2068. Different times, I know.
Different times - in X86 Assembly:
https://github.com/linker3000/Historic-code-PC-Pascal-and-AS...
Re: X86 assembly doesn’t have to be scary
#8Loved the article. Then one can follow up with some MS-DOS classics. https://www.amazon.com/Peter-Nortons-Assembly-Language-Book/... https://www.amazon.com/Advanced-S-DOS-Programming-Microsoft-... https://www.amazon.com/Peter-Norton-Programmers-Bible-progra... https://www.amazon.de/PC-Intern-Programming-Encyclopedia-Dev...
Obligatory mention: John Socha is the author of Peter Norton books as well as Norton Commander.
Re: X86 assembly doesn’t have to be scary
#9Loved the article. Then one can follow up with some MS-DOS classics. https://www.amazon.com/Peter-Nortons-Assembly-Language-Book/... https://www.amazon.com/Advanced-S-DOS-Programming-Microsoft-... https://www.amazon.com/Peter-Norton-Programmers-Bible-progra... https://www.amazon.de/PC-Intern-Programming-Encyclopedia-Dev...
One more from Mr. Norton: https://www.amazon.com/Peter-Norton-Programmers-Guide-IBM/dp...
It covers a wide range of interrupt routines, both DOS and the BIOS ones. Also, some PCJr sound chip programming got snuck in.
Re: X86 assembly doesn’t have to be scary
#10I think to many programmers assembly is the "GOTO" of programming languanges: From the day you start learning to program, you are told that all this fancy high-level-language stuff is there so you do not have to deal with assembly. So most people never go there.
I did go there, briefly, about ten years ago. It was wicked fun. But all in all, I may have written maybe 20 or 30 instructions of assembly in total. I did try to rewrite a few small, heavily-used functions from our code base in assembly only to discover that the code I came up with was practically identical to what the compiler emitted. At that point I figured that the people who told me that "you can't beat the compiler" were probably right and called it a day[0]. Alas, I never had the hardcore performance requirements that would make go back there. But it was fun to get a taste of it.
[0] At the same time, I was kind of proud that I did not get beat by the compiler. Then again, those functions were fairly trivial.