From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Frederic Marmond Subject: Re: confused asm newbie Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 13:29:31 +0100 Sender: linux-assembly-owner@vger.kernel.org Message-ID: <3FB8BF2B.3070000@eprocess.fr> References: <20031117114725.79704.qmail@web41313.mail.yahoo.com> Reply-To: fmarmond@eprocess.fr Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <20031117114725.79704.qmail@web41313.mail.yahoo.com> List-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format="flowed" To: b klein Cc: linux-assembly@vger.kernel.org b klein wrote: >im trying to learn asm and use nasm, ald and a little >gdb for it. im not a newbie to programming or >assembly. ive learned it some time ago and come back >to it now. so my question is what is the important >bits that are worth learning? Im not interested in >learning a tool, i want to learn the .. well >'language' >but if it isnt a language, what should it be? >addressing modes, big-little endian, memory models, >8-16-32-64 (12?) bits processors, ports, interupts or >something else? > > > Hum... 1: find something to do! Take something you would like to do (an assembly routine that write a text to the screen very quickly, a boot loader (not so hard to do!), a ACPI state reader, or what else you want) 2: get a compilator (cc is one) 3: try to do it. I Think it is the only good way to learn assembly. By this method, you'll see how to use a tool (the compilator, but it will not be the main goal, you can choose the one you want), learn how to get doc (about the OS you are on, about BIOS if you have no OS, about the chips if you don't want to use BIOS, ...) and how all that work. Once you have enough knowledge about one particular architecture, you can safety try an other! Fred