last update: 06/2003
This WWW-project contains information about programming your PC in Assembler. That means pages about protected mode, OS-development, FAQs, memorymanagement (XMM), Debug and much more.
To navigate click on the desired link on the righthand frame.
Assembler gives you the opportunity to program right on the hardware. You can alternate things which you hardly reach in a high level language.
Because you are so near the hardware, programming is more time-consuming than in HLLs but you will be rewarded by a higher speed of your program.
The machinecodes are numbers up to six byte long which are understood by the CPU but quite hard to remember for humans. Therefore you have little words (like MOV for move) which make it easy for you to remember but are an exact translation of a machinecode. One by one!
Most Assemblers (the programs which assemble your code into machinecode) give the choice of macroprogramming. This makes the code look a bit like HLL-code.
The differences of assembler and machinecode are discussed very often, but that here is my opinion, so please: NO FLAMES!
To programm in Assembler you need an editor, an assembler (as above) and a linker. The linker links all the parts of your code to the final executable file. Some Assemblers (as A86) have an integrated linker.
Nearly every HLL has an inbuilt assembler. So you can code simple routines without a real assembler or you can speed up parts of the HLL-code by your own assembly routines.
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