Re: Assembler Language

["Foz" <nospam [at] mmu.ac.uk>]

> To be honest, you shouldn't be making even OS calls, let alone BIOS calls.
> Firstly, there is NO reason to make calls to the BIOS - Linux ditches a
> lot of BIOS calls for a number of reasons, i) they tend to be buggy, esp.
> with more technical operations, ii) they're not reliable across platforms
> and or motherboards.. leave the BIOS well alone.
Ok I can live with that, its fair enough
> 
> OS calls - no, you should really be going through libc anyway. The reason
> being, you don't want to have to keep updating your code every time the
> kernel breaks or something. 
Yes I do, I am totally crazy - my ambition is to get used to 
assembler and then write a primitive OS (based on the ZX80, 
snigger :) just in assembler for my 8086 which will never get an 
upgrade for the rest of its existance.

> 
> You lose a lot of advantages by programming in assembly. I would suggest
I only see lots of advantages and short cuts, remember whatever a 
compiler can do, an assembler can also do, and much more - yes i 
want to write my own librarys in the orginal Chekov.

> But still, even simple optimisations gcc will provide (such as
> unroll_all_loops) will be beyond the means of an assembly programmer -
Not a madly determined assembly programmer.

Like I say, I'm mad, Assembly stretches my mind in 5 dimensions, 
it is *the* only thing forces me to sit down and design even the 
simplest of programs - I speak high level language with ease, low 
level languages however require thought, new approaches to tricks. 
I am always determined to write things in the least amount of 
space. Yes I am a hard disk space freak. My mind is still in shock 
that a few years ago 10Mb was considered tons of space. Think of 
the ZX80 - user ram was 1k - yes I am completely mad, but 
assembly causes me to do things properly, I don't need Megs of 
downloads - A86 is a couple of hundred kb, I can write my own 
libraries, as and when I need them. Think of writing to the screen; 
The "safest" optimised speed to plot a pixel via the memory was 
147 ticks. I cut it down to 46 ticks due to me taking presumtions 
for my machine.
For me to write entire assembly programs isn't to ditribute or 
anything, it is simply to teach me things about the machine 
workings and at the end of the day, be one of the people who 
wants to reverse "bulk" code, by just having nessecities, not 
useless bits to make it look pretty, or have features that would 
never be used.

Thanks

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Paul Aspinall - Manchester Metropolitan Uni
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Windows NT - Next Time it'll work....
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