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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?

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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 by jcl
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