Hello and Where to Start?

[rdc]

It says in the rules to post a message as soon as possible, so here is my real person post. :)

I am also interested in which package a beginner should acquire. I know the basics of assembler, from way back in the DOS days, and I want to get back into assembler with the idea of creating a compiler for a language I have been designing (right now I use an interpreted pseudo-assembler language of my own design). This is one of those ongoing projects that I use to fill in some time. Back in the day I used Microsoft's assembler, and I see that an updated version is available that I have d/l'ed. However, I have been out of touch so long, I am wondering if there is a better (free) package? Any suggestions would be appreciated. I am going to use RadASM for my editor if that makes a difference.

[rdc]

I see that the MASM package has an editor. Very nice. I think I will start with this package and see how things progress.

[mineiro]

Hello Sr rdc, welcome.
Since you come from ms-dos, some things have changed. Now, you don't pass argument via registers, you pass arguments to some procedure via stack, pushing it in win32, but returned values from functions can be in registers ( in win64 register rules again). The old functions that ms-dos have (int 21h,...) are obsolete , now you call some functions inside some .dll's . Windows restrict you with uses of some instructions, like 'in' or 'out', well, in a "default way". In windows programming, the Windows send to your program some messages, and it's your choice answer to these messages, handling it, or send to windows again to default processing be executed. In ms-dos, if you like to paint something in the screen, you control the address of video memory, or call some bios or ms-dos functions alright? In windows, your program wait windows send a paint message.
Take a look in some iczelions tutorials, I migrated from ms-dos to windows reading their tutorials, and helped me a lot. And, when I was learning windows programming, I frequently come to this forum and make some search, this is a very good database.

[MichaelW]

Hi Rick, good to see you here. And it's good to see that you're still writing fiction :U

And it's the MASM32 package.

[jj2007]

Hi Rick,
Welcome to the Forum :thumbu

Using Masm to create a language is possible in two ways:
1. Create a full-fledged app that processes text its own way
2. Use macros
To see what can be achieved with macros alone, check MasmBasic; if you want to see what is under the hood of that very "basic" language: after extraction, the macros are in \masm32\MasmBasic\MasmBasic.inc - don't get scared, we have some real macro gurus here :bg

As to Masm32: The package maintained by Hutch is an absolute must for Win32 programming (and it's a prerequisite for MasmBasic, of course). The only "add-on" needed isjavascript:void(0); a newer version of ML.EXE (Masm32: 6.14), which you can get either by searching for ML 6.15 (the first version that handles SSE2), or by downloading JWASM. The latter is fully compatible to the latest Microsoft assembler.

Hope this helps,
Jochen

[rdc]

Take a look in some iczelions tutorials, I migrated from ms-dos to windows reading their tutorials, and helped me a lot. And, when I was learning windows programming, I frequently come to this forum and make some search, this is a very good database.

Thanks for the info. I will check those out.

[rdc]

Hi Rick, good to see you here. And it's good to see that you're still writing fiction :U

And it's the MASM32 package.

Hey, Michael. Yeah, still trying to write. :) Thanks for the shout out.

[rdc]

Hi Rick,
Welcome to the Forum :thumbu

Using Masm to create a language is possible in two ways:
1. Create a full-fledged app that processes text its own way
2. Use macros
To see what can be achieved with macros alone, check MasmBasic; if you want to see what is under the hood of that very "basic" language: after extraction, the macros are in \masm32\MasmBasic\MasmBasic.inc - don't get scared, we have some real macro gurus here :bg

I will be following #1, but #2 sounds interesting. I will check that out.

As to Masm32: The package maintained by Hutch is an absolute must for Win32 programming (and it's a prerequisite for MasmBasic, of course). The only "add-on" needed isjavascript:void(0); a newer version of ML.EXE (Masm32: 6.14), which you can get either by searching for ML 6.15 (the first version that handles SSE2), or by downloading JWASM. The latter is fully compatible to the latest Microsoft assembler.

Hope this helps,
Jochen

Thanks for the info. I'll do that.