Misc/abrash-black-book
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James Gregory 2013-12-30 12:25:34 +11:00
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<P>In the PC world, you can never have enough knowledge, and every item you add to your store will make your programs better. Thorough familiarity with both the operating system APIs and BIOS interfaces is important; since those interfaces are well-documented and reasonably straightforward, my advice is to get a good book or two and bring yourself up to speed. Similarly, familiarity with the PC hardware is required. While that topic covers a lot of ground&#151;display adapters, keyboards, serial ports, printer ports, timer and DMA channels, memory organization, and more&#151;most of the hardware is well-documented, and articles about programming major hardware components appear frequently in the literature, so this sort of knowledge can be acquired readily enough.
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<P>The single most critical aspect of the hardware, and the one about which it is hardest to learn, is the CPU. The x86 family CPUs have a complex, irregular instruction set, and, unlike most processors, they are neither straightforward nor wellregarding true code performance. What&#146;s more, assembly is so difficult to learn that most articles and books that present assembly code settle for code that just works, rather than code that pushes the CPU to its limits. In fact, since most articles and books are written for inexperienced assembly programmers, there is very little information of any sort available about how to generate high-quality assembly code for the x86 family CPUs. As a result, knowledge about programming them effectively is by far the hardest knowledge to gather. A good portion of this book is devoted to seeking out such knowledge.</P>
<TABLE WIDTH="100%"><TD WIDTH="5%" VALIGN="TOP"><IMG SRC="images/02-02i.jpg"><TD WIDTH="95%"><SMALL><I>Be forewarned, though: No matter how much you learn about programming the PC in assembly, there&#146;s always more to discover.</I></SMALL>
<TABLE WIDTH="100%"><TD WIDTH="5%" VALIGN="TOP"><IMG SRC="images/i.jpg"><TD WIDTH="95%"><SMALL><I>Be forewarned, though: No matter how much you learn about programming the PC in assembly, there&#146;s always more to discover.</I></SMALL>
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