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General => The Campus => Topic started by: Fredelig on June 20, 2018, 02:02:23 AM

Title: Can I use an assembly book from 92 to learn assembly?
Post by: Fredelig on June 20, 2018, 02:02:23 AM
Back in 95 I started learning assembly from the book "Assembly language step-by-step" by Jeff Duntemann. I never finished that book and just bought it again from Amazon. This Duntemann has a good sense of humour and I really like that book, so I wonder if I can still use it to learn assembly in 2018? The coding examples are probably in 16-bit and I'm using Windows 10 64-bit.
Title: Re: Can I use an assembly book from 92 to learn assembly?
Post by: hutch-- on June 20, 2018, 02:27:29 AM
Fred,

You could but it would be useless as it would be 16 bit MS-DOS level assembler. There are better books that are up to date with protected mode Win32 and later 64 bit. Win32 is a good place to start, it is well understood and many people are familiar with it and its easily powerful enough to do most things. 64 bit is coming but a grounding in Win32 will be extremely useful to you if and when you need to learn 64 bit.

Have a look at this book, its genuine class.

http://masm32.com/board/index.php?topic=3868.0
Title: Re: Can I use an assembly book from 92 to learn assembly?
Post by: Raistlin on June 20, 2018, 02:29:04 AM
There are some (as in two) really good books for sale on
x86_x64 assembly. hutch will tell you there's really only one
to recommend, which I forked money out for BTW. But why
buy a book when there's Agner Fog, Izeleon (spelt incorrectly)
MASM SDK tuts,
Daydreamer & Siekmanski at your bek and call, the Internet,
MSDN, Intel & AMD manuals, source forge, code project, etc etc.
Just thinking out loud.... :t
Pps: seesh before I could post this from
my cell, hutch dropped that book title. Told you
there is really only one.  :badgrin:
Title: Re: Can I use an assembly book from 92 to learn assembly?
Post by: Fredelig on June 20, 2018, 02:43:21 AM
Ok, thanks for the advice Hutch and Raistlin. I'll have a look at it. I've already downloaded the intel manuals  :t
Title: Re: Can I use an assembly book from 92 to learn assembly?
Post by: daydreamer on June 20, 2018, 03:53:19 AM
I like Randy Hyde's Aoa,some say its out of date,but like especially MMX part,if you want to get started with SIMD programming techniques,also look up SSE,avx etc
I really recommend 32bit minimum,flat memory adressing instead of segments, 16bit indirect adressing modes are restricted compared to 32bit

Title: Re: Can I use an assembly book from 92 to learn assembly?
Post by: jj2007 on June 20, 2018, 08:12:20 AM
Quote from: daydreamer on June 20, 2018, 03:53:19 AM
I like Randy Hyde's Aoa

Yes, but attention, there is also a HLA version which is pretty useless. Some hints to free resources are on Tips, Tricks & Traps (http://www.webalice.it/jj2006/Masm32_Tips_Tricks_and_Traps.htm), "recommended reading". I just checked and of course, the AoA link is a 404 :(

Try this one (https://web.archive.org/web/20160328144127/https://courses.engr.illinois.edu/ece390/books/artofasm/artofasm.html); it works, but it's mainly 16-bit oriented. No luck :(
Title: Re: Can I use an assembly book from 92 to learn assembly?
Post by: Caché GB on June 21, 2018, 10:39:44 AM
Hi Fredelig, welcome to the forum.

"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof"

Fredelig, Murphy's 2nd Law - If nothing can go wrong, something will go wrong.

All the best.
Title: Re: Can I use an assembly book from 92 to learn assembly?
Post by: Fredelig on June 22, 2018, 07:21:51 AM
Hi, I'll try to go for 32 bit. Thanks for the welcome Caché :). Yeah, I know Murphy's Law. But there's something about the way Douglas Adams phrased it  :biggrin:
Title: Re: Can I use an assembly book from 92 to learn assembly?
Post by: mineiro on July 28, 2018, 11:52:06 AM
welcome fredelig;
Why should we ease if we can complicate it a little more?  ;)
I always suggest the book by Peter Norton and John Socha, I think from 1986, but we're talking about 16 bits. I prefer a solid foundation. I recommend to anyone who has an interest in dealing with hardware directly, connected device ports. Well, but book don't cover this.
This was even a mistake of mine when I came across the internet; I heard about port 80 for http, and others, and coming from printer ports 3e8h if I was not mistaken I wondered how it did not work.
Well, but I'm with others, complexity grows but that still remains the same because compatibility. Imaginate if you are releasing a new pc processor that is not compatible with olders one. One program will not work in another cpu and need be rewriten, you will not sold that, ... . I think is the same that happened with ascii table, each one creating their own symbols.