That's a great suggestion! Way back in the day, before I had internet, my local
library was an excellent resource to begin learning. :)
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------- Original Message -------
On Saturday, July 2nd, 2022 at 7:01 PM, Daniel <codehunte...@gmail.com> wrote:
> If ya have a library, ya can try lookin there. Usin our library here I found
> some good books to go through. Advanced MSDOS Programming, From BASIC to
> 8086/8088 Assembly Language. There are other books I am waitin on. I also
> have other books I collected over the years. I hope this is a good suggestion.
>
> On Sat, Jul 2, 2022 at 14:02 <freedos-user-requ...@lists.sourceforge.net>
> wrote:
>
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>> Today's Topics:
>>
>> 1. Re: DOS ASM resources (Ben Collver)
>> 2. Re: DOS ASM resources (Travis Siegel)
>> 3. Re: DOS ASM resources (Santiago Almenara)
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2022 13:12:03 +0000
>> From: Ben Collver <bencoll...@hotmail.com>
>> To: "freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net"
>> <freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net>
>> Subject: Re: [Freedos-user] DOS ASM resources
>> Message-ID:
>> <sn6pr1901mb2046248543333f6bc374a92bcb...@sn6pr1901mb2046.namprd19.prod.outlook.com>
>>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>>
>> I made a mistake pasting a URL into my last post.
>>
>> OLD: http://ref.x86asm.net/coder32.htmlhttp://www.eji.com/a86/
>> NEW: http://ref.x86asm.net/coder32.html
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 2
>> Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2022 13:37:01 -0400
>> From: Travis Siegel <tsie...@softcon.com>
>> To: "Discussion and general questions about FreeDOS."
>> <freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net>, Bret Johnson <bretj...@juno.com>
>> Subject: Re: [Freedos-user] DOS ASM resources
>> Message-ID: <be5f66ee-0715-1707-9181-5e9efee42...@softcon.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
>>
>> Interestingly enough, I also bought a86/D86, and have found it to be the
>> best assembler/disassembler I've ever found for dos.? I ran across it
>> after (mostly) trying to use debug for things, so it was a welcome
>> relief.? I still use it when working on dos things, which admittedly
>> isn't very often these days, but at least it still works, and still does
>> what's needed.
>>
>> Of course, take this with a grain of salt, since I'm an intermediate asm
>> programmer (at best), and it takes me many hours to get anything
>> complicated untangled when looking at asm code, which is why I don't use
>> it much, but there's sometimes when nothing else can do the job as well,
>> so <shrug>
>>
>> Masm, Tasm, and others all have their own syntax which confuses me more
>> than helping.? I find debug and A86 fairly straightforward, which is why
>> I still like those methods when working with asm code.
>>
>> On 7/1/2022 11:58 AM, Bret Johnson wrote:
>>> Santiago:
>>>
>>> I agree pretty much with ECM. The best way to learn is to look at the code
>>> someone else has written and try to understand it. Unfortunately, most ASM
>>> coders aren't very good at comments/documentation, and you really need the
>>> comments to help you figure things out. Looking at uncommented code doesn't
>>> seem to help me very much -- I need to try and figure out how the coder was
>>> thinking, not just the result of the thinking.
>>>
>>> I put LOTS of comments in my code -- I'm sure at least some people think
>>> too many. Almost every line of the source has a comment, and each
>>> "subroutine" has a comment header similar to what ECM has (but my "style"
>>> is different than ECM's). The comment header includes details about what
>>> the subroutine does, its inputs and outputs, and what it may change. The
>>> header MAY also include the "context" of when and where the subroutine
>>> should get used, and why the subroutine even exists at all (especially if
>>> it is there to address some "special" situation). For example, most of my
>>> programs are TSR's and in the most recent versions I'm working on the
>>> programs can use different kinds of memory: conventional, upper, Expanded
>>> (EMS), and/or Extended (XMS, which I access through a DOS Protected Mode
>>> Services or DPMS server). I have comments to try and explain why I do
>>> something that requires a special consideration for one of the different
>>> types of memory. An example of this would be that you NEVER want a stack to
>>> use Expanded memory, so sections of the code related to the stack need to
>>> take that into account and should make some comment about it.
>>>
>>> When I first started (a LONG time ago), modern assemblers like NASM & FASM
>>> didn't exist, and I didn't like MASM (though it was and still is kind of
>>> "the standard" I find it confusing), so I ended up buying A86/A386 from
>>> Eric Isaacson. Unfortunately, Eric hasn't updated those in a long time and
>>> it's not possible to do large projects with them because they don't take
>>> advantage of extended or expanded memory. I've since switched to NASM, but
>>> I think FASM is also pretty good, and they're both free (unlike A86/A386).
>>>
>>> I've got a couple of books, but really the only "fixed" resource I use is
>>> Ralf Brown's Interrupt List (RBIL). I've found looking at other people's
>>> actual production code is the best way to learn things.
>>>
>>> I also think the best way to get started is to actually write a small but
>>> useful program from scratch -- a program that you will actually use when
>>> you get done. Don't make it try to do too much -- just something relatively
>>> simple. The very first program I wrote was a simple version of JOYKEYS, a
>>> program that allows you to use a Joystick with almost any DOS program. The
>>> first version was pretty basic, and it's changed a lot over the decades
>>> compared to how it started. There are lots of things you need to understand
>>> (memory, I/O, Interrupts, BIOS, DOS, etc.) to even write a simple program.
>>> The ASM part of it, while pretty complicated, is not the hard part. The
>>> hard part is figuring out WHY you do (or don't do) certain things.
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Freedos-user mailing list
>>> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
>>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
>>
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 3
>> Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2022 13:01:58 -0500
>> From: Santiago Almenara <almen...@gmail.com>
>> To: "Discussion and general questions about FreeDOS."
>> <freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net>
>> Subject: Re: [Freedos-user] DOS ASM resources
>> Message-ID:
>> <cacqaplpc3koobextnbmfo-e3ern6prhjtn0gt4vs521hojd...@mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>>
>> Thank you for the answers. I've been following all the links you've sent
>>
>> I'll also follow the advice and try to understand some project like DOSLFN.
>> (source code is only 220k)
>>
>> Santiago
>>
>> El jue, 30 jun 2022 a la(s) 13:19, C. Masloch (pus...@ulukai.org) escribi?:
>>
>>> On at 2022-06-30 10:00 -0500, Santiago Almenara wrote:
>>> > Hello!
>>> >
>>> > What book or webpage do you recommend to learn some DOS assembler?
>>> >
>>> > Thanks in advance
>>> >
>>> > Santiago
>>>
>>> I learned primarily using these methods:
>>>
>>> 1. Read existing code and try to understand it. Even better, start with
>>> higher-level commentary about code if you can find any. Some
>>> applications' manuals are good for this, eg DOSLFN.
>>>
>>> 2. Have an english-language instruction set reference handy. I used the
>>> one included with older NASM versions, which I subsequently forked when
>>> it was dropped from NASM. [1]
>>>
>>> 3. Likewise, refer to the Interrupt List for reference as to what a
>>> particular interrupt service does. Apart from some modern extensions it
>>> is fairly complete. It can be found in plain-text files (split across a
>>> lot of them, you can concatenate them to receive a single file) on Ralf
>>> Brown's pages [2] and can be accessed online, page per page, hosted by
>>> several different websites such as fd.lod.bz [3].
>>>
>>> 4. Try out things in a debugger if unsure, such as when unclear about
>>> what a particular instruction does, or to trace an existing program and
>>> try to improve your understanding of its workings. My main project is
>>> lDebug (with a small "L"), a debugger with a command line interface
>>> that's based on FreeDOS Debug. [4]
>>>
>>> 5. You can also read some of the books that have been written about DOS.
>>> At home I have the following print books: "FreeDOS Kernel", "DOS
>>> Internals", "Undocumented DOS (Second Edition)" (UDOS), "Dissecting
>>> DOS", "Extending DOS", "Advanced MS-DOS Programming", "Writing MS-DOS
>>> Device Drivers", and a german "DR DOS 6.0" manual. UDOS and the DR DOS
>>> manual are probably the best among these.
>>>
>>> Finally, I wrote a document called Assembly Comments Explained: Guide
>>> for Advanced Learning and Style [5]. It is intended to clarify
>>> conventions in my assembly language sources in particular.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> ecm
>>>
>>>
>>> [1]: https://pushbx.org/ecm/doc/insref.htm
>>> [2]: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ralf/files.html
>>> [3]: https://fd.lod.bz/rbil/index.html
>>> [4]: https://pushbx.org/ecm/web/#projects-ldebug
>>> [5]: https://pushbx.org/ecm/doc/acegals.htm
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net
>>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
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