A newbie story and need help.

[benji]

Hai,....

I'm a newbie in this world of assembly, i've code in VB6 and Java before.
And now i'm trying to study the assembly.
I've posted my question once in the CAMPUS section and people told me to start with 32bit and some with 16bit.
So, i choose to start with 16bit (but i also try to read the 32bit at the same time).
But now i'm concentrating in 16bit and forget about the 32bit.
I have Masm32 with 16bit linker, so all the ammo are set.

I read the Art of Asembly Language(16bit), Windows Assembly Language & Systems Programming, and some books related to computer architecture & organization that student use in college.
I haven't finish them all, because now i'm under the "stress" mode. ^_^
I understand all the text in those books, but there are major problems.
I don't know what to do......(in 16bit).
For example: I don't know how to get user input from keyboard, print user input to screen, how to make input box, why can people use :
   message    db    "Hello Word!"
(they said that it's a byte, but "Hello World!" is more than 1 byte, so is it an array or something?), when segment concept is really2 use, when segment override is useful, etc.....

That kind of question is really2 bothering me.

So, is there good tutorial or books or is there someone who is willing to tutor me from the basic?
Maybe i need someone that tell me "Just follow me and later on you will understand!" or "Just shut up and do what i told you!" ^_^
I am really2 lack of guidance, and if i stayed in this situation long enough i think i can gone crazy. hua-hua-hua......

So, is there any advice or tutorial or something for someone like me?
Is there any tutorial from the basic with it's sample code ?

Thx,
Benji

[jj2007]

Benji,
1. Forget 16-bit - it is obsolete and a lot more complicated than 32-bit assembler
2. Study \Masm32\icztutes, they contain everything you need to know for a start and are written for newbies.
Have fun, jj

[benji]

Hai,...

So why people still use the 16bit?
Only for study purpose? Like college?

Thx,
Benji

[MichaelW]

I agree, if you have a choice skip the 16-bit coding and go straight to 32-bit coding.

For 16-bit code you generally use DOS functions for most I/O, including displaying text on the screen and interacting with the file system. And at a lower level there are the BIOS functions. For information on the DOS and BIOS functions, try Ralf Brown's Interrupt list.

An HTML version used to be here, but when I tried the link was not working.

And the download version here:

http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~ralf/files.html

If by "input box" you mean something like the VB InputBox function, while such a thing is doable, learning all of the necessary system details in addition to learning assembly language, would make it very difficult for a beginner.

If you need examples, you should be able to find many of them in the 2930+ posts in this sub forum.

[eek]

It'll take you weeks to figure that stuff out.

This is a 16 bit interpreter with a fully interactive tutorial, the works.
http://www.btinternet.com/~btketman/tutpage.html

good luck :U