Re: Which assembler (or compiler) to start with? (newbie question)


Marion asked:

Hello all,

I'm going to be taking assembly next semester and I'm bored here
during Christmas vacation (imagine that). :p

There were some ASM-code posted in this group recently, if you
try to figure the details you might find yourself less bored :)

So, I thought I'd teach myself assembly and get a jump ahead in my
class and searched Google for free assemblers and lo and behold!
There are so many of them!

FASM, MASM, NASM, HLA...it's frightening. I thought it'd be an easy
thing to find and choose but not after reading the descriptions I
thought I should start with MASM then eventually do NASM?

Assembly is pretty universal in commands, aren't they?

Not 'that universal' in comparision with HLLs. An ASM language depend
on the CPU-family and syntax, compiler directives of the used tool.

FASM, NASM and even MASM use the syntax shown in the CPU-manuals.

A whole set if x86 instructions work on one CPU while others got
this totally different [ie: SSE+4 vs. 3Dnow!ext]

Does it really matter which one I start with?

It might be a good idea to check which tools, CPUs and environment
(the underlaying OS) will be used in the class ...
Do you expect an x86 class for windoze ? I wont bet on this.

If you know which CPU then you can read ahead about registers,
addressing modes, flags and the basic instruction set.

I am a newbie just wanting to get familiarized with the language
and its' intrinsics (well the elementary stuff anyway.)

'Intri-sinks' belong to HLL or -inline ASM, in an x86 class
you may hear about MOV (Intel's term for LD/ST/copy), ADD,ADC,...

Any advice is appreciated.

You can try the RosASM-lessons for x86 on windoze, or
download the CPU manual and look at register set and flags.
And you are welcome with all raised questions then ...

__
wolfgang





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