naraku9333 Posted February 7, 2006 Report Share Posted February 7, 2006 This semmester I am taking an assembly language class (introductory level) and I will not be able to buy my text book for about a week so I am looking for online reading material to get a bit of a jump start. All I have found so far is many refferences to books on the topic and some apparently old sites (dealt with 16 bit ASM only). Also, I believe the instructor is going to be using Microsoft Macro Assembler in class; will I have any pitfalls using NASM or YASM at home or would I just be better off using MASM? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
CurlingSteve Posted February 7, 2006 Report Share Posted February 7, 2006 You'll get a feel for assembly programming with any of those assemblers.And the concepts for 16 bit programming apply to 32 (or 64) bit as well.It's more a case of how small you need to break a task down to than anything else. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
jcl Posted February 7, 2006 Report Share Posted February 7, 2006 (edited) This semmester I am taking an assembly language class (introductory level) and I will not be able to buy my text book for about a week so I am looking for online reading material to get a bit of a jump start.You'll want the IA-32 Architecture Software Developer's Manual (2/3rds down the page). Volume 1 covers the basic architecture and Volumes 2A and 2B are the instruction set reference. Volumes 3A and 3B are interesting but you shouldn't need them unless you're doing operating system work. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 of Volume 1 give a good overview of IA-32 without requiring any knowledge of assembly. If you have an AMD processor the Athlon/Opteron optimization guides include a nice overview of the AMD microarchitecture to supplement the Intel manuals.Also, I believe the instructor is going to be using Microsoft Macro Assembler in class; will I have any pitfalls using NASM or YASM at home or would I just be better off using MASM?MASM is fairly potent macroassembler. Neither NASM nor YASM are completely compatible nor do they come close in terms of features. If the instructor avoids using the high-level features of MASM you might be able to translate their code into something [NY]ASM can understand but going the other way could be a problem. Edited February 8, 2006 by jcl Quote Link to post Share on other sites
naraku9333 Posted February 8, 2006 Author Report Share Posted February 8, 2006 Thanks guys. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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