Win10 and assembly language

Long ago, I programmed in assembly a bit to better understand how computers functioned.

Is there anything like MASM or Turbo Assembler for Windows 10? Curious because I've heard some things about the security architecture in Win10. Thanks for any comments or tips.

Cheers

Are you trying to actually access the processor for direct ISA access?
I'm not sure about that. :O
I would imagine it's trickier now, with security, but there are a lot of things that virtualize or simulate that access now.

Some higher level languages allow dropping down to some assembly.

I used something called LC3 iirc, on recent OS's for some simulated assembly.

a reply to: Archivalist

Thanks for the comment, that tracks with the bits I've heard. Makes me wonder if the days of assembly language (for Windows at least) are dead.

Yeah, I recall Turbo C used to allow insertion of assembly code. Interesting. I guess I could boot using one the MSDOS descendants to run an assembler if I wanted to. Truth be told, anything I write in assembly wouldn't need to use Windows.

Cheers

ASM isn't dead and is still viable as at some point all instructions must be submitted to the CPU, windows has protection more built in to stop you from stuffing everything up and totally locking up the machine but doing assembler is fine as its just a programming language and as such turns human readable stuff into the 0/1's the machine can actually understand.

a reply to: F2d5thCavv2

I also miss the days of assembler language.. I stopped after I moved on from the 6502 and then DOS to windows, only using it then in a higher level language.

Windows killed the assembler star..

haha I even wrote a front end for masm.. using professional basic 7, so I could code in edit.com and compile/run the code without having to do it manually.. Worked well, unless I locked things up with a bad call.. but a reset back then was almost instant. I miss those silly days..

a reply to: F2d5thCavv2

If want to get a better understanding of how computers function you need to study HDL instead of assembly. The execution of assembly language by a micro-processor is defined by HDL.



Here is video showing how this works:



Here are a few terms that will help you understand what a computer actually is:

en.wikipedia.org...

en.wikipedia.org...

www.computerscience.gcse.guru...

originally posted by: Maxatoria
ASM isn't dead and is still viable as at some point all instructions must be submitted to the CPU, windows has protection more built in to stop you from stuffing everything up and totally locking up the machine but doing assembler is fine as its just a programming language and as such turns human readable stuff into the 0/1's the machine can actually understand.

Got a suggestion for an assembler one can use with Win10?

Cheers

originally posted by: F2d5thCavv2
Long ago, I programmed in assembly a bit to better understand how computers functioned.

Is there anything like MASM or Turbo Assembler for Windows 10? Curious because I've heard some things about the security architecture in Win10. Thanks for any comments or tips.

Cheers

MASM runs on Win10 just fine, just get a recent version. TASM can be run using DOSBox.

originally posted by: F2d5thCavv2

originally posted by: Maxatoria
ASM isn't dead and is still viable as at some point all instructions must be submitted to the CPU, windows has protection more built in to stop you from stuffing everything up and totally locking up the machine but doing assembler is fine as its just a programming language and as such turns human readable stuff into the 0/1's the machine can actually understand.

Got a suggestion for an assembler one can use with Win10?

Cheers

Have you looked at the Visual Studio option? If you select the c++ workload as part of your setup, it apparently gives you MASM for x64. it's free, too, if you download the Microsoft Visual Studio Community Edition.

This page describes it, I've just glanced over it, but seems to be something of interest.

docs.microsoft.com...

Thanks all.

Cheers

So I looked at MS downloads. Looks like one can download an older 32 bit version of MASM. There is also ml64.exe which is apparently the 64-bit version, but it is hidden in one of the packages. Guess I could dig for it if I want to.

I wonder if I try to use A86 in a DOS window if I'll get an error. May be worth a try, anything I'll do initially will be on the "hello world" level of complexity.

Cheers

If you're going to do something like that then perhaps a dosbox sort of program to give you full control as windows 10 in a cmd box will probably intercept some calls and block them causing all sorts of strange things when something doesn't quite go to plan.

a reply to: Maxatoria

Thanks Maxatoria. Good suggestion.

Cheers

a reply to: F2d5thCavv2

Just as an FYI. Looks like a freeware program called FASM (flat assembler) can work with 64-bit Windows. I sense a steep learning curve in getting used to programming the in the Win64 environment.

Flat Assembler

Cheers