Student trying to learn assembly language

[rogerkeith52]

My computer is a Pentium IV and runs Windows XP Pro and Office XP Pro.  I am a gradute student trying to complete prerequisite courses.  I have installed MASM32 with the 16 bit linker.  I have used the GUI text editor and the assembler and linker from the menu.  Some of the .bat files used to build and link were modified to make the programs assemble. 

I have written some simple test programs to make sure things work.  I then assembled them again and the executable file that worked before did not work after the second build and link.  I was testing the process to make sure it worked.  What happens is the code assembles and links but when I try to run the program, there is no ouput.

I am new at this and this is my first venture into assembly language.

Roger

[Mark Jones]

 Hi Roger, can you tell us, is there any error produced? Is it time-sensitive (demo?) And have you tried analyzing it with a debugger?

If you have an exception-handling debugger like OllyDbg http://home.t-online.de/home/Ollydbg/, simply loading the app with Olly and pressing F9 should stop at the error (unless the program isn't crashing, at which case you may need to go through the code with a fine-toothed comb.) But in general, MASM shouldn't generate random code... :toothy Good luck.

[Randall Hyde]

My computer is a Pentium IV and runs Windows XP Pro and Office XP Pro.  I am a gradute student trying to complete prerequisite courses.  I have installed MASM32 with the 16 bit linker.  I have used the GUI text editor and the assembler and linker from the menu.  Some of the .bat files used to build and link were modified to make the programs assemble. 

I have written some simple test programs to make sure things work.  I then assembled them again and the executable file that worked before did not work after the second build and link.  I was testing the process to make sure it worked.  What happens is the code assembles and links but when I try to run the program, there is no ouput.

I am new at this and this is my first venture into assembly language.

Roger

Be sure to check out http://webster.cs.ucr.edu.
Especially "The Art of Assembly Language"
Cheers,
Randy Hyde

[raymond]

Roger

Maybe you should elaborate on that "there is no output".

The most frequent cause of that with beginners is that some data is sent to the screen, but the program then exits immediately without waiting for any feedback such a keystroke before destroying the output.

Raymond

[Vortex]

Hi Roger,

Welcome to the forum:

I have installed MASM32 with the 16 bit linker.

Which one is your target environment? 16-bit DOS or 32-bit Windows?