Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[Dave Howorth]

James Knott wrote:
> Carl Spitzer wrote:
>> An old timer told me about those things and the roaches which used to
>> eat the wires causing shorts, hence the term debugging.
>>
> That term had supposedly been created by Grace Hopper, who found a moth
> in the computer.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper

Fortunately, that page debunks the myth and provides a link to another
one  that gives a detailed
explanation, explaining that the term has been around since 1878 at least.

Cheers, Dave
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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[James Knott]

Carl Spitzer wrote:
> An old timer told me about those things and the roaches which used to
> eat the wires causing shorts, hence the term debugging.
>
>   
That term had supposedly been created by Grace Hopper, who found a moth
in the computer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper

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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[Carl Spitzer]

On Sun, 2007-06-10 at 19:57 -0400, John Ross wrote:
> John Ross wrote:
> 
> Carl Spitzer wrote:
> > On Sun, 2007-06-03 at 19:43 +0100, Vince L wrote:
> >   
> > > On Sunday 03 June 2007 18:06, jdd wrote:
> > > 
> > > > too many oldtimer, here :-)))
> > > > 
> > > >   
> > > Punched cards, anyone?
> > > 
> > 
> > IBM 360 / 370 Assembler with a green card guide at Cal Poly San Louis
> > Obispo.
> > 
> > 
> >   
> How about an IBM 407a -- whopping 90 card per minute read rate.  The
> "program" was a 14" by 24" board made of bakelight
> like a car spark plug distributor -- with holes like a peg board --
> which held snap pluged wires that combined 1/2 adders and
> controlled multiple accumulator registers

An old timer told me about those things and the roaches which used to
eat the wires causing shorts, hence the term debugging.

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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[Carl Spitzer]

On Sun, 2007-06-03 at 19:43 +0100, Vince L wrote:
> On Sunday 03 June 2007 18:06, jdd wrote:
> >
> > too many oldtimer, here :-)))
> >
> 
> Punched cards, anyone?

IBM 360 / 370 Assembler with a green card guide at Cal Poly San Louis
Obispo.


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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[James Knott]

Jerry Feldman wrote:
> On Sun, 3 Jun 2007 15:36:06 -0500
> "Rajko M." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>   
>> You mean in Fortran IV times ?  ;-)
>> 
>
> I learned FORTRAN II just before FORTAN IV was released on an IBM 7044.
>
> Worked with a 4K DEC PDP 8. Had to enter binary for the RIM loader to
> load in paper tape. The original Burger King point of sale (Manex) was
> developed in the early 1970s. Very tight 100% assembler code with no
> external storage. It relied on core memory for persistence if power
> went down. The modem did not have any UARTS, we would send a bit, go
> into a timing loop for 1200 bps, send the next bit until 8 bits + start
> and stop were sent. We even had to program the hammer strikes on the
> printer drum.. Those days were fun.
>
>   
I also used to work with a PDP-8i and remember the RIM loader.


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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[Bill Anderson]

jdd wrote:

M Harris wrote:
For those of you who never used it, debug was a combination of 
debugging tool (register display) and machine language monitor.  It 
was the latter that most folks were unaware of usually...  early .com 



and breaking an application was a problem of minutes :-)

to have an idea, try "ed", still present on openSUSE

man ed
ed is a line-oriented text editor.

exactly the same than debug was working with

jdd

When I started in computer it was paper tape, punched cards were an 
advancement. The first "PC" I built was an IMSAI 8080 (serial no. 25), 
and used a Model 10 Teletype as a terminal. My real world work started 
with transistor machines (RCA Spectra 70 Model 55), and just missed the 
vacuum tube machines. Well almost, I learned to maintain a GE vacuum 
tube monster.


Bill Anderson
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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[jpff]

> "Vince" == Vince L <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

 Vince> On Sunday 03 June 2007 18:06, jdd wrote:
 >> 
 >> too many oldtimer, here :-)))
 >> 

 Vince> Punched cards, anyone?

If we are playing that game I wrote my first programs 49 years ago
for a Pegasus computer -- no high level language, no assembler, size
of a house and using valves (tubes to the Americans).  39 bit word, and
32 words of memory.  Never got to understand the delay-line stuff, but
I was quite young.  Tape, cards, switches  first UK on-line
system, seem to have done it all.  Loved assembler; adored microcode.
Miss real Lisp, and end up writing C.

==John ffitch
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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[John E. Perry]

M Harris wrote:
> On Sunday 03 June 2007 13:43, Vince L wrote:
>>> too many oldtimer, here :-)))
>> Punched cards, anyone?
>   My first "official" computer related job (ca. 1970, I was 15) was 
> computer 
> operator on an IBM 360 mod44 (fully transistorized high speed number 
> crunching mainframe--- with 256K of main ram!). 

Another 360/44 user! I used it in a nuclear lab from 1971 -- 1976.  I
was officially an electronics technician going to school, but often
helped physicists optimize their data acquisition and reduction code.


> ...card hopper.  We eventually installed drive packs... with platters the 
> size 
> of a large cake pan... and the drive units were the size of a washing 
> machine. 

Yeah, we had those 6-platter, 10-surface 14" packs, too.  It was scary
the first few times hearing the "clunk-clunk" as the heads did their seeks.

Am I remembering correctly that those held an ample 10MB total? :-)

John Perry
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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[John E. Perry]

jdd wrote:
> Randall R Schulz wrote:
> 
>> If speed is an issue, a purely interpreted language
> 
> Forth is not an interpreted langage. only uses a small number of
> assembly langage function and recursive calls. 

No, the Forth text is interpreted once into bytecodes, then the
bytecodes are interpreted from there to execute the machine code
functions.  Still interpretation, but much faster.  Just like Billy G's
original Microsoft Basic in the early '80's.

But any new function is
> added to the underlying system and available instantly, and all this is
> done function by function. very simple for structured programming.

True enough. I was fascinated by Forth for a while, but never got to use
it professionally.

John Perry

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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[Randall R Schulz]

On Sunday 03 June 2007 14:53, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> On Sun, 3 Jun 2007 08:05:00 -0700
>
> Randall R Schulz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > If speed is an issue, a purely interpreted language (unlike
> > contemporary JVMs which perform native code translation) will never
> > give good speed.
>
> Actually, I've seen well written Forth code do very well. We had a
> 3270 terminal emulation system on an 8085 processor where we bit a
> system with Forth as the high level language, and Forth did very
> well, albeit that Forth is interpreted, and did better than the
> assembler language version of the same emulator product.

That undoubtedly says more about how hard it is to write assembly than 
it does about the inherent speed potential of FORTH vs. assembly.

Randall Schulz
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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[Jerry Feldman]

On Sun, 3 Jun 2007 08:08:07 -0700
Randall R Schulz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> And the real point for any modern microprocessor is that it's very 
> difficult for human programmers to properly optimize the instruction 
> streams when writing in assembly.

You are absolutely, positively correct, especially when looking at
something like the Itanium. The Alpha and PA-RISC really needed the
scheduler pass. The scheduler would reorder the instruction stream to
prevent stalls and optimize the instruction streams. 

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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[Jerry Feldman]

On Sun, 3 Jun 2007 08:05:00 -0700
Randall R Schulz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> If speed is an issue, a purely interpreted language (unlike contemporary 
> JVMs which perform native code translation) will never give good speed.

Actually, I've seen well written Forth code do very well. We had a 3270
terminal emulation system on an 8085 processor where we bit a system
with Forth as the high level language, and Forth did very well, albeit
that Forth is interpreted, and did better than the assembler language
version of the same emulator product.

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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[Jerry Feldman]

On Sun, 3 Jun 2007 15:36:06 -0500
"Rajko M." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> You mean in Fortran IV times ?  ;-)

I learned FORTRAN II just before FORTAN IV was released on an IBM 7044.

Worked with a 4K DEC PDP 8. Had to enter binary for the RIM loader to
load in paper tape. The original Burger King point of sale (Manex) was
developed in the early 1970s. Very tight 100% assembler code with no
external storage. It relied on core memory for persistence if power
went down. The modem did not have any UARTS, we would send a bit, go
into a timing loop for 1200 bps, send the next bit until 8 bits + start
and stop were sent. We even had to program the hammer strikes on the
printer drum.. Those days were fun.

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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[Jerry Feldman]

On Sun, 3 Jun 2007 19:43:15 +0100
Vince L <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Punched cards, anyone?
Programming in IBM 360 assembler :-(
Programming in COBOL:
PROCEDURE DIVISION.
BEGIN.
ENTER SYMBOLIC.
Burroughs assembler language
ENTER COBOL.
EXIT.





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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[jdd]

M Harris wrote:
For 
those of you who never used it, debug was a combination of debugging tool 
(register display) and machine language monitor.  It was the latter that most 
folks were unaware of usually...  early .com 



and breaking an application was a problem of minutes :-)

to have an idea, try "ed", still present on openSUSE

man ed
ed is a line-oriented text editor.

exactly the same than debug was working with

jdd

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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[Rajko M.]

On Sunday 03 June 2007 13:43, Vince L wrote:
> On Sunday 03 June 2007 18:06, jdd wrote:
> > too many oldtimer, here :-)))
>
> Punched cards, anyone?

You mean in Fortran IV times ?  ;-)

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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[M Harris]

On Sunday 03 June 2007 06:43, James Knott wrote:
> Anyone here remember doing assembly code in DEBUG?
Back in the mid '80s we used "debug.com" at the Tampa lab to 
efficiently send 
printer control codes to the new line of Proprinters by IBM.  The same thing 
could be done with some trouble with Rom BASIC... but the simplicity of 
calling the bios from a com file for configuring a printer control stream 
couldn't be beat... 
A buddy and I were all ready to right a "new" debug clone for linux (32 
bit). 
But after getting used to yasm, and gdb, we decided to forgo the effort.  For 
those of you who never used it, debug was a combination of debugging tool 
(register display) and machine language monitor.  It was the latter that most 
folks were unaware of usually...  early .com files could be written quickly 
that would run hundreds of times faster than interpretted counter parts... 
and back then all we really has was BASIC, and some rather early level 
expensive Pascal from Borland and others.
Assembler is having a bit of a revival these days because of the full 
32 bit 
flat memory model provided by linux (no worry about segmentation or near/far 
calls etc) and the fact that the C library can be used with it almost 
transparently. And for some of us--- messing around with the guts of the 
processor is just plain fun... 



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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[M Harris]

On Sunday 03 June 2007 13:43, Vince L wrote:
> > too many oldtimer, here :-)))
>
> Punched cards, anyone?
My first "official" computer related job (ca. 1970, I was 15) was 
computer 
operator on an IBM 360 mod44 (fully transistorized high speed number 
crunching mainframe--- with 256K of main ram!). At the time there were only 
11 of those models in the world. The one I worked on sat on the 2nd floor of 
Upsher's Laboratories in Kansas City. That sucker had a high speed mag tape 
reader, high speed yellow punched tape reader, and of course a turbo punched 
card hopper.  We eventually installed drive packs... with platters the size 
of a large cake pan... and the drive units were the size of a washing 
machine. The whole thing sat on a raised floor, required its own building 
circuit... and was cooled by three air-conditioner units mounted on the roof. 
The lab used the unit primarily to analyse electro-cardiograms from the 
four-state area hospitals. The programming (I must have punched a zillion 
cards in the early seventies...) was Fortran II / IV     we had an entire 
room of card cabinets.   Oh, and the best part were all the blinking 
lights... that thing had the primary registers "lit up" on the front panel... 
selectable with a large wheel switch... and of course the stdout device was a 
Selectric 1 console.
The last time I saw an IBM 360 mod44 was at the Chicago Museum of 
Science and 
Industry... in the IBM wing... behind a glass case. That was the 
machine that brought T.J. Watson Jr fame for saying, "from this point on we 
will never make another computer with vacuum tubes!"   And the second famous 
quote when his son asked him what they were doing down at the lab... he said, 
"I have no idea... but whatever it is they're doing it at 300,000 times per 
second."
I still remember vividly about dreaming of a time when I might own my 
own 
computer ... and be able to do anything I could imagine with it... 



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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[James Knott]

Vince L wrote:
> On Sunday 03 June 2007 18:06, jdd wrote:
>   
>> too many oldtimer, here :-)))
>>
>> 
>
> Punched cards, anyone?
>   
I used to maintain punch card equipment and I used pencil mark cards in
a Fortran class, back in high school!


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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[Vince L]

On Sunday 03 June 2007 18:06, jdd wrote:
>
> too many oldtimer, here :-)))
>

Punched cards, anyone?
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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[jdd]

Vince L wrote:

On Sunday 03 June 2007 17:23, James Knott wrote:



Those were the days. Innumerable fights with pointers...


and innumerable small tests programs to know what happen on the 
edge... and Turbo series was a good compiler and had good doc :-)


thanksfully I did that only for learning Pascal & C and not for 
professional programming :-)


but the early days of Eprom programming (hex) was very good to learn 
to proofread a code :-)))


too many oldtimer, here :-)))

jdd
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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[Vince L]

On Sunday 03 June 2007 17:23, James Knott wrote:
>
> I was just learning about C programming at the time, so neither trick
> would have been known to me.  I also learned about the "fun" of variable
> sizes.  In class, we were using Borland's Turbo C++ for DOS.  At home, I
> was using Borland C++ for OS/2.  I'd do my homework and it would run
> fine on OS/2, but fail when I got to class, because of the difference in
> integer size etc.
>

Those were the days. Innumerable fights with pointers... Doing C while never 
having been given an explanation of what the compiler did, ie Preprocess, 
Compile, Assemble, Link

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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[James Knott]

Vince L wrote:
> On Sunday 03 June 2007 12:43, James Knott wrote:
>   
>> Anyone here remember doing assembly code in DEBUG?  Many years ago,
>> someone wanted a DOS utility that would just return an error code and do
>> nothing else.  I wrote one in assembler, using DEBUG, and it was only 5
>> bytes long.  The same thing in Turbo C, came in at a few K bytes.
>> 
>
> A lot of that depends on what library elements get compiled in by default, 
> and 
> how much you could strip that down. If you wrote the core of this 
> functionality in a separate C file, the size of the resulting object file 
> would be more indicative - the trick would be either to compile main() 
> without all of the overheads, or find a shortcut to invoke the requested 
> function, and link that instead.
>   
I was just learning about C programming at the time, so neither trick
would have been known to me.  I also learned about the "fun" of variable
sizes.  In class, we were using Borland's Turbo C++ for DOS.  At home, I
was using Borland C++ for OS/2.  I'd do my homework and it would run
fine on OS/2, but fail when I got to class, because of the difference in
integer size etc.

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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[Vince L]

On Sunday 03 June 2007 12:43, James Knott wrote:
> Anyone here remember doing assembly code in DEBUG?  Many years ago,
> someone wanted a DOS utility that would just return an error code and do
> nothing else.  I wrote one in assembler, using DEBUG, and it was only 5
> bytes long.  The same thing in Turbo C, came in at a few K bytes.

A lot of that depends on what library elements get compiled in by default, and 
how much you could strip that down. If you wrote the core of this 
functionality in a separate C file, the size of the resulting object file 
would be more indicative - the trick would be either to compile main() 
without all of the overheads, or find a shortcut to invoke the requested 
function, and link that instead.
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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[jdd]

Randall R Schulz wrote:


If speed is an issue, a purely interpreted language


Forth is not an interpreted langage. only uses a small number of 
assembly langage function and recursive calls. But any new function 
is added to the underlying system and available instantly, and all 
this is done function by function. very simple for structured programming.


of course the logic is fairly different from C, an experienced C 
programmer will see Forth as the hell :-)


but embedded system programmers uses it, because it's extremely compact.

and including assembly is very simple, so why I mentioned it here

jdd

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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[Vince L]

On Sunday 03 June 2007 15:24, Mike McMullin wrote:
> Someone mentioned that this looked like an effort on the part of person
> looking to learn assembly, to me that makes sense, and should signal the
> "vultures" to provide some actual guidance on getting the code runnable,
> and then perhaps crank over the style, which will come over time as the
> person gets used to assembly language.

In posting as I did, I was fully aware that this was a learning attempt, and 
it was for exactly that reason I spent time giving guidance on style and 
comments specifically. I was only going to spend 5 minutes on it [I actually 
spent about 20, I suppose], and I went for what I judge to be the input which 
would have most benefit for the OP - namely his presentation and his 
comments. Good layout and commenting are necessary to help reviewers read the 
code in the first place and to validate the code as delivering the intent.

For the OP, getting comments by submitting to the internet will be a bit hit 
and miss. I'm hoping that if he takes on board the input on presentation and 
commenting, he will improve his chances of getting help by getting reviewers 
up to speed quickly.
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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[Randall R Schulz]

On Sunday 03 June 2007 07:59, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> On Sun, 03 Jun 2007 11:03:34 +0100
>
> G T Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Some assembler code is truly ugly (using 100s of NOPS for timing is
> > one example I can think off), where timing or speed is essential
> > one will nearly always get a better result with well written
> > assembler (it often is not pretty to look at at)..
>
> Just a general comment on this since I was one of the authors of the
> Unix/Windows NT assembler for the Alpha chip. (This is a bit of a
> generalization) Alpha chip could execute multiple simultaneous
> streams (2 or 4 depending on the chip version), but the instructions
> had to be ordered properly for this to happen. We used a "scheduler"
> as an optimization as the last pass of the assembler. In some cases,
> using NOPs  had a positive performance effect. Additionally, in the
> Intel Itanium chip, they pack 6 instructions together, and properly
> placed NOPs help performance.

And the real point for any modern microprocessor is that it's very 
difficult for human programmers to properly optimize the instruction 
streams when writing in assembly.

Assembly programming's domain continues to shrink with the ongoing 
advancement of both processor and compiler / programming language 
technologies.

Combine this with the need for increased programmer productivity and 
assembler is left with littler more than niche applications.


Randall Schulz
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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[Randall R Schulz]

On Sunday 03 June 2007 04:01, jdd wrote:
> G T Smith wrote:
> > Any high level computer language comes with overheads on the
> > compiled code
>
> if you need to have complete control over a very fast and compact
> code, think about 'Forth' langage

Now I _am_ gagging.

If speed is an issue, a purely interpreted language (unlike contemporary 
JVMs which perform native code translation) will never give good speed.

And that hideous code formatting scheme. Yuck.


> jdd


RRS
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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[Jerry Feldman]

On Sun, 03 Jun 2007 11:03:34 +0100
G T Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Some assembler code is truly ugly (using 100s of NOPS for timing is one
> example I can think off), where timing or speed is essential one will
> nearly always get a better result with well written assembler (it often
> is not pretty to look at at)..

Just a general comment on this since I was one of the authors of the
Unix/Windows NT assembler for the Alpha chip. (This is a bit of a
generalization) Alpha chip could execute multiple simultaneous streams
(2 or 4 depending on the chip version), but the instructions had to be
ordered properly for this to happen. We used a "scheduler" as an
optimization as the last pass of the assembler. In some cases, using
NOPs  had a positive performance effect. Additionally, in the Intel
Itanium chip, they pack 6 instructions together, and properly placed
NOPs help performance. 

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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[James Knott]

Mike McMullin wrote:
> On Sun, 2007-06-03 at 07:43 -0400, James Knott wrote:
>   
>> M Harris wrote:
>> 
>>> On Friday 01 June 2007 22:22, azeem ahmad wrote:
>>>   
>>>   
 i am about to make a bootable floppy for test
 but i am being unable to get it done
 
 
>>> Whoa bubba... I am surprised you can make lunch... but seriously, who 
>>> taught 
>>> you how to write assembler code?Ok, here is a sample "hello, world!" 
>>> program that includes a counted loop to the iolib wrapper routine 
>>> ( hello.asm ) and the io wrapper ( iolib.asm ) and a Makefile. All you will 
>>> need to build this hello world demo in opensuse is yasm|nasm , binutils 
>>> ( ld ) and elf (standard).  Its a flat 32 bit sample, staticly linked, and 
>>> does not call any of the c library.  Enjoy, but pay particular attention to 
>>> the format, the style, the comments, and the Makefile.  note: do not 
>>> include 
>>> the /begin /end lines in the code files.
>>>
>>> 
>>>   
>>>   
>> Anyone here remember doing assembly code in DEBUG?  Many years ago,
>> someone wanted a DOS utility that would just return an error code and do
>> nothing else.  I wrote one in assembler, using DEBUG, and it was only 5
>> bytes long.  The same thing in Turbo C, came in at a few K bytes.
>> 
>
>   Anyone here learn a.l. by hand disassembling their basic interpreter?
> Someone mentioned that this looked like an effort on the part of person
> looking to learn assembly, to me that makes sense, and should signal the
> "vultures" to provide some actual guidance on getting the code runnable,
> and then perhaps crank over the style, which will come over time as the
> person gets used to assembly language.
>
>   
While not quite the same thing, I manually typed in my BASIC
interpreter, in octal!  My first computer was an IMSAI 8080 and I ran
Scelbi's "SCELBAL" BASIC on it.  Since I didn't have a paper tape
reader, the only way I had to load it, was to type the octal numbers
into memory, using Scelbi's monitor program.  Once I'd typed in a block
of 256 bytes, I'd save it to cassette tape and then start on the next
block.  Fortunately, my work had me in the middle of nowhere for a
month, so I had plenty of spare time on my hands.  I also loaded in that
monitor program from the front panel and then saved to tape!


IMSAI 8080 http://oldcomputers.net/imsai8080.html




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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[Mike McMullin]

On Sun, 2007-06-03 at 07:43 -0400, James Knott wrote:
> M Harris wrote:
> > On Friday 01 June 2007 22:22, azeem ahmad wrote:
> >   
> >> i am about to make a bootable floppy for test
> >> but i am being unable to get it done
> >> 
> > Whoa bubba... I am surprised you can make lunch... but seriously, who 
> > taught 
> > you how to write assembler code?Ok, here is a sample "hello, world!" 
> > program that includes a counted loop to the iolib wrapper routine 
> > ( hello.asm ) and the io wrapper ( iolib.asm ) and a Makefile. All you will 
> > need to build this hello world demo in opensuse is yasm|nasm , binutils 
> > ( ld ) and elf (standard).  Its a flat 32 bit sample, staticly linked, and 
> > does not call any of the c library.  Enjoy, but pay particular attention to 
> > the format, the style, the comments, and the Makefile.  note: do not 
> > include 
> > the /begin /end lines in the code files.
> >
> > 
> >   
> 
> Anyone here remember doing assembly code in DEBUG?  Many years ago,
> someone wanted a DOS utility that would just return an error code and do
> nothing else.  I wrote one in assembler, using DEBUG, and it was only 5
> bytes long.  The same thing in Turbo C, came in at a few K bytes.

  Anyone here learn a.l. by hand disassembling their basic interpreter?
Someone mentioned that this looked like an effort on the part of person
looking to learn assembly, to me that makes sense, and should signal the
"vultures" to provide some actual guidance on getting the code runnable,
and then perhaps crank over the style, which will come over time as the
person gets used to assembly language.

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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[jdd]

James Knott wrote:


Anyone here remember doing assembly code in DEBUG?  Many years ago,
someone wanted a DOS utility that would just return an error code and do
nothing else.  I wrote one in assembler, using DEBUG, and it was only 5
bytes long.  The same thing in Turbo C, came in at a few K bytes.


I used debug to brake applications. I had some that copy protection 
made crash...


Just a story. I had to compile a progam to have a computer hard reset.

I first do a basic programm... two lines, but 64k basic to launch.

Then a turbo pascal exe. down to 10K
Tene a macro assembler .com... 2K
then I took a hex program and wrote the code for 
Longjump... 3 bytes, and fast!!


:-)

jdd


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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[James Knott]

M Harris wrote:
> On Friday 01 June 2007 22:22, azeem ahmad wrote:
>   
>> i am about to make a bootable floppy for test
>> but i am being unable to get it done
>> 
>   Whoa bubba... I am surprised you can make lunch... but seriously, who 
> taught 
> you how to write assembler code?Ok, here is a sample "hello, world!" 
> program that includes a counted loop to the iolib wrapper routine 
> ( hello.asm ) and the io wrapper ( iolib.asm ) and a Makefile. All you will 
> need to build this hello world demo in opensuse is yasm|nasm , binutils 
> ( ld ) and elf (standard).  Its a flat 32 bit sample, staticly linked, and 
> does not call any of the c library.  Enjoy, but pay particular attention to 
> the format, the style, the comments, and the Makefile.  note: do not include 
> the /begin /end lines in the code files.
>
> 
>   

Anyone here remember doing assembly code in DEBUG?  Many years ago,
someone wanted a DOS utility that would just return an error code and do
nothing else.  I wrote one in assembler, using DEBUG, and it was only 5
bytes long.  The same thing in Turbo C, came in at a few K bytes.


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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[jdd]

G T Smith wrote:


Any high level computer language comes with overheads on the compiled
code


if you need to have complete control over a very fast and compact 
code, think about 'Forth' langage


jdd

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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[G T Smith]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Vince L wrote:
> On Saturday 02 June 2007 04:22, azeem ahmad wrote:
>> hi list
>> i am about to make a bootable floppy for test
>> but i am being unable to get it done
>> please review the code below and tell me if there is any problem with it
> 
> Very funny!!! I have recently left a job in part because I became very tired 
> of reviewing rubbish code in assembler when I felt certain I could write the 
> same thing in C and leave less problems if my C was unreviewed than there 
> would be if I reviewed someone else's misguided assembler.
> 

Any high level computer language comes with overheads on the compiled
code, and I have seen in the past seen some truly horrible low level
code generated by high level language compilers. Also on occasion in the
past I have found decompiling to assembler and hand optimisation was a
necessity.

Some assembler code is truly ugly (using 100s of NOPS for timing is one
example I can think off), where timing or speed is essential one will
nearly always get a better result with well written assembler (it often
is not pretty to look at at).. One would assume in your role as a code
reviewer you were not only taking into account what the code did but how
well it did it. (If not why not?).




>> call _disp# call subroutine disp
> Useless comment. Says what you can see from the code
> 
>> _disp:#label of the disp routine
> That too is a useless comment. Again, either we know it's a label, or we have 
> nothing useful to contribute to a review. No comment is needed here, it just 
> makes the rest harder to read.
> 
>> lodsb# load the string pointed by ds:si in a
>>  # - byte by byte manner into the accumulator
> This is a misleading comment. You should be shot for this. AFAICS, this 
> instruction loads just 1 byte, it does not do anything byte by byte - it is 
> the _disp loop as a whole which does byte by byte.
> 
>> jz ret   # jump if al zero to return
> Another useless comment for the same reason. I am not hot on Intel assembler,

Obviously not, see below!  jz checks the status of zero flag

> so I don't know it is al which is zero compared - but I do know that to 
> review this I would have to know what jz does - so as reviewer, I know it is 
> my responsibility either to understand each line or to find out what it does
> 
>> or %al, %al  # check if the entire string has been loaded byte-wise
>>  # by oring al to al,
>>  # if the result is 0, there are no more bytes to load

Really useful ... swapped the order of instructions .. or al,al will set
the Z flag to zero for the jz test. As you have ordered them this
routine could go on for ever. If you do not know about it, dont comment
on it.

> This is a far more useful comment, because it reveals strategy - ie what you 



This a bog standard Intel interrupt 10h display routine which could be
lifted out of any 8086 assembler cookbook. It does and should not need
any more comment that.

Comments are a matter a style, personally I dislike end of line comments
(they get in the way of the code), and prefer block head comments.

However, for a novice, which the guy obviously is, the comments are
probably a good mnemonic. My suspicion is the original got mauled in
transmission.

The only comment I made on it was a suspicion that a dangerous
assumption was being made with the string definition, which is probably
an easily made mistake by a novice assembler programmer with a C
background.


> 
> If your intention is to make a bootable floppy, you may find this link 
> useful: 
> http://linuxgazette.net/issue84/dashti.html. Good luck with your coding - but 
> even if you are fixing the comments in this code, you've had your 5 minutes 
> from me. May be this is not the help you expected - I have been been hard on 
> your style - but I hope that it will help you in the future.
> 

I would suspect that he attempting first steps in using assembler to
communicate with the PC BIOS. Something which is usually rather
difficult to do on both the Linux and Win32 platform. Using 8/16 bit
intel assembler in useful start point, rather than the 32 bit
instruction set. There are also quite a view 8088/8086 devices out there
in the process control world.


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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[M Harris]

On Friday 01 June 2007 22:22, azeem ahmad wrote:
> i am about to make a bootable floppy for test
> but i am being unable to get it done
Whoa bubba... I am surprised you can make lunch... but seriously, who 
taught 
you how to write assembler code?Ok, here is a sample "hello, world!" 
program that includes a counted loop to the iolib wrapper routine 
( hello.asm ) and the io wrapper ( iolib.asm ) and a Makefile. All you will 
need to build this hello world demo in opensuse is yasm|nasm , binutils 
( ld ) and elf (standard).  Its a flat 32 bit sample, staticly linked, and 
does not call any of the c library.  Enjoy, but pay particular attention to 
the format, the style, the comments, and the Makefile.  note: do not include 
the /begin /end lines in the code files.


section .text
global _start
extern stdOut

_start:
mov ecx,count   ;loop counter
mov eax,hello   ;setup data hello
mov edx,hellolen

wrtHello:
callstdOut  ;write data hello
loopwrtHello;loop back until counter is zero

mov eax,1   ;sys_exit
mov ebx,0   ;return code 0 (no error)
int 80h ;call the kernel

section .data
hello   db  'Hello, World!',10
hellolen:   equ $-hello
count:  equ 07h



section .text
global stdOut

stdOut:
pushedx ;save environment
pushecx ;
pushebx ;
pusheax ;
mov ecx,eax ;setup data register
mov eax,4   ;sys_write
mov ebx,1   ;standard out
int 80h ;call kernell
pop eax ;restore environment
pop ebx ;
pop ecx ;
pop edx ;
ret



all: hello

AS = yasm
ASMOPTS = -f elf
LINKOPTS = -s -o hello

hello: hello.o iolib.o
ld $(LINKOPTS) hello.o iolib.o

hello.o: hello.asm
$(AS) $(ASMOPTS) hello.asm

iolib.o: iolib.asm
$(AS) $(ASMOPTS) iolib.asm

clean:
rm hello.o iolib.o hello

install:
cp hello ~/bin/





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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[Vince L]

On Saturday 02 June 2007 04:22, azeem ahmad wrote:
> hi list
> i am about to make a bootable floppy for test
> but i am being unable to get it done
> please review the code below and tell me if there is any problem with it

Very funny!!! I have recently left a job in part because I became very tired 
of reviewing rubbish code in assembler when I felt certain I could write the 
same thing in C and leave less problems if my C was unreviewed than there 
would be if I reviewed someone else's misguided assembler.

> ---
>--- .code16 #assembler
> directive to start 16-bit real mode for execution .text /*assembler
> directive to tell the start of 'read-only'
> code segment*/
> .org 0x00 /*assembler directive to set the origon to sector 0
> needed to copy the program to the very first sector
> of the floppy disk*/
>
> .global _start /*assembler directive to export the start section to
> all other programs, i.e. to make it visible to programs
> like linker or other user programs*/
>
> ... (etc)

Good grief man, no one in their right mind is going to review that. Or if they 
do, you should doubt the value of their comments.

If anyone asked me to review something looking like that, I would have told 
them to represent it, properly formatted. I used to teach our company's code 
review course, and I said that some code was so poor that it did not meet the 
entry criteria for review, and that it should be returned without review. 
Yours is so badly formatted thatnobody should waste their time reviewing it.

The comment I make is harsh - but please understand that if you want someone 
to even look at your code for 5 minutes, you have to convince them that you 
made good judgements when you worked on it for 5 hours.

Try something like this below - and don't insult your reviewer by telling him 
that each line beginning with '.' is an assembler directive. If he knows this 
already, you are making it harder for him to read. If he doesn't know this, 
you are wasting his time and yours by having him review it.

> .code16   # 16-bit real mode for execution
> .text # start of 'read-only' code segment
> .org 0x00 # origin at sector 0
>   # - ie floppy disk sector 0
>
> .global _start# make _start visible for linking

More:

> call _disp# call subroutine disp
Useless comment. Says what you can see from the code

> _disp:#label of the disp routine
That too is a useless comment. Again, either we know it's a label, or we have 
nothing useful to contribute to a review. No comment is needed here, it just 
makes the rest harder to read.

> lodsb# load the string pointed by ds:si in a
>  # - byte by byte manner into the accumulator
This is a misleading comment. You should be shot for this. AFAICS, this 
instruction loads just 1 byte, it does not do anything byte by byte - it is 
the _disp loop as a whole which does byte by byte.

> jz ret   # jump if al zero to return
Another useless comment for the same reason. I am not hot on Intel assembler, 
so I don't know it is al which is zero compared - but I do know that to 
review this I would have to know what jz does - so as reviewer, I know it is 
my responsibility either to understand each line or to find out what it does

> or %al, %al  # check if the entire string has been loaded byte-wise
>  # by oring al to al,
>  # if the result is 0, there are no more bytes to load
This is a far more useful comment, because it reveals strategy - ie what you 
are trying to do. Line 2 of the comment [by oring al to al] is useless 
because it says how you are trying to do it, but we can already see that from 
the code. You should tell your reviewer what you are trying to do - he is not 
a mind reader, otherwise you are wasting his time trying to work it out. 

Overall, taking the _disp loop as an example, you need a good 'strategy' 
comment to say what the loop is intended to achieve. If this comment is good, 
you need less comments on the individual lines.


If your intention is to make a bootable floppy, you may find this link useful: 
http://linuxgazette.net/issue84/dashti.html. Good luck with your coding - but 
even if you are fixing the comments in this code, you've had your 5 minutes 
from me. May be this is not the help you expected - I have been been hard on 
your style - but I hope that it will help you in the future.

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Re: [opensuse] Assembly Language program

[G T Smith]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

azeem ahmad wrote:
> hi list
> i am about to make a bootable floppy for test
> but i am being unable to get it done
> please review the code below and tell me if there is any problem with it
> --
> 
> .code16 #assembler directive to start 16-bit real mode for execution
> .text /*assembler directive to tell the start of 'read-only'
> code segment*/
> .org 0x00 /*assembler directive to set the origon to sector 0
> needed to copy the program to the very first sector
> of the floppy disk*/
> 
> .global _start /*assembler directive to export the start section to
> all other programs, i.e. to make it visible to programs
> like linker or other user programs*/
> 
> _start: #label of the start routine
> mov 0x07C0, %ax /*move immidiate operand 07C0 to the
> accumulator register ax, so that it can be
> transfered to data segment register*/
> mov %ax, %ds /*move contents of register ax to register ds*/
> call _boot #call the boot section
> ret #return the control to the caller routine
> 
> _boot: #label of the boot section
> mov $msg, %si /*move the address of the character string
> constant 'msg' to the source index register*/
> call _disp #call subroutine disp
> ret #return the control to the caller routine
> 
> _disp: #label of the disp routine
> cld /*clear direction flag, to permit string
> instructions to increment index registers
> by their own*/
> lodsb /*load the string pointed by ds:si in a
> byte by byte manner into the accumulator*/
> or %al, %al /*check if the entire string has been loaded
> byte-wise by oring al to al, if the result is
> zero, it shows there are no more byte to load*/
> jz ret #jump if al zero to return
> mov $0xE, %ah /*else put code for 'write a character on the
> screen and move forward' into the ah*/
> mov $7, %bh /*enable normal attribute for all the blank
> lines on the screen*/
> int $0x10 /*call interupt 0x10, which is responsible
> for the video display, it will take codes
> from ah and bh*/
> jmp _disp
> 
> msg: #label of the string definition
> .ascii "My Boot System" #definition of the string
> 
> .org 510 #set origon to 510
> .word 0xAA55 #
> --
> 
> 
> saved the file with the name myos.s
> then
> 
> #as myos.s -o myos.o
> #objcopy -O binary myos.o BOOT
> #dd if=./BOOT of=/dev/fd0 bs=512 count=1
> -
> 
> the system tries to boot from the floppy and it boots (as it doesnt give
> an error or it doesnt go to the next boot device. but it doesnt display
> the string that i had to show from the string
> 
> please check it and tell me about any possible errors in the code
> 
> Regards
> Azeem
> 
> _
> Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today it's FREE!
> http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
> 

a) Having a little difficulty reading the code...
b) You might get more help with the suse-programming list
c) I think you are assuming the string is null terminated. I am
unfamilier with this assembler but it might be worthwhile explicitly
putting a null at the end of the string.



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