I wrote:
>    Just as a comment on the books that were suggested on the list yesterday;
>    they're all out of print.  I was kinda amazed by that, but you can't find
>    one of any of them new in a bookstore.
>
>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?

I disagree with this statement's totality although I think there's a point
in the last sentence; I believe it is still reasonable to write .DLLs and
VxDs (and soon, WDMs) in Assembler.  Yes, I think doing complete
applications in assembler because of the complexity of the processors and
O/S, but there there are still hardware I/F routines that can be best done
in Assembler.

:

>I didn't have much trouble picking up the 8086 assembler from Intel's
>manuals, WAY back when - the instruction set description assumed an
>implied (strongly typed!) assembler syntax, and they were nicely grouped
>in catagories.  Of course, it was something like my 6th processor to
>program in assembly, and Intel may have followed MicroSoft into the
>depths of awful manuals.

I learned it the same way (my progression was PDP-11, 6502, Mot6800, Z-80
and S/370 Assembly Languages) and then I had to work with it in "IBM"
mnemonics, which pointed to the Intel docs.  Once you figure out 8086
segment addressing, it's a pretty easy architecture to work with.

>The MIT (?) freeware unix cross-assembler is probably still available,
>although it doesn't use the Intel syntax.

If it doesn't use Intel syntax/mnemonics, then avoid it.

>68000 based Macintoshes are pretty cheap (used) these days if you want
>to try your hand at 68k assembler.

I think somebody wanting to learn to program the Mac in Assembler would be
better off getting a used PowerPC.

Tom Handley Asked:

>   Myke, what book/s do you recommend (putting you `out on a limb' ;-)?
>I'm an old Motorola guy who has also done a lot of 8080/Z80 and some
>x86 work. I'm looking for an advanced book that also includes a good summary
>of instructions for the x86 and Pentium. A good coverage of interfacing to
>Windows and DLLs is desirable. I have some books on the subject in my Watcom
>C/C++ and VBASIC manuals. Thanks,

Start with "Assembly Language: Step-By-Step" by Jeff Duntemann (ISBN
0471578142) and then go to "Assembly Language Master Class" by Igor Chebotko
et al. (ISBN 1874416346).  Finally, if you're *really* masochistic, there's
Barry Kauler's "Windows Assembly Language and Systems Programming: 16 and 32
Bit Low-Level Programming for the PC and Windows" (ISBN 087930474X) - he
reminds me of a guy I knew when I first started at IBM; this guy wrote
*everything* is S/370 assembler (no PL/1 or PL/S).

The rumour was he wrote everything in assembler because that way nobody
could fire him.  As students, another guy and I were given the task of
supporting his applications after he was shown the door.  It was really well
written, but we ended up porting most of it to PL/S (which was one of the
smartest things I ever did).

myke

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