On Sat, 3 Oct 1998, William Chops Westfield wrote:

> People don't program PCs in assembly any more.  The last time it was a
> reasonable thing to do was probably slightly before the 286 machines came
> out, and now it's close to laughable.  What is the average program these
> days, anyway?  10% new code and 90% windows libraries and system calls?

pmfji, people DO program PCs in assembly nowadays, especially inline
assembly and embedded language startup/init/boot sequences as well as fast
IO, both on embedded x86 and on real size PCs.

The assembler used by the compilation process of the Linux kernel (as86)
will assemble happily x86 assembly. as86 is freeware.

The Borland Tasm products were among the best documented imho and it may
be worth your while to hunt down an original copy with manuals, second
hand. (the online manuals are worth most of the money though ;)

There is a shareware assembler for 386 and up by ?? Aaronson ?? that has a
less cretin segment/procedure declaration syntax than the mainstream
product. (why ?: f.ex. it is almost impossible to write straight code for
a boot sector using M$ masm, you need to hack the ORGs etc. to fool the
COM model into placing code at offset +0000. Been there. Aiee.).

imho, the *writing* of a at least a functional boot sector from scratch
for a PC should be required 'reading' for any would-be embedded PC
programmer. I did set and fulfill this goal when I was there, and I was
never to be sorry for it...

Nearly all assembler packages used to come with a book by a third party on
assembly for beginners. These can be found now in 2nd hand technical
bookstores, used, for a handshake and a smile. I have a small pile of
them but I'm pretty far away... one of the best books on the matter imho
was the 'Assembly Language Bible', Wiley (?) written loosely around
Borland TASM syntax. I've misplaced my copy a few years ago ;(

Peter