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General Forums => The Campus => Topic started by: BytePtr on July 17, 2005, 02:44:21 AM

Title: Learning BIN, DEC, HEX in easy way, how? Need help, tips and recommendations!
Post by: BytePtr on July 17, 2005, 02:44:21 AM
Im not prof. in asm thats why im asking this.
I have many many asm books and almost all of them start with teaching BIN, HEX, DEC etc.
I know that i can learn bin,hex all of this by them but maybe there are somebody who knows good tips or hints how to make learning binary, hexadecimal easier.
Maybe there are some good exercise's in net that can solve to do learning easier.
And here is also many experienced asm programmers, maybe they know something that can make it easier. I know it takes a time but i have alot of free time and really wan't to learn this. So it should be no problem.
Somebody can also write how long they have learned binary, hex.
So any help, tips & tricks are welcome.
Long question but i hope u understand.
If this thread is wrong forum then please move it to right place!
Thx in advance.
Title: Re: Learning BIN, DEC, HEX in easy way, how? Need help, tips and recommendations!
Post by: Xor Stance on July 17, 2005, 03:11:40 AM
:bg Same story as you, I'm not an expert but and more fool by pressures I have had. Well, I don't have books but I downloaded many tutorials in all type of sites even from hexz, and have some useful links. Unfortunately, they were too hard for my handicap, by helping
you I want to mature. Now in AOA programming it's very easy and you know 16-bits it's impossible that you don't know hex.

http://webster.cs.ucr.edu/ > Art of Assembly Book > 32-bits Windows I guess you want to for 32-bits. I guess you're saying you want to create a book.

This link you get the HLA book you can learn 32-bits, I would learn 16-bits later when I finished 32-bits. Good luck learn fast so we can join to help the necessity projects.

http://www.win32asmcommunity.net/phpwiki/
Title: Re: Learning BIN, DEC, HEX in easy way, how? Need help, tips and recommendations
Post by: hutch-- on July 17, 2005, 03:37:54 AM
HuMaX,

It will depend on what you know as to what you can do. Many of the existing books on assembler are well out of date in not only the platform they support (DOS) but in the assumptions and teaching methods they use. HEX, DEC, BIN are just conversions of the same data sizes and there is little reason to memorise this type of data, you can always convert it where you need it.

The real action is in learning the architecture of the OS, learning the Intel/AMD instruction set for x86 and knowing your way around enough Windows API functions to get the job done.
Title: Re: Learning BIN, DEC, HEX in easy way, how? Need help, tips and recommendations!
Post by: BytePtr on July 17, 2005, 05:47:20 AM
I know they are all for DOS. But im working in DOS (look my signature  :green), and im not programming Windows in ASM (or at least not so much) , so "old" is not problem!
So i must learn 32bit first and then 16bit like Xor Stance said?
Hmm..

But 32bit is easier when u know already 16bit or not?
Title: Re: Learning BIN, DEC, HEX in easy way, how? Need help, tips and recommendations
Post by: roticv on July 17, 2005, 06:32:27 AM
I think 16bit codes are harder to understand and more tricky because of the usage of segment registers. Since you are a fan of msdos, I don't see why would you should force yourself to embrace windows.  :toothy

Don't fall to the dark side.  :toothy

PS: Knowing binary, hexadecimal helps alot. Do take a look at my article (The section titled binary and hexadecimal in Number Systems) in the link Xor Stance has posted.  :bg
Title: Re: Learning BIN, DEC, HEX in easy way, how? Need help, tips and recommendations
Post by: hutch-- on July 17, 2005, 07:09:48 AM
If DOS is really where you want to work, 32 bit FLAT memory model code is no use to you and there is a mountain of stuff around that can help you if you can find it. I would try Randy Hyde's 16 bit AOA as it has a lot of very good technical reference for that technology. I imagine that Ralph Brown's interrupt list would be available if you look for it.

A long time ago there was a very good disassembler available for DOS called Sourcer that could disassemble existing 16 bit COM files and that gave you a large amount of reference material. The Intel manuals are still worth having as they have the complete instruction set including those that cannot be used in protected mode windows.

Your only real problem with some of this stuff is that its truly ancient and may be a bit hard to find.
Title: Re: Learning BIN, DEC, HEX in easy way, how? Need help, tips and recommendations
Post by: BytePtr on July 17, 2005, 02:15:39 PM
Quote from: roticv on July 17, 2005, 06:32:27 AMPS: Knowing binary, hexadecimal helps alot.

Yes, thats why i want to learn it.

QuoteSince you are a fan of msdos

Yep 101%
Thank you all i will look at AOA.
hutch i can find anything if i use right format in Google. I will search that Sourcer.
Thanks alot for inspiring  :U

Edit: Sourcer downloaded  :wink
This Sourcer seems to be very useful.
Title: Re: Learning BIN, DEC, HEX in easy way, how? Need help, tips and recommendations!
Post by: MichaelW on July 22, 2005, 08:43:38 PM
Sourcer is still a commercial product.

http://www.v-com.com/product/Sourcer_Home.html
Title: Re: Learning BIN, DEC, HEX in easy way, how? Need help, tips and recommendations!
Post by: Xor Stance on July 24, 2005, 03:28:29 AM
http://www.downloadjunction.com/product/software/69070/ A free disassembly for 16-bits, just be smart and don't mess with illegal software. For a hexadecimal editor will be good if you're going to manipulate such a common file to sharpen skills.
Don't worry this ver it's FREEWARE it's not the new one it's an old one. You can see the segments adresses, etc...
Assembly language was design for this so I won't hesitate to do a translation of softwares that are legal.
Title: Re: Learning BIN, DEC, HEX in easy way, how? Need help, tips and recommendations
Post by: Farabi on July 24, 2005, 04:12:45 AM
Yes, some book is out of date and even some of them is dont know if there are windows assembler programming.
Title: Re: Learning BIN, DEC, HEX in easy way, how? Need help, tips and recommendations!
Post by: Xor Stance on July 24, 2005, 05:00:37 AM
:bg I thought this was the one from DOS, I downloaded it's with a beautiful GUI. But it sounds funny, that the copy I got
supports till .486 this one its up to .686, etc.

Farabi, I don't understand what you mean? Even HLA, being easy I was thinking making something even easier.
What I meant with MS-DOS, is that most tuts on the net sucks. Perhaps, I don't want to waste anymore time
explaining the same explicit fact for the last time;

I feel sorry for all of us in forums working for FREE in asm what other stupid people left the bloatware. I even founded asm
docs uneasy at first look and thought of creating what it is performing in the hardware and more ex, the reason why others
couldn't accomplish this, is that the ignorance from this type of people gives us and not enough workshop to be able to comply it. And stupid C programmers using int main, such weird functions, etc... Even the MSDN library from Masm in inline assembly you just learn code but not logical how it can be perform with a doc like AOA. And ms expressing that Windows
Vista will let us have a machine knowledge.

Let's kill this one to waste less time, the feeling from this stupid people.

See ya. 
Title: Re: Learning BIN, DEC, HEX in easy way, how? Need help, tips and recommendations!
Post by: Farabi on July 24, 2005, 03:17:41 PM
What I mean is people in here who studied asm at college did not know if there are assembler on Win32. Some of the asm writer book use CPP to programming the Win32.
Title: Re: Learning BIN, DEC, HEX in easy way, how? Need help, tips and recommendations!
Post by: MusicalMike on July 24, 2005, 07:34:00 PM
I don't know, I found learning assembly language easy and I am only 16. I guess part of the reason is because I did a lot of win32 programming in c++ before. However I am not here to brag. The best way to learn assembly language is to check out a nice little book called Art of Assembly Language Programming. The book teaches in HLA but, once you got the concept of registors, memory, the addressing modes, and gotten used to the absence of high level data types, download a copy of masm32, study the macros, and go to town. Thats how I did it, though granted, making the switch from hla to true masm did proove to be somewhat difficult, but I did so successfully in a matter of days. Hope this helps.
Title: Re: Learning BIN, DEC, HEX in easy way, how? Need help, tips and recommendations
Post by: roticv on July 25, 2005, 12:32:13 PM
[offtopic]

I feel so old now. :toothy Started out 3 years ago when I was 14/15?