Edward LeMay
Since 1962
The Assembler Book as last written can be found elsewhere. My gracious wonderfull friends at Newness of Life Ministries have provided a stable home for the book pages. Please give them a visit; and while your their, check out my Assembler Book pages.
I want to introduce the basic ideas behind assembly language, and how it relates to your system. We also will examine the tools of the trade for the assembly language programmer and how to get the best out of them. Finally, you'll see some DOS batch files that will make the process of creating a finished program easier.
If you are completely new to assembly language and do not have much experience with the lower-levels of your PC, then some of the material here may be heavy going. Don't worry! I will be deliberately putting all this information together as you will often refer back to it, as you become more experienced. What may not be completely clear now will fall into place as you get more hands-on experience. For now, think of it as a quick tour round the factory.
These next chapters cover the basic notions of MS-DOS and shows how you can use DOS facilities from within programs written in assembly language. I will show you where to look for the most important system information and how this information is represented in the memory. You will become introduced to the most important tool for using the DOS service - the interrupts. To demonstrate using the DOS facilities, I have designed various small programs that you should be able to include in your routine work.
Having examined the services and information provided by the system software of the PC, you have seen how BIOS and DOS services interact. Using interrupt vectors has shown you how to activate these routines. Finally, I explained how to install your own interrupt handlers. You are now well equipped to move on and take control of all the system resources.
Please come back soon and see how this page will have grown.