                         :::::::::   ::::::::  :::::::::  :::::::::: 

                         :+:    :+: :+:    :+: :+:    :+: :+:        

                         +:+    +:+ +:+        +:+    +:+ +:+        

                         +#++:++#+  +#++:++#++ +#++:++#:  :#::+::#   

                         +#+    +#+        +#+ +#+    +#+ +#+        

                         #+#    #+# #+#    #+# #+#    #+# #+#        

                         #########   ########  ###    ### ###  

                         

                    	             http://blacksun.box.sk

                                   ____________________

           _______________________I      Topic:        I_____________________

          \                       I   Sk00l m3 ASM!!   I                    /

           \     E-mail:          I                    I   Written by:     /

            >                     I                    I                  < 

           /    fu@ckz.org        I____________________I      Ralph        \

          /___________________________>           <_________________________\         







Sk00l m3 ASM!!#@$!@#



by Ralph (fu@ckz.org)

    -AWC (http://awc.rejects.net)

Version: 0.841

Date: 7/23/00



NOTE:  This thing is almost done, just gotta finish of the Win32 section, however I 

       started working on other shit so finishing this is kinda 10th on my priority 

       list.  If you think you can convince me to finish it sooner, feel free to 

       contact me. 





TOC



1.  Introduction

    -What is it?

    -Why learn it?

    -What will this tutorial teach you?



2.  Memory

    -Number Systems

      -Decimal

      -Binary

      -Hexadecimal

    -Bits, Nybbles, Bytes, Words, Double Words

    -The Stack

    -Segment:Offset

    -Registers



3.  Getting started

    -Getting an assembler

    -Program layout

     -.COM

     -.EXE



4.  Basic ASM

    -Basic Register operations

    -Stack operations

    -Arithmetic operations

    -Bit wise operation

    -Interrupts



5.  Tools

    -Debug

    -CodeView



6.  More basics

    -.COM file format

    -Flow control operations

    -Loops

    -Variables

    -Arrays

    -String Operations

    -Sub-Procedures

    -User Input



7.  Basics of Graphics

    -Using interrupts

    -Writing directly to the VRAM

    -A line drawing program



8.  Basics of File Operations

    -File Handles

    -Reading files

    -Creating files

    -Search operations 



9.  Basics of Win32

    -Introduction

    -Tools

    -A Message Box

    -A Window





Appendix A

    -Resources



Appendix B

    -Credits, Contact information, Other shit











1.  Introduction

================





What is it?

-----------

Assembly language is a low-level programming language.  The syntax is nothing like 

C/C++, Pascal, Basic, or anything else you might be used to.





Why learn it?

-------------

If you ask someone these days what the advantage of assembly is, they will tell you it's 

speed.  That might have been true in the days of BASIC or Pascal, but today a C/C++ 

program compiled with an optimized compiler is as fast, or even faster than the same 

algorithm in assembly.  According to many people assembly is dead.  So why bother 

learning it?

1.  Learning assembly will help you better understand just how a computer works.

2.  If windows crashes, it usually returns the location/action that caused the error.

    However, it doesn't return it in C/C++.  Knowing assembly is the only way to track

    down bugs/exploits and fix them.

3.  How often do you whish you could just get rid of that stupid nag screen in that

    shareware app you use?  Knowing a high-level language wont get you very far when you

    open the shit up in your decompiler and see something like CMP EAX, 7C0A

4.  Certain low level and hardware situations still require assembly

5.  If you need precise control over what your program is doing, a high level language

    is seldom powerful enough.

6.  Anyway you put it, even the most optimized high level language compiler is still 

    just a general compiler, thus the code it produces is also general/slow code.  If 

    you have a specific task, it will run faster in optimized assembly than in any other

    language.

7.  "Professional Assembly Programmer"  looks damn good on a resume.

My personal reason why I think assembly is the best language is the fact that you're

in control.  Yes all you C/C++/Pascal/Perl/etc coders out there, in all your fancy

high level languages you're still the passenger.  The compiler and the language itself

limit you.  In assembly you're only limited by the hardware you own.  You control the

CPU and memory, not the otherway around.





What will this tutorial teach you?

----------------------------------

I tryed to make this an introduction to assembly, so I'm starting from the beginning.

After you've read this you should know enough about assembly to develop graphics

routines, make something like a simple database application, accept user input, 

make Win32 GUIs, use organized and reuseable code, know about different data types

and how to use them, some basic I/O shit, etc. 





2.  Memory

==========

In this chapter I will ask you to take a whole new look at computers.  To many they

are just boxes that allow you to get on the net, play games, etc.  Forget all that 

today and think of them as what they really are, Big Calculators.  All a computer does

is Bit Manipulation.  That is, it can turn certain bits on and off.  A computer can't

even do all arithmetic operations.  All it can do is add.  Subtraction is achieved

by adding negative numbers, multiplication is repeaded adding, and dividing is 

repeaded adding of negative numbers.





Number systems

--------------

All of you are familiar with at least one number system, Decimal.  In this chapter I 

will introduce you to 2 more, Binary and Hexadecimal.





Decimal

Before we get into the other 2 systems, lets review the decimal system.  The decimal

system is a base 10 system, meaning that it consists of 10 numbers that are used to make

up all other number.  These 10 numbers are 0-9.  Lets use the number 125 as an example:

               Hundreds     Tens     Units

Digit             1          2         5

Meaning         1x10^2     2x10^1    5x10^0

Value            100         20        5

NOTE: x^y means x to the power of y.  ex. 13^3  means 13 to the power of 3 (2197)

Add the values up and you get 125.



Make sure you understand all this before going on to the binary system!





Binary

The binary systems looks harder than decimal at first, but is infact quite a bit easier

since it's only base 2 (0-1).  Remember that in decimal you go "value x 10^position" to

get the real number, well in binary you go "value x 2^position" to get the answer.  

Sounds more complicated than it is.  To better understand this, lets to some converting.

Take the binary number 10110:

1 x 2^4 = 16

0 x 2^3 = 0

1 x 2^2 = 4

1 x 2^1 = 2

0 x 2^0 = 0

Answer:  22





NOTE: for the next example I already converted the Ax2^B stuff to the real value: 

      2^0 = 1 

      2^1 = 2

      2^2 = 4 

      2^3 = 8

      2^4 = 16

      2^5 = 32

      etc....



Lets use 111101:

1 x 32 = 32

1 x 16 = 16

1 x  8 =  8

1 x  4 =  4

0 x  2 =  0

1 x  1 =  1

Answer:  61



Make up some binary numbers and convert them to decimal to practise this.  It is very 

important that you completely understand this concept.  If you don't, check Appendix B

for links and read up on this topic BEFORE going on!



Now lets convert decimal to binary, take a look at the example below:

238 / 2  remainder: 0

119 / 2  remainder: 1

59  / 2  remainder: 1

29  / 2  remainder: 1

14  / 2  remainder: 0

7   / 2  remainder: 1

3   / 2  remainder: 1

1   / 2  remainder: 1

0   / 2  remainder: 0

Answer: 11101110



Lets go through this:

1.  Divide the original number by 2, if it divides evenly the remainder is 0

2.  Divide the answer from the previous calculation (119) by 2.  If it wont

    divide evenly the remainder is 1.

3.  Round the number from the previous calculation DOWN (59), and divide it by 2.

    Answer: 29, remainder: 1

4.  Repeat until you get to 0....

The final answer should be 011101110, notice how the answer given is missing the 1st 0?

That's because just like in decimal, they have no value and can be omitted (023 = 23).



Practise this with some other decimal numbers, and check it by converting your answer

back to binary.  Again make sure you get this before going on!



A few additional things about binary:

* Usually 1 represents TRUE, and 0 FALSE

* When writing binary, keep the number in multiples of 4

  ex.  DON'T write 11001, change it to 00011001, remember that the 0 in front 

  are not worth anything

* Usually you add a b after the number to signal the fact that it is a binary number

  ex. 00011001 = 00011001b





Hexadecimal

Some of you may have notice some consistency in things like RAM for example.  They seem

to always be a multiple of 4.  For example, it is common to have 128 megs of RAM, but

you wont find 127 anywhere.  That's because computer like to use multiples of 2, 4, 8, 

16, 32, 64 etc.  That's where hexadecimal comes in.  Since hexadecimal is base 16, it is 

perfect for computers.  If you understood the binary section earlier, you should have

no problems with this one.  Look at the table below, and try to memorize it.  It's not

as hard as it looks.

Hexadecimal        Decimal        Binary

0h                  0             0000b

1h                  1             0001b

2h                  2             0010b

3h                  3             0011b

4h                  4             0100b

5h                  5             0101b

6h                  6             0110b

7h                  7             0111b

8h                  8             1000b

9h                  9             1001b

Ah                 10             1010b

Bh                 11             1011b

Ch                 12             1100b

Dh                 13             1101b

Eh                 14             1110b

Fh                 15             1111b



NOTE:  the h after each hexadecimal number stands for <insert guess here>



Now lets do some converting:

Hexadecimal to Decimal

2A4F



F x 16^0 = 15 x 1    = 15

4 x 16^1 =  4 x 16   = 64 

A x 16^2 = 10 x 256  = 2560

2 x 16^3 =  2 x 4096 = 8192

Answer: 10831



1.  Write down the hexadecimal number starting from the last digit

2.  Change each hexadecimal number to decimal and times them by 16^postion

3.  Add all final numbers up



Confused?  Lets do another example: DEAD

D x 1    = 13 x 1    = 13

A x 16   = 10 x 16   = 160

E x 256  = 14 x 256  = 3584

D x 4096 = 13 x 4096 = 53248

Answer: 57005



Practise this method until you get it, then move on.



Decimal to Hexadecimal

Study the following example:

1324



1324 /   16 = 82.75

  82 x   16 = 1312

1324 - 1312 = 12, converted to Hexadecimal: C



82 / 16 =  5.125

 5 x 16 = 80

82 - 80 =  2, converted to Hexadecimal: 2



5 / 16 = 0.3125

0 x 16 = 0

5 -  0 = 5, converted to Hexadecimal: 5



Answer: 52C



I'd do another example, but it's too much of a pain in the ass, maybe some other time.



Learn this section you WILL need it!

This was already one of the hardest parts, the next sections should be a bit easier



Some additional things abot hexidecimal

1.  It's not uncommon to say "hex" instead of "hexidecimal" even thechnicaly speaking

    "hex" means 6, not 16.

2.  Keep hexidecimal numbers in multiples of 4, adding zeros as necessary

3.  Most assemblers can't handle numbers that start with a "letter" because they don't

    know if you mean a label, instruction, etc.  In that case there are a number of

    other ways you can express the number.  The most common are:

    DEAD = 0DEADh  (Usually used for DOS/Win)

    and

    DEAD = 0xDEAD  (Usually used for *Nix based systems)

    Consult your assembler's manual to see what it uses.





By the way, does anyone think I should add Octal to this...?





Bits, Nibbles, Bytes, Words, Double Words

-----------------------------------------

Bits are the smallest unit of data on a computer.  Each bit can only represent 2 numbers,

1 and 0.  Bits are fairly useless because they're so damn small so we got the nibble.

A nibble is a collection of 4 bits.  That might not seem very interesting, but remember

how all 16 hexadecimal numbers can be represented with a set of 4 binary numbers?  

That's pretty much all a nibble is good for.



The most important data structure used by your computer is a Byte.  A byte is the 

smallest unit that can be accessed by your processor.  It is made up of 8 bits, or

2 nibbles.  Everything you store on your hard drive, send with your modem, etc is in 

bytes.  For example, lets say you store the number 170 on your hard drive, it would look

like this:



+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+

| 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 |

+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+

  7   6   5   4   3   2   1   0

  H.O Nibble    |   L.O Nibble    



10101010 is 170 in binary.  Since we can fit 2 nibbles in a byte, we can also refer

to bits 0-3 as the Low Order Nibble, and 4-7 as the High Order Nibble

Next we got Words.  A word is simply 2 bytes, or 16 bits.  Say you store 43690, it would

look like this:



+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+

| 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 |

+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+

 15  14  13  12  11  10   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1   0

       High Order Byte          |         Low Order Byte



Again, we can refer to bits 0-7 as Low Order Byte, and 7-15 as High Order Byte.

Lastly we have a Double Word, which is exactly what it says, 2 word, 4 bytes, 8 nibbles

or 32 bits.



NOTE:  Originally a Word was the size of the BUS from the CPU to the RAM.  Today most

       computers have at least a 32bit bus, but most people were used to 

       1 word = 16 bits so they decided to keep it that way.







The Stack

---------

You have probably heard about the stack very often.  If you still don't know what it 

means, read on.  The stack is a very useful Data Structure (anything that holds data).

Think of it as a stack of books.  You put one on top of it, and that one will be the 

first one to come of next.  Putting stuff on the stack is called Pushing, getting stuff

from the stack is called Poping.  For example, say you have 5 books called A, B, C, D,

and E stack on top of each other like this:

A

B

C

D

E

Now you add (push) book F to the stack:

F

A

B

C

D

E

If you pop the stack, you get book F back and the stack looks like this again:

A

B

C

D

E

This called LIFO, Last In, First Out.

So what good is all this?  The stack is extremely useful as a "scratchpad" to 

temporarily hold data.





Segment:Offset

--------------

Everything on your computer is connected through a series of wires called the BUS.  The

BUS to the RAM is 16 bits.  So when the processor needs to write to the RAM, it does

so by sending the 16 bit location through the bus.  In the old days this meant that 

computers could only have 65535 bytes of memory  (16 bits = 1111111111111111 = 65535).  

That was plenty back than, but today that's not quite enough.  So designers came up 

with a way to send 20 bits over the bus, thus allowing for a total of 1 MB of memory

In this new design, memory is segmented into a collection of bytes called Segments, 

and can be access by specifying the Offset number within those segments.  So if the 

processor wants to access data it first sends the Segment number, followed by the 

Offset number.  For example, the processor sends a request of 1234:4321, the RAM would 

send back the 4321st byte in segment number 1234.

This all might sound a bit complicated, but study it carefully and you should be able

to master segment:offset.

The best way to picture seg:off is with a 2 dimensional array.  Remember that X,Y shit 

you had to learn in grade 9 math?

Look at the diagram below, the * is located at 4:3.  The Y-axis is equal to the segment,

and the X-axis is the offset.





         +--+--+--+--+--+

       5 |  |  |  |  |  |

         +--+--+--+--+--+

       4 |  |  |* |  |  |

Y axis   +--+--+--+--+--+

       3 |  |  |  |  |  |

         +--+--+--+--+--+

       2 |  |  |  |  |  |

         +--+--+--+--+--+

       1 |  |  |  |  |  |

         +--+--+--+--+--+

          1  2  3  4  5  

              X axis     



To get the physical address do this calculation:

Segment x 10h + Offset = physical address

For example, say you have 1000:1234 to get the physical address you do:

1000 X 10h = 10000



 10000

+ 1234

------

 11234



This method is fairly easy, but also fairly obsolete.  Starting from the 286 you can 

work in Protected Mode.  In this mode the CPU uses a Look Up Table to compute the 

seg:off location.  That doesn't mean that you cannot use seg x 10h + off though, you 

will only be limited to working in Real Mode and your programs can't access more than 

1 MB.  However by the time you know enough to write a program even close to this limit, 

you already know how to use other methods (for those comming from a 50 gig hard drive 

world, a program that's 1 MB is about 15x bigger than this text file is).



Registers

---------

A processor contains small areas that can store data.  They are too small to store

files, instead they are used to store information while the program is running.

The most common ones are listed below:



General Purpose:

NOTE:  All general purpose registers are 16 bit and can be broken up into two 8 bit

       registers.  For example, AX can be broken up into AL and AH.  L stands for Low

       and H for High.  If you assign a value to AX, AH will contain the first part of

       that value, and AL the last.  For example, if you assign the value DEAD to AX,

       AH will contain DE and AL contains AD.  Likewise the other way around, if you

       assign DE to AH and AD to AL, AX will contain DEAD

AX - Accumulator.  

     Made up of: AH, AL

     Common uses: Math operations, I/O operations, INT 21

BX - Base

     Made up of: BH, BL

     Common uses: Base or Pointer

CX - Counter

     Made up of: CH, CL

     Common uses: Loops and Repeats

DX - Displacement

     Made up of: DH, DL

     Common uses: Various data, character output

When the 386 came out it added 4 new registers to that category: EAX, EBX, ECX, and EDX.

The E stands for Extended, and that's just what they are, 32bit extensions to the

originals.  Take a look at this diagram to better understand how this works:



|        EAX        |



+----+----+----+----+

|    |    | AH | AL |

+----+----+----+----+



          |   AX    |



Each box represents 8 bits

NOTE:  There is no EAH or EAL

           



Segment Registers:

NOTE:  It is dangerous to play around with these!

CS - Code Segment.  The memory block that stores code

DS - Data Segment.  The memory block that stores data

ES - Extra Segment.  Commonly used for video stuff

SS - Stack Segment.  Register used by the processor to store return addresses from 

     routines



Index Registers:

SI - Source Index.  Used to specify the source of a string/array

DI - Destination Index.  Used to specify the destination of a string/array

IP - Instruction Pointer.  Can't be changed directly as it stores the address of the 

     next instruction.



Stack Registers:

BP - Base pointer.  Used in conjunction with SP for stack operations

SP - Stack Pointer. 



Special Purpose Registers:

IP - Instruction Pointer.  Holds the offset of the instruction being executed

Flags - These are a bit different from all other registers.  A flag register is only 1 

bit in size.  It's either 1 (true), or 0 (false).  There are a number of flag registers 

including the Carry flag, Overflow flag, Parity flag, Direction flag, and more.  You 

don't assign numbers to these manually.  The value automatically set depending on the 

previous instruction.  One common use for them is for branching.  For example, say you 

compare the value in BX with the value in CX, if it's the same the flag would be set to 

1 (true) and you could use that information to branch of into another area of your 

program.



There are a few more registers, but you will most likely never use them anyway.





Exercises:

1.  Write down all general purpose registers and memorize them

2.  Make up random numbers and manually convert them into Binary and hexadecimal

3.  Make a 2D graph of the memory located at 0106:0100

4.  Get the physical address of 107A:0100







3.  Getting Started

===================

Now finally on to real assembler!  Believe me, I'm getting sick of all this background

shit :)





Getting an Assembler

--------------------

There are quite a few available these days.  All code in this tutorial has been tested

with TASM, so you should have no problems if you have it.  A86 should also work with

thise code, but I can't guarentee that.

A86 - Available from: http://eji.com/a86/index.htm

      License: Shareware

      Price: A86 only - US$50+Tax/SH

             A86 + Manual + D86 + 32bit version of each - US$80+Tax/SH

             Manual - US$10+Tax/SH

TASM - Available from: http://www.borland.com/borlandcpp/cppcomp/tasmfact.html

       License: Gotta buy it

       Price: US$129.95+Tax/SH

There are tons more out there, check www.tucows.com, I know they have a few.  However as

said before, all programs in this tutorial have only been tested with TASM.  If

you are low on cash, just get A86 and evaluate for longer than you're supposed to.





Program Layout

--------------

It is good programming practise to develop some sort of standard by which you write your

programs.  In this chapter you will learn about a layout of .COM and .EXE files that is 

excepted by both, TASM and A86.  





.COM

Lets look at the source code to a very simple program:



MAIN  SEGMENT

      ASSUME CS:MAIN,DS:MAIN,ES:MAIN,SS:MAIN



      ORG 100h



START:

  INT 20

MAIN ENDS

END START



This program does absolutely nothing, but it does it well and fast.  Lots of code for 

something that doesn't do shit.  Lets examine that more closely:



MAIN SEGMENT - Declares a segment called MAIN.  A .COM file must fit into 1 segment of

               memory (aka. 65535 bytes - stack - PSP)



ASSUME CS:MAIN,DS:MAIN,ES:MAIN,SS:MAIN - This tells the assembler the initial values of 

                                         the CS,DS,ES, and SS register.  Since a .COM

                                         must fit into one segment they all point to the

                                         segment defined in the line above.

ORG 100h - Since all .COM files start at XXXX:0100 you declare the entry point to be 

           100h.  More on this later.



START: - A label



INT 20 - Returns to DOS



MAIN ENDS - Ends the MAIN segment



END START - Ends the START label



NOTE:  This is the kind of layout we will use most of the time.  Maybe later (Chapter 9+)

       We get into the next one...



Now how do you make this shit into an actual program?  First, type this program out in

your favourite editor (notepad, dos edit, etc).  If you have A86, just get into DOS, 

than into the directory A86 is in and type "a86 filename.asm".  If you have TASM, 

get into DOS and into the tasm directory and type "tasm filename.asm", then type

"tlink /t filename.obj".  In both cases you will get a file called Filename.com.  More

on what .com is and does later.







.EXE

Take a look at the following code:



    DOSSEG

    .MODEL SMALL

    .STACK 200h

    .DATA

    .CODE



START:

    INT 20

END START



Again, his program does absolutely nothing.  Lets examine each line in detail:



DOSSEG - sorts the segments in the order:

         Code

         Data

         Stack

This is not required, but recommended while you're still learning



.MODEL SMALL - selects the SMALL memory model, available models are:

TINY:    All code and data combined into one single group called DGROUP.  Used for .COM

         files.

SMALL:   Code is in a single segment.  All data is combined in DGROUP.  Code and data 

         are both smaller than 64k.  This is the standard for standalone assembly 

         programs.

MEDIUM:  Code uses multiple segments, one per module.  All data is combined in DGROUP

         Code can be larger than 64k, but data has to be smaller than 64k

COMPACT: Code is in a single segment.  All near data is in DGROUP.  Data can be more 

         than 64k, but code can't.

LARGE:   Code uses multiple segments.  All near data is in DGROUP.  Data and code can be

         more than 64k, but arrays can't.

HUGE:    Code uses multiple segments.  All near data is in DGROUP.  Data, code and arrays

         can be more than 64k

Most of the time you want to use SMALL to keep the code efficient.



.STACK 200h - sets up the stack size.  In this case 200h bytes



.DATA - The data segment.  This is where all your data goes (variables for example).



.CODE - The code segment.  This is where your actually program goes.



START: - Just a label, more on that later



INT 20 - exits the program, more on that later



END START - Take a wild guess on what this does!  Not required for all assemblers, I 

            know TASM needs it, and A86 doesn't.



NOTE:  For .EXE files, DON'T use the /t switch when linking!





Exercises:

1.  Make a program that uses the LARGE memory model, sets up a 100h long stack, and exits

    to DOS.

 













4.  Basic ASM

=============

In this chapter we actually start making some working code





Basic Register operations

-------------------------

You already know what registers are, but you have yet to learn how to modify them.

To assign a value to a register:



MOV DESTINATION, VALUE



For example, say you want AX to equal 56h:

MOV AX,56h

You can also use another register as the value:

MOV AX,BX

Remember how all general purpose registers are made up of a H and a L register?  Now you

can actually use that info:

MOV AL,09

Now AL equals 09 and AX equals 0009



The next register operator is XCHG, which simply swaps 2 registers.  The syntax is:



XCHG REGISTER1, REGISTER2



For example, consider the following code:



MOV  DX,56h

MOV  AX,3Fh

XCHG DX,AX



1.  DX is equal to 3Fh

2.  AX is equal to 56h

3.  DX and AX get swapped and AX now equals 56h, and DX equals 3Fh



NOTE:  NEVER try to exchange a 8 bit (h/l) register with a 16 bit (X)!!

       The following code is invalid:

       XCHG AH,BX



Next we got 2 simple operations, INC and DEC.

INC increment a register's value and DEC decrements it.



Example:



MOV DX,50h

INC DX



DX is now equal to 51h (50h + 1h = 51h).



Example:



MOV DX,50h

DEC DX



DX is now equal to 4F (50h - 1h = 4Fh).







Stack operations

----------------

Now it's time to put that stack shit to some actual use.  And it's very easy to.  There

are 6 stack operators, 2 of which you will use most of the time.  The syntax is:

POP  REGISTER

PUSH REGISTER

Lets say you want to temporarily store the value in AX on the stack for later use, 

simply do:

PUSH AX

Now you played around with AX and want to restore the original value:

POP  AX



NOTE: The stack will only accept 16 bit registers!  That shouldn't be a problem though

      since the 16 bit registers include the value of the 8 bit.



This next bit of code does some poping and pushing, take a guess on what BX and AX are

equal to at the end.



MOV  AX,51h

MOV  BX,4Fh



XCHG AX,BX



PUSH AX

MOV  AX,34h



POP  BX



PUSH BX



POP  AX



First AX is equal to 51h and BX to 4Fh, than the 2 get exchanged.  Now we got

AX = 4Fh and BX = 51h.  AX gets pushed on the stack, then set to 34h:

AX = 34h and BX = 51h.  BX gets poped, than pushed:

AX = 34h and BX = 4Fh.  Finally AX gets poped.  So the final result is:

AX = 4Fh and BX = 4Fh.



Next we got the two variations of the stacks registers, POPF and PUSHF.  These two

place the flag register on the stack.  Sounds more complicated than POP and PUSH, but

it's actually easier.  The syntax is:

POPF

PUSHF

No operand is required.  For example, say you want AX to hold the current flag register

value:



PUSHF

POP AX



PUSHF puts it on the stack, POP AX places it into AX.



The last two stack operators are PUSHA and POPA.

PUSHA puts all general purpose registers on the stack

POPA retrieves all general purpose registers from the stack

NOTE:  These 2 are 32bit instructions, so they only work on a 386+ and will not

       work with .COM files.



Example:

MOV AX,1h

MOV BX,2h

MOV CX,3h

MOV DX,4h



PUSHA



MOV AX,5h

MOV BX,6h

MOV CX,7h

MOV DX,8h



POPA



At the end of this program, all registers are restored to their initial value



Practise some of these instructions!  If you make a program containing everything 

you've learned so far it won't do anything, but if it doesn't crash it most likely 

worked.  So code some simple programs and play around with the values and registers. 









Arithmetic operations

---------------------

Everyone loves arithmetic.  Especially if you do it in hex or binary.  For those who 

don't know what arithmetic is, it's just adding and subtracting.  Multiplying and 

dividing are really just repeated additions and subtractions.  So in short, it's a 

fancy name for grade 3 math.  In this chapter I will introduce you to the 4 basic 

arithmetic operators, ADD, SUB, MUL, DIV .  There are a few more that I will cover 

later.

Lets start with ADD.  The syntax is:

ADD REGISTER1, REGISTER2

ADD REGISTER, VALUE



Example 1:

MOV AX,5h

MOV BX,4Fh



ADD AX,BX



This adds AX and BX and stores the resulting value in AX.  So after running this 

program AX = 9h



Example 2:

MOV AX,5h



ADD AX,4Fh



The result is the same as in example 1.  AX is set to 5h, and 4Fh is added to it.



Now lets go on to SUB.  The syntax is:

SUB REGISTER1, REGISTER2

SUB REGISTER, VALUE



Example 1:

z



This will subtract the value of BX from the value of AX.  In this case the result would

be 4A.



NOTE:  If you still don't completely get hexadecimal, you can easily check this by

       converting 5, 4F, and 4A to decimal.

       4F = 79

       4A = 74

        5 =  5



As with ADD you can also use a value:

MOV BX,4Fh



SUB BX,5h



Which leaves you with BX = 4A



Next in line is the MUL operator.  Syntax:

MUL REGISTER



Notice that only one operant is required.  That's because the processor assumes that you 

want to multiply the give register with AX or AH.



Example:

MOV AX,5h

MOV BX,4Fh



MUL BX



This leaves AX equal to 18B (4Fh x 5h = 18B).  Notice that the result is stored in AX,

or AH, depending on what was used for the operation.



Finally we have the DIV operator.  Syntax:

DIV REGISTER



Just like the MUL operator, there is only one operand, and AX is assumed to be the 

second one.

 

Example:

MOV AX,5h

MOV BX,4Fh



DIV BX



Now AX equals Fh since 4Fh / 5h  = Fh.

NOTE:  The result is rounded to the next lowest number:

       4Fh = 79

        5h =  5

       79 / 5 = 15.8

        

        15 = Fh



NOTE:  For now it's fine if you use MUL and DIV, but they are very slow operators.

       That means if you need speed (in graphics for example), NEVER use MUL/DIV!

       You can use Shifting combined with addition/subtraction to achieve code

       that can sometimes be 3000% faster!  However shifting is a bit difficult to

       understand if you don't know much about assembly yet, I will completly discuss

       them in the graphics part of this tutorial.







Bit wise operation

-----------------

Sounds hard but is very easy.  There are 4 bit wise operators:  AND, OR, XOR, and NOT.

What these do is compare two values bit for bit.  This can be extremely useful!



AND syntax:

AND REGISTER1, REGISTER2

AND REGISTER, VALUE



AND returns 1 (TRUE) only if BOTH operands are 1 (TRUE)



Example 1:

MOV AX,5h

MOV BX,6h



AND AX,BX



The result is stored in AX.  So for this example AX = 4.  Lets look at that result more

closely:

5h = 101b

6h = 110b



101b

110b

---

100b



100b = 4h



Example 2:

MOV AX,5h



AND AX,6h



The result is the same as in Example 1 (AX = 4h).



AND truth table:

0 AND 0 = 0

1 AND 0 = 0

0 AND 1 = 0

1 AND 1 = 1





OR syntax:

OR REGISTER1, REGISTER2

OR REGISTER, VALUE



OR returns 1 (TRUE) if either operand is 1 (TRUE).



Example 1:

MOV AX,5h

MOV BX,6h



OR AX,BX



AX is now equal to 7h



5h = 101b

6h = 110b



101b

110b

----

111b



111b = 7h



OR truth table:

0 OR 0 = 0

1 OR 0 = 1

0 OR 1 = 1

1 OR 1 = 1





XOR syntax:

XOR REGISTER1, REGISTER2

XOR REGISTER, VALUE



XOR returns 1 (TRUE) if one or the other operand is 1 (TRUE), but not both



Example:

MOV AX,5h

MOV BX,6h



XOR AX,BX



AX is not equal to 3h



5h = 101b

6h = 110b



101b

110b

----

011b



11b = 3h



XOR truth table:

0 XOR 0 = 0

1 XOR 0 = 1

0 XOR 1 = 1

1 XOR 1 = 0





And finally we have NOT.  NOT is the easiest one as it simply inverts each bit.



NOT syntax:

NOT REGISTER

NOT VALUE



Example:

MOV AX,F0h



NOT AX



AX is now equal to F since



F0h = 11110000

Invert it:

00001111

which is:

F



NOTE:  The windows calculator won't work for this, do it by hand.



NOT truth table:

NOT 1 = 0

NOT 0 = 1 







Interrupts

---------

Interrupts are one of the most useful things in assembly.  An interrupt is just what it

says, a interruption to the normal execution of a program.  The best way to illustrate 

this is one of those "Press any key to continue" things.  The program is running but 

when you press a key it stops for a split second, check what key you pressed and 

continues.  This kind of interrupt is known as a Hardware Interrupt because it uses 

hardware (the keyboard).  The kind of interrupts you will use in your assembly programs

are know as Software Interrupts because they are caused by software, not hardware.  An 

example of a software interrupt is reading and writing to a file.  This is a DOS 

interrupt because it is done by DOS, than there are other interrupts done by other 

things.  For example your BIOS or Video Card all have build in interrupts at your 

exposure.  So how does the computer know what interrupt is what?  Each interrupt is 

assigned a number and stored in the Interrupt Vector Table (IVT for short).  The IVT is

located at 0000:0000 (remember the segment:offset shit.  This location would be the 

origin if plotted on a 2D graph).  All interrupt handlers are 1 DWORD in size 

(double word, 32bit, or 4 bytes).  So the handler for interrupt 1h can be found at 

0000:0004 (since it's a DWORD it goes up by 4 bytes).  The most common interrupt is 

21h and can be found at 0000:0084.



So how do you use interrupts? 

Very simple:

INT interrupt



For example, in the Program Layout section earlier the program contain the line

INT 20h

The interrupt 20h returns to DOS.



Some interrupts like this one only have one function, but other have many more.  So how

does the operating system know what function you want?  You set the AX register up.



Example: 

MOV AH,02

MOV DL,41



INT 21

INT 20



This program is quite amazing.  It prints the character A.  Lets make it even better

by plugging it into our layout:



MAIN SEGMENT

     ASSUME DS:MAIN,ES:MAIN,CS:MAIN,SS:MAIN



START:

    MOV AH,02h

    MOV DL,41h



    INT 21h

    INT 20h

MAIN ENDS

END START



Save it and assemble it.  Refer back to chapter 2 if you forgot how to do that.

So what is happening here?

First it does the familiar set up, than it set AH to 02, which is the character output

function of interrupt 21. Then it moves 41 into DL, 41 is the character A.  Finally

it calls interrupt 21 which displays the A and quits with interrupt 20.

How do you know what you have to set all those registers to?  You get a DOS interrupt

list.  Check Appendix B for urls.

Quite an accomplishment there, after reading 970 lines of boring text you can finally

make a 11 line program that would take 1 line to do in Perl!  Pad yourself on that back

and lets move on.





Exercises:

1.  Make a program that gets the value from AX, puts it into DX and BX, then multiplies

    the values in DX and BX and stores the result in CX.

    This sounds easier than it really is, use the stack to help you out.

2.  Make a program that prints out the string ABC, than quits to DOS

    Hint: A = 41, B = 42, C = 43

3.  Make a program that performs ALL bit wise operations using the values 5h and 4Fh







5.  Tools

=========

Throughout this tutorial you have been using no software other than your assembler.

In this chapter you will learn how to master other software that can be of tremendous

help to you.







Debug

-----

Lets start with something that's not only very useful, but also free and already

on your computer.

Get into dos and type "debug", you will get a prompt like this:

-

now type "?", you should get the following response:

          assemble     A [address]

          compare      C range address

          dump         D [range]

          enter        E address [list]

          fill         F range list

          go           G [=address] [addresses]

          hex          H value1 value2

          input        I port

          load         L [address] [drive] [firstsector] [number]

          move         M range address

          name         N [pathname] [arglist]

          output       O port byte

          proceed      P [=address] [number]

          quit         Q

          register     R [register]

          search       S range list

          trace        T [=address] [value]

          unassemble   U [range]

          write        W [address] [drive] [firstsector] [number]

          allocate expanded memory        XA [#pages]

          deallocate expanded memory      XD [handle]

          map expanded memory pages       XM [Lpage] [Ppage] [handle]

          display expanded memory status  XS



Lets go through each of these commands:





Assemble:

-a

107A:0100

At this point you can start assembling some programs, just like using a assembler.  

However the debug assembler is very limited as you will probably notice.  Lets try

to enter a simple program:

-a

107A:0100 MOV AH,02

107A:0102 MOV DL,41

107A:0104 INT 21

107A:0106 INT 20

-g

A

Program terminated normally



That's the same program we did at the end of the previous chapter.  Notice how you

run the program you just entered with "g", and also notice how the set-up part is not 

there?  That's because debug is just too limited to support that.

Another thing you can do with assemble is specify the address at which you want to start,

by default this is 0100 since that's where all .COM files start.





Compare:

Compare takes 2 block of memory and displays them side by side, byte for byte.  Lets do

an example.  Quite out of debug if you haven't already using "q".

Now type "debug c:\command.com"

-c 0100 l 8 0200

10A3:0100  7A  06  10A3:0200

This command compared offset 0100 with 0200 for a length of 8 bytes.  Debug responded

with the location that was DIFFERENT.  If 2 locations were the same, debug would just 

omit them, if all are the same debug would simply return to the prompt without any

response.





Dump:

Dump will dump a specified memory segment.  To test it, code that assembly program again:

C:\>debug

-a

107A:0100 MOV AH,02

107A:0102 MOV DL,41

107A:0104 INT 21

107A:0106 INT 20

-d 0100 l 8

107A:0100  B4 02 B2 41 CD 21 CD 20                             ...A.!.



The "B4 02 B2 41 CD 21 CD 20" is the program you just made in machine language.

B4 02 = MOV AH,02

B2 41 = MOV DL,41

CD 21 = INT 21

CD 20 = INT 20

The "...A.!." part is your program in ASCII.  The "." represent non-printable characters.

Notice the A in there.





Enter:

This is one of the hard commands.  With it you can enter/change certain memory areas.

Lets change our program so that it prints a B instead of an A.

-e 0103                          <-- edit program at segment 0103

107A:0103  41.42                 <-- change 41 to 42

-g

B

Program terminated normally

-

Wasn't that amazing?





Fill:

This command is fairly useless, but who knows....

It fills the specified amount of memory with the specified data.  Lets for example clear

out all memory from segment 0100 to 0108, which happens to be our program.

-f 0100 l 8 0                    <-- file offset 0100 for a length of 8 bytes with 0

-d 0100 l 8                      <-- verify that it worked

107A:0100  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00                             .......

Yep, it worked.





Go:

So far we used go (g) to start the program we just created.  But Go can be used for much

more.  For example, lets say we want to execute a program at 107B:0100:

-r CS                             <-- set the CS register to point to 107B

CS 107A

:107B

-g =100

You can also set breakpoints.

-a                                <-- enter our original program so we have something

107A:0100 MOV AH,02                   to work with

107A:0102 MOV DL,41

107A:0104 INT 21

107A:0106 INT 20

-g 102                            <-- set up a break point at 107A:0102

At this point the program will stop, display all registers and the current instruction.





Hex:

This can be very useful.  It subtracts and adds to hexadecimal values:

-h 2 1

0003  0001                        <-- 2h + 1+ = 3h and 2h - 1h = 1h

This is very useful for calculating a programs length, as you will see later.





Input:

This is one of the more advanced commands, and I decided not to talk about it too much

for now.  It will read a byte of data from any of your computers I/O ports (keyboard,

mouse, printer, etc).

-i 3FD

60

-

Your data may be different.

In case you want to know, 3FD is Com port 1, also known as First Asynchronous Adapter.





Load:

This command has 2 formats.  It can be used to load the filename specified with the

name command (n), or it can load a specific sector.

-n c:\command.com

-l

This will load command.com into debug.  When a valid program is loaded all registers will 

be set up and ready to execute the program.

The other method is a bit more complicated, but potential also more usefull.  The syntax

is 

L <address> <drive letter> <sector> <amount to load>

-l 100 2 10 20

This will load starting at offset 0100 from drive C (0 = A, 1 = B, 2 = C, etc), sector

10h for 20h sectors.  This can be useful for recovering files you deleted.





Move:

Move takes a byte from the starting address and moves it to the destination address.

This is very good to temporary move data into a free area, than manipulate it without

having to worry about affecting the original program.  It is especially useful if

used in conjunction with the r command to which I will get later.  Lets try an example:

-a                              <-- enter our original program so we have something

107A:0100 MOV AH,02                 to work with

107A:0102 MOV DL,41

107A:0104 INT 21

107A:0106 INT 20

-m 107A:0100 L 8 107B:0100      <-- more 8 bytes starting from 107A:0100 into 107B:0100

-e 107B:0103                    <-- edit 107B:0103

107B:0103  41.42                <-- and change it 42 (B)   

-d 107A:0100 L 8                <-- make sure it worked

107A:0100  B4 02 B2 41 CD 21 CD 20                             ...A.!.

-d 107B:0100 L 8

107A:0100  B4 02 B2 42 CD 21 CD 20                             ...B.!.

-m 107B:0100 L 8 107A:0100      <-- restore the original program since we like the 

                                      changes.





Name:

This will set debug up with a filename to use for I/O commands.  You have to include

the file extension, and you may use addition commands:

-n c:\command.com





Output:

Exactly what you think it is.  Output sends stuff to an I/O port.  If you have an

external modem with those cool lights on it, you can test this out.  Find out what port

your modem is on and use the corresponding hex number below:

Com 1 = 3F8 - 3FF (3FD for mine)

Com 2 = 2F8 - 2FF

Com 3 = ??? - ??? (if someone knows, please let me know, I would assume though that it's

0F8 - 0FF.)

Now turn on the DTA (Data Terminal Ready) bit by sending 01h to it:

-o XXX 1                           <-- XXX is the com port in hex

As soon as you hit enter, take a look at your modem, you should see a light light up.

You can have even more fun with the output command.  Say someone put one of those BIOS

passwords on "your" computer.  Usually you'd have to take out the battery to get rid of

it, but not anymore:

AMI/AWARD BIOS

-o 70 17

-o 71 17



QPHOENIX BIOS

-o 70 FF

-o 71 17



QGENERIC

-o 70 2E

-o 71 FF



These commands will clear the BIOS memory, thus disabling the password.  Please note

however that these are fairly old numbers and BIOS makes constantly change them, so

they might not work with your particular BIOS.





Proceed:

Proceeds in the execution of a program, usually used together withy trace, which I 

will cover later.  Like the go command, you can specify an address from which to start

using =address

-p 2

Debug will respond with the registers and the current command to be executed.





Quite:

This has got to be the most advanced feature of debug, it exits debug!

-q





Register:

This command can be used to display the current value of all registers, or to manually

set them.  This is very useful for writing files as you will see later on.  

-r AX

AX: 011B

:5

-





Search:

Another very useful command.  It is used to find the occurrence of a specific byte, or

series of bytes in a segment.  The data to search for can by either characters, or a

hex value.  Hex values are entered with a space or comma in between them, and characters

are enclosed with quotes (single or double).  You can also search for hex and characters

with the same string:

-n c:\command.com                 <-- load command.com so we have some data to search in

-l

-s 0 l 0 "MS-DOS"                 <-- search entire memory block for "MS-DOS"

10A3:39E9                         <-- found the string in 10A3:39E9

NOTE:  the search is case sensitive!





Trace:

This is a truly great feature of debug.  It will trace through a program one instruction

at a time, displaying the instruction and registers after each.  Like the go command

you can specify where to start executing from, and for how long.

-a                                <-- yes, this thing again

107A:0100 MOV AH,02

107A:0102 MOV DL,41

107A:0104 INT 21

107A:0106 INT 20

-t =0100 8

If you leave out the amount of instructions that you want to trace, you can use the 

proceed (p) to continue the execution as long as you want.





Unassemble:

Unassembles a block of code.  Great for debugging (and cracking)

-u 100 L 8                           <-- unassembles 8 bytes starting at offset 100

107A:0100 MOV AH,02                  <-- debut's response

107A:0102 MOV DL,41

107A:0104 INT 21

107A:0106 INT 20







Write:

This command works very similar to Load.  It also has 2 ways it can operate:  using name,

and by specifying an exact location.  Refer to back to Load for more information.

NOTE:  The register CX must be set the file size in order to write!

NOTE:  Write will not write files with a .EXE or .HEX extension.  





Enough about debug, lets move on to CodeView.







CodeView

--------

CodeView is another program that might come in handy sometimes.  However it is not free.

There are many debuggers similar to CodeView out there, but it is enough for you to 

understand one.

CodeView has a number of different windows, Help, Locals, Watch, Source 1, Source 2, 

Memory 1, Memory 2, Registers and a few more, depending on the version number.



The Source Windows

Source 1 and 2 let you view 2 different source code segments at the same time.  This is

very useful for comparing.  



Memory Windows

These windows let you view and edit different sections of memory.  On the left side

you have the memory location in segment:offset form, in the middle the hex value of the

instructions, and on the right side the ASCII value.  Again, non-printable characters

are represented by a ".".  You can switch between multiple menus using F6.  You can 

also press Shift+F4 to switch between hexadecimal, ASCII, words, double words, signed

integers, floating values, and more.



Register

This menu lets you view and change the value in each register.  The FL register near

the bottom stands for Flags.  At the very bottom you should see 8 different values.

They are the specific flag values.

OV/NV = Overflow  	(OVerflow/No oVerflow)

DN/UP = Direction 	(DowN/UP)

DI/EI = Interrupt       (????)

PL/NG = Sign      	(????)

NZ/ZR = Zero            (Not Zero/ZeRo)

NA/AC = Auxiliary Carry (No Auxiliary carry/Auxiliary Carry)

PO/PE = Parity          (????)

NC/CY = Cary            (????)



Command

This window lets you pass commands to CodeView.  I will not explains these as they are

almost identical to the ones Debug uses, however a bit more powerful.





This chapter went through a lot of material.  Make sure you actually get it all, or at

least most of it.  Debug will be insanely useful later on, so learn it now!  The key

is practise, lots of practise!





Exercises:

1.  Make a program that prints an A on the screen using debug, save it to C drive as

    cow.com.  Quite debug and delete it.  Now get back into debug and restore it again.

    HINT:  If you delete a file in DOS, DOS simply changes the first character to E5



    It's not as hard as it sounds, basically here's what you do:

      I) Load as many sectors of your drive as you think you will need

     II) Search those sectors for the hex value E5 and the string "ow"

    III) Dumb the offset of the location the search returned

     IV) Edit that offset and change the E5 instruction to a letter of your choice (41)

      V) Write the sectors you loaded into RAM back to C drive

2.  Use debug to get your modem into CS (Clear to Send) mode.  The hex value is 2.

3.  Make a program called cursor.com using debug that will change the cursor size.

      I) Move 01 into AH

     II) Move 0007 into CX

    III) Call interrupt 10

     IV) Call interrupt 20









6.  More basics

===============

Before reading this chapter, make sure you completely understood EVERYTHING I talked 

about so far.





.COM File Format

----------------

COM stands for COre iMage, but it is much easier to memorize it as Copy Of Memory, as 

that description is even better.  A COM file is nothing more than a binary image of what 

should appear in the RAM.  It was originally used for the CP/M and even though CP/M were 

used in the Z80/8080 period, COM files have still the same features as they did back in 

the 70's.  Let's examine how a COM file is loaded into memory:

1.  You type in the file name, DOS searches for filename + .com, if found that file gets 

    executed.  If not DOS will search for filename + .exe, if it can't find that it will

    search for filename + .bat, and if that search fails it will display the familiar

    "Bad command or filename" message.

2.  If it found a .com file in step 1, DOS will check its records and make sure that a 

    64k block of memory is found.  This is necessary or else the new program could 

    overwrite existing memory.

3.  Next DOS builds the Program Segment Prefix.  The PSP is a 256 byte long block of 

    memory which looks like the table below:

    Address          Description

    00h-01h          Instructions to terminate the program, usually interrupt 20h

    02h-03h          Segment pointer to next available block

    04h              Reserved, should be 0

    05h-09h          Far call to DOS dispatcher

    0Ah-0Dh          INT 22h vector (Terminate program)

    0Eh-11h          INT 23h vector (Ctrl+C handler)

    12h-15h          INT 24h vector (Critical Error)

    16h-17h          PSP segment of parent process

    18h-2Bh          Pointer to file handler

    2Ch-2Dh          DOS environment segment

    2Eh-31h          SS:SP save area

    32h-33h          Number of file handles

    34h-37h          Pointer to file handle table

    40h-41h          DOS version

    5Ch-6Bh          File control block 1

    6Ch-7Bh          File control block 2

    7Ch-7Fh          Reserved

    80h              Length of parameter string

    81h-FFh          Default DTA (Disk Transfer Area)

4.  DS,ES, and SS are set to point to block of memory

5.  SP is set to FFFFh

6.  0000h is pushed on the stack (stack is cleared)

7.  CS is set to point to memory (segment), IP is set to 0100h (offset, remember debug?)



The PSP is exactly 255 bytes long, meaning that to fit into one segment (aka. to be a valid

.com file your program cannot be larger than 65280 bytes).  However as I mentioned before, by 

the time you can code a program in assembly that is that large, you already know well 

more than enough to make a .EXE file.

So what do you need this information for?  Well like all other memory, you can view

and edit the PSP.  So you could play around with it.  For example, later when we get

into file operations you will be working with the DTA.  Or maybe you need to know the

DOS version, you can just check 40h-41h, etc.







Flow control operations

-----------------------

Flow control operations are just what the name says, operations that control the flow

of your program.  If you have worked with another language before, those are the if/then

statements.  From what you've hear about assembly, you might think that this is fairly

difficult, but it's not.  To do the equivalent of a if/then I will have to introduce you

to 3 new things, labels, the compare command and jump instructions.  First things first,

maybe you recall the simple program that prints A from the interrupts section.  Notice 

how our layout contains the line START:?  START: is a label.  If you come from 

C/C++/Pascal you can think of a label almost like a function/procedure.  Take a look at 

the following code, by now you should know what's happening here:



MAIN  SEGMENT

      ASSUME CS:MAIN,DS:MAIN,SS:NOTHING



      ORG 100h



START:

  INT 20



MAIN ENDS

END START



Notice the line that saying START:, that's a label.  So what's the point of putting 

labels in your code?  Simple, you can easily jump to any label in your program using the 

JMP operator.  For example, consider the following code:





MAIN  SEGMENT

      ASSUME CS:MAIN,DS:MAIN,ES:MAIN,SS:MAIN



      ORG 100h



START:

  MOV AH,02h

  MOV DL,41h

  INT 21h



  JMP EXIT



  MOV AH,02h

  MOV DL,42h

  INT 21h



EXIT:

  INT 20h



MAIN ENDS

END START



First the program prints an A using the familiar routine, but instead of using INT 20h

to exit, it jumps to the label EXIT and calls INT 20h from there.  The result is that it

completely skips everything after the JMP EXIT line, the B doesn't get printed at all.

So by using a label you can easily close the program from any location.

This is fairly useless so far though.  It gets interesting when you start using some of 

the other jump commands.  I will only explain a few here as there are just too many.

Below is a alphabetical list of most of them:

JA    - Jump if Above

JAE   - Jump if Above or Equal

JB    - Jump if Below

JBE   - Jump if Below or Equal

JC    - Jump on Carry

JCXZ  - Jump if CX is Zero

JE    - Jump if Equal

JG    - Jump if Greater

JGE   - Jump if Greater than or Equal

JL    - Jump if Less than

JLE   - Jump if Less than or Equal

JMP   - Jump unconditionally

JNA   - Jump if Not Above

JNAE  - Jump if Not Above or Equal

JNB   - Jump if Not Below

JNE   - Jump if Not Equal

JNG   - Jump if Not Greater

JNGE  - Jump if Not Greater or Equal

JNL   - Jump if Not Less

JNLE  - Jump if Not Less or Equal

JNO   - Jump if No Overflow

JNP   - Jump on No Parity

JNS   - Jump on No Sign

JNZ   - Jump if Not Zero

JO    - Jump on Overflow

JP    - Jump on Parity

JPE   - Jump on Parity Even

JPO   - Jump on Parity Odd

JS    - Jump on Sign

JZ    - Jump on Zero



Some of these are fairly self-explanatory (like JCXZ), but others require some more

explanation.  What is being compared to what, and how does the jump know the result?

Well almost anything can be compared to almost anything.  The result of that comparison

is stored in the flags register.  The jump command simply checks there and response

accordingly.  Let's make a simple if/then like structure:



MAIN  SEGMENT

      ASSUME CS:MAIN,DS:MAIN,ES:MAIN,SS:MAIN



      ORG 100h



START:

  MOV DL,41h

  MOV DH,41h

  CMP DH,DL

  JE  TheyAreTheSame

  JMP TheyAreNotSame





TheyAreNotSame:

  MOV AH,02h

  MOV DL,4Eh

  INT 21h

  INT 20h



TheyAreTheSame:

  MOV AH,02h

  MOV DL,59h

  INT 21h

  INT 20h



This code is fairly straight forward, it could be expressed in C++ as:

void main () {

int DH,DL

DL = 41

DH = 41

if (DH == DL) {

    cout << "Y"; 

 } else {

    cout << "N";

}



In this case the program will return Y, but try changing either DH, or DL to some other

value.  It should display N.





HINT:  Tired of constantly typing "tasm blah.asm", "tlink /t blah.obj"?  Make a simple

       batch file containing the following 3 lines and save it as a.bat in your tasm dir.

       

       @ECHO OFF

       TASM %1.ASM

       TLINK /T %1.OBJ

       

       Now you can just type "a blah", even without the file extension.

       If you have A86 and are sick of typing "a86 blah.asm", just rename a86.exe to

       something like a.exe.  





Loops

-----

Loops are a essential part of programming, in fact loops make the difference between

being a programming language and being something like HTML.  If you don't know what 

loops are, they are just the repeaded execution of a block of code.  The 2 most common 

types of loops are For and While.  

A for loop repeads a block of code until a certain condition is met.  Look at the

following C++ code:



main()

{

  for (int counter = 0; counter < 5; counter++)

     {

      cout << "A";

     }

return 0;



This will produce the following output:

AAAAA



This code is fairly easy, it initializes a variable and sets it equal to zero.  It will

loop until the varialbe is less than 5, and after each execution the variable gets

incremented.  Now lets make an exact copy of that program in assembly:



blah            segment

assume          cs:blah, ds:blah, ss:blah, es:blah, ss:blah    ;do the usual setup

org             0100h



start:                                  ;label for start of program

  MOV CX,5                              ;cx is always the counter



LOOP_LABEL:                             ;label to loop

  MOV AH,02h                            ;do the familiar A shit (this printed some wierd

  MOV DL,41h                            ;character instead for me, anyone know why?)

  INT 21h



  LOOP LOOP_LABEL                       ;loop everything in between loop_label: and the 

                                        ;loop statement as many times as specified in CX

  INT 20h                               

                                        ;usual ending shit

blah  ends

end   Start



Output should be:

AAAAA

C:\>

But as I said, it printed some other shit for me.  Well who cares, as long as it looped.

This code is basicly doing this:

1.  Set CX to 5

2.  Print an A

3.  Check of CX = 0, if not decrement CX

4.  Go back to loop_label

5.  Check if CX = 0, if not decrement CX

6.  etc





Next we have the While loop.  It also repeads a block of code as long as a condition is 

true, but the condition is not changed during in the loop declaration as with the For

loop.  Take a look at a simple C++ While loop:



main()

{

  int counter = 0;

  while(counter < 5)

     {

      counter++	

      cout << "A";

     }

return 0;



Notice how the condition is being changed in the actual loop.  This is very important as

you may already know.  Let's convert that piece of code to assembly:



blah            segment

assume          cs:blah, ds:blah, ss:blah, es:blah    ;do the usual setup

org             0100h



start:

  MOV CX, 5                                 ;set CX equal to 5

loop_label:

  MOV AH,02h                                ;print the A

  MOV DL,41h

  INT 21h



  DEC CX                                    ;decrement CX                     

   

  CMP CX,0                                  ;check if CX is zero

  JNZ loop_label                            ;no?  go back to loop_label



  INT 20h                                   ;yes?  terminate program

                                            ;usual ending shit

blah  ends

end   Start 



Output:

AAAAA

C:\>



They look almost identical, so what's different?  And why use em?  Well the For loop is

good for loops that have a set number of repetitions, while the while loop can change

the amount or repedition during the loop execution.  This is useful for user input for 

example.  It is also possible to make a for loop without using the loop statement, 

just like you would do a while loop.  That might not look as pretty, but it can

potentially be a bit faster.



Sometimes interrupts can modify the CX register, in which case your loop would loop an

unpredictable number of times.  That's not good.  To stop that you can make use of the

stack:



MAIN SEGMENT

     ASSUME CS:MAIN,DS:MAIN,ES:MAIN,SS:MAIN



     ORG 100h



START:

  MOV CX,5



Loop_Label:

  PUSH CX                               ;store CX on the stack

  MOV AH,02h                            

  MOV DL,41h

  INT 21h

  POP CX                                ;restore it after the pass is completed



  LOOP Loop_Label                       

                                        

  INT 20h                               

                                        ;usual ending shit

MAIN ENDS

END START







Variables

---------

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know there are no variables in assembly, but this is close enough 

for me.

You may be familiar with variables if you've come from another language, if not 

variables are simply a name given to a memory area that contains data.  To access that 

data you don't have to specify that memory address, you can simply refer to that 

variable.  In this chapter I will introduce you to the 3 most common variables types: 

bytes, words, and double words.  You declare variables in this format:

NAME TYPE CONTENTS

Were type is either DB (Declare Byte), DW (Declare Word), or DD (Declare DoubleWord).

Variables can consist of number, characters and underscores (_), but must begin with

a character.



Example 1:

A_Number DB 1



This creates a byte long variable called A_Number and sets it equal to 1



Example 2:

A_Letter DB "1"



This creates a byte long variable called A_Letter and sets it equal to the ASCII value

1.  Note that this is NOT a number.



Example 3:

Big_number DD 1234



This declares a Double Word long variable and sets it equal to 1234.



You can also create constants.  Constants are data types that like variables can be used

in your program to access data stored at specific memory locations, but unlike variables

they can not be changed during the execution of a program.  You declare constants almost

exactly like variables, but instead of using D?, you use EQU.  Well actually EQU

declares a Text Macro.  But since we haven't covert macros yet and the effect is 

basicly the same, we will just tread it as a constant.



Example 4:

constant EQU DEADh





So how do you use variables and constants?  Just as if they were data.  Take a look at 

the next example:



Example 5:

constant EQU 100

mov dx,constant

mov ax,constant

add dx,ax



This declares a constant called constant and sets it equal to 100, then it assigns the

value in constant to dx and ax and adds them.  This is the same as

mov dx,100

mov ax,100

add dx,ax



The EQU directive is a bit special though.  It's not really a standard assembly 

instruction.  It's assembler specific.  That means that we can for example do the

following:



bl0w EQU PUSH

sUcK EQU POP



bl0w CX

sUcK CX



When you assemble this, the assembler simply substitues PUSH and POP with every 

occurance of bl0w and sUcK respectivly.





Arrays

------

Using this knowledge it is possible to create simple arrays.

Example 1:

A_String DB "Cheese$"



This creates a 5 byte long array called A_String and sets it equal to the string Cheese.  

Notice the $ at the end.  This has to be there, otherwise your CPU will start 

executing instructions after the last character, which is whatever is in memory at 

that particular location.  There probably won't be any damage done, but who knows 

what's hidden in those dark corners... 

To use quotes (single or double) within a string you can use a little

trick:



Example 2:

Cow  DB  'Ralph said "Cheese is good for you!"$'

or

Cow  DB  "Ralph said 'Cheese is good for you!'$"

Use whichever you think looks better.  What if you have to use both types of quotes?



Example 3:

Cow  DD  'Ralph said "I say: ""GNAAAARF!""$'

Use double double/single quotes.



What if you don't know what the variable is going to equal?  Maybe it's user-inputed.



Example 4:

Uninitialized_variable DB ?



Now lets use a variable in an actual program:



MAIN  SEGMENT

      ASSUME CS:MAIN,DS:MAIN,ES:MAIN,SS:MAIN



      ORG 100h



START:

COW  DB  "Hello World!$"

  MOV AH,09h

  MOV DX,OFFSET COW

  INT 21h

  INT 20h

MAIN ENDS

END START



Yes, even in assembly you finally get to make a Hello World program!  

Here we're using interrupt 21h, function 9h to print a string.  To use this interrupt

you have to set AH to 9h and DX must point to the location of the string.



NOTE:  VERY important!  ALWAYS declare unitialized arrays at the VERY END of your

       program, or in a special UDATA segment!  That way they will take up no space

       at all, regardless of how big you decide to make them.  For example say you have

       this in a program:

       Some_Data  DB 'Cheese'

       Some_Array DB 500 DUP (?)

       More_Data  DB 'More Cheese'

       This will automaticly add 500 bytes of NULL characters to your program.  However

       if you do this instead:

       Some_Data  DB 'Cheese'

       More_Data  DB 'More Cheese'

       Some_Array DB 500 DUP (?)

       Your program will become 500 bytes smaller.





String Operations

-----------------

Now that you know some basics of strings, let's use that knowledge.  There are a 

number of string operations available to you.  Here I will discuss 4 of them.

Lets start with MOVSB.  This command will move a byte from one location to another.

The source destination is ES:SI and the destination is DS:DI.



Example 1:

MAIN SEGMENT

     ASSUME CS:MAIN,DS:MAIN,ES:MAIN,SS:MAIN



     ORG 100h



START:

      MOV AH,9



      MOV DX,OFFSET NEWSTRING

      INT 21h



      MOV DX,OFFSET OLDSTRING

      INT 21h



      MOV CX,9

      LEA SI,OLDSTRING

      LEA DI,NEWSTRING



      REP MOVSB



      MOV DX,OFFSET NEWSTRING

      INT 21h



      MOV DX,OFFSET OLDSTRING

      INT 21h



      INT 20h

OLDSTRING DB 'ABCDEFGHI $'

NEWSTRING DB '123456789 $'

MAIN ENDS

END START



Output:

ABCDEFGHI 123456789 ABCDEFGHI ABCDEFGHI





This little example has a few instructions that you haven't seen before, so lets

go through this thing step by step.

1.  We do the regular setup

2.  We use the method from the previous section to print NEWSTRING (ABCDEFGHI)

3.  We print OLDSTRING (123456789)

4.  We set CX equal to 9.  Remeber that the CX register is the counter.

5.  Here's a new instruction, LEA.  LEA stands for Load Effective Address.  This

    instruction will load the contents of a "variable" into a register.  Since DI

    contains the destination and SI the source, we assign the location of NEWSTRING

    and OLDSTRING to them respectivly

6.  MOVSB is the string operator that will move a byte from SI to DI.  Since we have

    an array of 9 characters (well 10 if you count the space, but that is the same

    in both anyway) we have to move 9 bytes.  To do that we use REP.  REP will REPeat

    the given instruction for as many times as specified in CX.  So REP MOVSB will 

    perform the move instruction 9 times, ones for each character.

7.  To see our result we simple print each string again using the same code we used 

    in step 2 and 3.





The next string operator is not only very easy to use, but also very useful.  It 

will scan a string for a certain character and set the EQUAL flag bit if the search

was successful.  The operator is SCASB, the location of the string is in DI, and

the character is stored in AL.



Example 2:

MAIN SEGMENT

     ASSUME CS:MAIN,DS:MAIN,ES:MAIN,SS:MAIN



     ORG 100h



START:

     MOV CX,17h

     LEA DI, STRING

     MOV AL, SEARCH



     REPNE SCASB



     JE  FOUND

     JNE NOTFOUND





NOTFOUND:

     MOV AH,09h

     MOV DX,OFFSET NOTFOUND_S

     INT 21h

     INT 20h



FOUND:

     MOV AH,09h

     MOV DX,OFFSET FOUND_S

     INT 21h

     INT 20h



SEARCH     DB '!'

STRING     DB  'Cheese is good for you!'

FOUND_S    DB  'Found$'

NOTFOUND_S DB  'Not Found$'

               

MAIN ENDS

END START



This should be fairly easy to figure out for you.  If you can't, I'll explain it:

1.  We do the usual setup

2.  We set CX equal to 17h (23 in decimal), since our string is 17h characters long

3.  We load the location of STRING into DI

4.  And the value of the constant SEARCH into AL

5.  Now we repeat the SCASB operation 23x

6.  And use a jump to signal wether or not we found the string



Finally we have the CMPS instruction.  This operator will compare the value of two

strings with each other until they're equal.



Example 3:

MAIN SEGMENT

     ASSUME CS:MAIN,DS:MAIN,ES:MAIN,SS:MAIN



     ORG 100h



START:

     MOV CX,17h

     LEA SI,STRING1

     LEA DI,STRING



     REP CMPSB

     

     JE  EQUAL

     JNE NOTEQUAL



NOTEQUAL:

     MOV AH,09h

     MOV DX,OFFSET NOT_EQUAL   

     INT 21h

     INT 20h



EQUAL:

     MOV AH,09h 

     MOV DX,OFFSET EQUAL1

     INT 21h

     INT 20h



STRING1    DB 'Cheese is good for you!' 

STRING     DB 'Cheese is good for you!'

EQUAL1     DB 'They''re equal$'

NOT_EQUAL  DB 'They''re not equal$'

                        

MAIN ENDS

END START



By now you should know what's going on.  SI and DI contain the two strings to be

compared, and REP CMPSB does the comparison 17h times, or until it comes across

two bytes that are not equal (b and g in this case).  Then it does a jump command

to display the appropriate message.



The final string operations I will introduce you to are STOSB and and LODSB.  STOSB

will store a byte from AL at the location that ES:DI points to.  STOSB will get a byte

that ES:DI points into AL.  These two instructions are very very powerful as you will

see if you continue learning assembly.  Take a look at the next example.



MAIN SEGMENT

     ASSUME CS:MAIN,DS:MAIN,ES:MAIN,SS:MAIN



     ORG 100h



START:

     MOV AH,9

     MOV DI,OFFSET STRING



     MOV SI,DI



     LODSB

     INC AL

     STOSB



     MOV DX,DI

     DEC DX



     INT 21h

     INT 20h



STRING DB "oh33r! $"



MAIN ENDS

END START



This code will return:

ph33r!



So what does it do?

1.  It moves 9 into AH to set it up for interrupt 21's Print String function

2.  Move the location of STRING into DI for the the LODSB instruction

3.  Do the same with SI

4.  Load ES:DI into AL

5.  Increment AL, thus changing it from o to p

6.  And put the contents of AL back to ES:DI

7.  Put DI into DX for interrupt 21's Print String function

8.  STOSB will increment DI after a successful operation, so decrement it

9.  Call interrupt 21h

10. And terminate the program



And here's a final note that I should have mentioned earlier:  All these string

instructions actually don't always end in B.  The B simply means Byte but could be

replaced by a W for example.  That is, MOVSB will move a byte, and MOVSW will move a

word.  If you're using a instruction that requires another register like AL for example,

you use that registers 32 or 64 bit part.  For example, LODSW will move a word into AX.







Sub-Procedures

--------------

This chapter should be fairly easy as I will only introduce one new operator, CALL.

CALL does just that, it CALLs a sub-procedure.  Sub-Procedure are almost exactly like

labels, but they don't end with a : and have to have a RET statement at the end of the

code.  The purpose of sub-procedures is to make your life easier.  Since you can call

them from anywhere in the program you don't need to write certain sections over and

over again.



MAIN SEGMENT

     ASSUME CS:MAIN,DS:MAIN,ES:MAIN,SS:MAIN



     ORG 100h



START:

       CALL CHEESE

       CALL CHEESE

       CALL CHEESE

       CALL CHEESE

       CALL CHEESE

       CALL CHEESE

       CALL CHEESE

       INT 20h



CHEESE PROC

       MOV AH,09

       LEA DX,MSG

       INT 21h

       RET

CHEESE ENDP



MSG DB 'Cheese is good for you! $'

 

MAIN ENDS

END START



1.  We use the CALL command to call the sub-procedure CHEESE 7 times.

2.  We set up a sub-procedure called CHEESE.  This is done in the following format:

    LABEL PROC

3.  We type in the code that we want the sub-procedure to do

4.  And add a RET statement to the end.  This is necessary as it returns control to the 

    main function.  Without it the procedure wouldn't end and INT 20h would never get

    executed.

5.  We end the procedure using

    LABEL ENDP

6.  The usual...





User Input

----------

Finally!  User Input has arrived.  This chapter will discuss simple user input using

BIOS interrupts.  The main keyboard interrupt handler is 16h.  For the first part of this

chapter we will be using the function 0h.

Lets start with a simple program that waits for a keypress:



Example 1:

MAIN SEGMENT

     ASSUME CS:MAIN,DS:MAIN,ES:MAIN,SS:MAIN



     ORG 100h



START:

    MOV AH,0

    INT 16h

    INT 20h

MAIN ENDS

END START



This program waits for you to press a key, and then just quits.  Expected more?  Of

course.  We have the echo the key back.  Only than it will be truly 3|337.  Remember

all those programs you did in the debug part of this tutorial that printed out an A?

Remember how we did it?  No?  Like this:



Example 2:

MAIN SEGMENT

     ASSUME CS:MAIN,DS:MAIN,ES:MAIN,SS:MAIN



     ORG 100h



START:

    MOV AH,2h

    MOV DL,41h

    INT 21h

    INT 20h

MAIN ENDS

END START



Notice how the register DL contains the value that we want to print.  Well if we use

interrupt 16h to get a key using function 0h, the ASCII scan code gets stored in AL, so

all we have to do is move AL into DL, then call the old interrupt 21h, function 2h.



Example 3:

MAIN SEGMENT

     ASSUME CS:MAIN,DS:MAIN,ES:MAIN,SS:MAIN



     ORG 100h



START:

    MOV AH,0h

    INT 16h

   

    MOV AH,2h

    MOV DL,AL

    INT 21h

    INT 20h

MAIN ENDS

END START



Isn't this awesome?  Well that's not all INT 16 can do.  It can also check the status

of the different keys like Ctrl, Alt, Caps Lock, etc.  Check Appendix A for links to

interrupt listings and look them up.

Let's use our new found t3kn33kz to create another truly 3|337 program:



Example 4:

MAIN SEGMENT

     ASSUME CS:MAIN,DS:MAIN,ES:MAIN,SS:MAIN



     ORG 100h



START:

    MOV AH,0h

    INT 16h

    MOV KEY,AL    

     

    CMP KEY,90h

    JE ITS_A_Z

    JNE NOT_A_Z



ITS_A_Z:

    MOV AH,9h

    MOV DX,OFFSET NOTA

    INT 21h

    

    INT 20h

  

NOT_A_Z:

    MOV AH,2h

    MOV DL,KEY

    INT 21h



    INT 20h



KEY DB ?

NOTA DB "You pressed Z!!!!!!!!",10,13,"Ph33r! $"

MAIN ENDS

END START



Well you should be able to understand this program without any problems.  If you don't:

1.  We set AX to 0h and call interrupt 16h, that waits for the user to press a key

2.  We move the value of AL (which holds the ASCII value of the key pressed) into

    a variable.  This way we can manipulate the registers without having to worry about

    destroying it

3.  We compare KEY with 90h, which is hex for Z (case sensitive)

4.  If it is a Z we jump to ITS_A_Z which displays the message

5.  If not, we jump to NOT_A_Z, which simply echos the key back.

6.  We decalared 2 variables, one which is not initialized yet called KEY, and one

    that holds the value "You pressed Z!!!!!!!!",10,13,"Ph33r! $"  Which looks like

    this on a DOS computer:

    You pressed Z!!!!!!!!

    Ph33r! 





Exercises:

1.  Make a program that will accept a series of keypresses, but when the user enters

    the following characters, convert them to their real values as shown below:

    S  = Z

    F  = PH

    PH = F

    E  = 3

    I  = 1

    EA = 33

    T  = 7

    O  = 0

    A  = 4

    L  = |

    NOTE:  This is NOT case sensitive.  In other words, you're going to either have to

    convert lower case to upercase (or the otherway around) as soon as its entered by

    for example subtracting 20 from the ASCII value, or by making a branch for either

    case.

    Also, try using procedures to do this.

    







7.  Basics of Graphics

======================

Graphics are something we all love.  Today you will learn how to create some bad ass

graphics in assembly!  Well actually I will tell you how to plot a pixel using various

methods.  You can apply that knowledge to create some other graphics routines, like

line drawing shit, or a circle maybe.  It's all just grade 11 math.





Using interrupts

----------------

This is the easiest method.  We set up some registers and call an interrupt.  The 

interrupt we will be using is 10h, BIOS video.  Before we do anything, we have to

get into graphics mode.  For the purpose of simplicity I will just cover 320x200x256

resolution (that is 320 vertical pixels, 200 horizontal pixels, and 256 shades of

colors).  So how do you get into this mode?  You set AH to 00h and AL to 13h.  00h

tells interrupt 10h that we want to get into graphics mode, and 13h is the mode

(320x200x256).



Example 1:

MAIN SEGMENT

     ASSUME DS:MAIN,ES:MAIN,SS:MAIN,CS:MAIN



     ORG 100h



START:

    MOV AH,00h

    MOV AL,13h

    INT 10h



    INT 20h

MAIN ENDS

END START



This ins't too exiting, just looks bigger.  Let's plot a pixel.



Example 2:

MAIN SEGMENT

     ASSUME DS:MAIN,ES:MAIN,SS:MAIN,CS:MAIN



     ORG 100h



START:

    MOV AH,00h

    MOV AL,13h

    INT 10h



    MOV AH,0Ch

    MOV AL,10

    MOV CX,100

    MOV DX,100

    MOV BX,1h

    INT 10h



    INT 20h

MAIN ENDS

END START



First we get into graphics mode, then we set AH to 0Ch which is the Draw Pixel function

of interrupt 10h.  In order to use 0Ch we have to set up some other registers as well.

AL contains the colors of the pixel, CX the location on the X axis and DX the location

on the Y axis.  Finally BX tells interrupt 10h to use page one of the VGA card.  Don't

worry about what pages are until you get into more advanced shit.

Once in graphics mode you can switch back to text using

    MOV AH,00h

    MOV AL,03h

    INT 10h

So putting it all together, the following program will draw a green pixel at location

100,100 on page 1, then switch back to text mode, clearing the pixel along the way.

Notice that it sets the AL and AH registers using only 1 move by moving them into AX.

This might save you a clock tick or two and makes the executable file a whooping 3 

bytes smaller!



Example 3:

MAIN SEGMENT

     ASSUME DS:MAIN,ES:MAIN,SS:MAIN,CS:MAIN



     ORG 100h



START:

    MOV AX,0013h

    INT 10h



    MOV AX,0C04h

    MOV CX,100

    MOV DX,100

    MOV BX,1h

    INT 10h



    MOV AX,0003h

    INT 10h



    INT 20h

MAIN ENDS

END START



Even though we did a bit of optimization there, it's still very slow.  Maybe with one

pixel you won't notice a difference, but if you start drawing screen full after screen

full using this method, even a fast computer will start to drag.  So lets move on to

something quite a bit faster.

By the way, if you're computer is faster than a 8086, you will see nothing at all 

because even though the routine is slow, a single pixel can still be drawn fast.  So

the program will draw the pixel and earase is before your eye can comprehend its

existance.



Writing directly to the VRAM

----------------------------

This is quite a bit harder than using interrupts as it involves some math.  To make

things even worse I will introduce you to some new operators that will make the pixels

appear even faster.

When you used interrupts to plot a pixel you were just giving the X,Y coordinates,

when writing directly the the VRAM you can't do that.  Instead you have to find the 

offset of the X,Y location.  To do this you use the following equation:

Offset = Y x 320 + X

The segment is A000, which is were VRAM starts, so we get:

A000:Y x 320 + X

However computers hate multiplication as it is just repeated adding, which is slow.

Let's break that equation down into different numers:

A000:Y x 256 + Y x 64 + X

or

A000:Y x 2^8 + Y x 2^6 + X

Notice how now we're working with base 2?  But how to we get the power of stuff?

Using Shifts.  Shifting is a fairly simple concept.  There are two kinds of shifts,

shift left and shift right.  When you shift a number, the CPU simply adds a zero to

one end, depending on the shift that you used.  For example, say you want to shift

256

       256 = 100000000b

Shift Left:  1000000000b

       512 = 1000000000b

Shift Right: 0100000000b

       256 = 100000000b

Shifts are equal to 2^n where N is the number shifted by.  So we can easily plug shifts

into the previous equation.

A000:Y SHL 8 + Y SHL 6 + X

This is still analog.  Let's code that in assembly:



SET_VSEGMENT:                       ;set up video segment

    MOV AX,0A000h                   ;point ES to VGA segment

    MOV ES,AX



VALUES:                             ;various values used for plotting later on

    MOV AX,100                      ;X location

    MOV BX,100                      ;Y location



GET_OFFSET:                         ;get offset of pixel location using X,Y

    MOV DI,AX                       ;put X location into DI

    MOV DX,BX                       ;and Y into DX

    SHL BX,8                        ;Y * 2^8.  same as saying Y * 256

    SHL DX,6                        ;Y * 2^8.  same as sayinh Y * 64

    ADD DX,BX                       ;add the two together

    ADD DI,BX                       ;and add the X location



Now all we have to do is plot the pixel using the STOSB instruction.  The color of the

pixel will be in AL.

    MOV AL,4                        ;set color attributes

    STOSB                           ;and store a byte



So the whole code to plot a pixel by writing directly to the VRAM looks like this:



MAIN SEGMENT

     ASSUME CS:MAIN,ES:MAIN,DS:MAIN,SS:MAIN



     ORG 100h



START:

    MOV AH,00h                      ;get into video mode.  00 = Set Video Mode

    MOV AL,13h                      ;13h = 320x240x16

    INT 10h



SET_VSEGMENT:                       ;set up video segment

    MOV AX,0A000h                   ;point ES to VGA segment

    MOV ES,AX



VALUES:                             ;various values used for plotting later on

    MOV AX,100                      ;X location

    MOV BX,100                      ;Y location



GET_OFFSET:                         ;get offset of pixel location using X,Y

    MOV DI,AX                       ;put X location into DI

    MOV DX,BX                       ;and Y into DX

    SHL BX,8                        ;Y * 2^8.  same as saying Y * 256

    SHL DX,6                        ;Y * 2^8.  same as sayinh Y * 64

    ADD DX,BX                       ;add the two together

    ADD DI,BX                       ;and add the X location

;this whole thing gives us the offset location of the pixel



    MOV AL,4                        ;set color attributes

    STOSB                           ;and store



    XOR AX,AX                       ;wait for keypress

    INT 16h



    MOV AX,0003h                    ;switch to text mode

    INT 10h



    INT 20h                         ;and exit



END START

MAIN ENDS



If you don't understand this yet, study the source code.  Remove all comments and add

them yourself in your own words.  Know what each line does and why it does what it does.





A line drawing program

----------------------

To finish up the graphics section I'm going to show you a little modification to the 

previous program to make it print a line instead of just a pixel.  All you have to do is

repeat the pixel ploting procedure as many times as required.  It should be commented

well enough, so I wont bother explaining it.



MAIN SEGMENT

     ASSUME CS:MAIN,ES:MAIN,DS:MAIN,SS:MAIN



     ORG 100h



START:

    MOV AH,00h                      ;get into video mode.  00 = Set Video Mode

    MOV AL,13h                      ;13h = 320x240x16

    INT 10h



SET_VSEGMENT:                       ;set up video segment

    MOV AX,0A000h                   ;point ES to VGA segment

    MOV ES,AX



VALUES:                             ;various values used for plotting later on

    MOV AX,100                      ;X location

    MOV BX,100                      ;Y location

    MOV CX,120                      ;length of line.  used for REP



GET_OFFSET:                         ;get offset of pixel location using X,Y

    MOV DI,AX                       ;put X location into DI

    MOV DX,BX                       ;and Y into DX

    SHL BX,8                        ;Y * 2^8.  same as saying Y * 256

    SHL DX,6                        ;Y * 2^8.  same as sayinh Y * 64

    ADD DX,BX                       ;add the two together

    ADD DI,BX                       ;and add the X location

;this whole thing gives us the offset location of the pixel



    MOV AL,4                        ;set color attributes

    REP STOSB                       ;and store 100 bytes, decrementing CX and

                                    ;incrementing DI



    XOR AX,AX                       ;wait for keypress

    INT 16h



    MOV AX,0003h                    ;switch to text mode

    INT 10h



    INT 20h                         ;and exit



END START

MAIN ENDS







8.  Basics of File Operations

=============================

In the old days, DOS did not include interrupts that would handle file operations.  So

programers had to use some complicated t3kn33kz to write/open files.  Today we don't

have to do that anymore.  DOS includes quite a few interrupts to simplify this process.





File Handles

------------

File handles are are numbers assigned to a file upon opening it.  Note that opening

a file does not mean displaying it or reading it.  Take a look at the following code:



MAIN SEGMENT

     ASSUME CS:MAIN,DS:MAIN,SS:MAIN,ES:MAIN

     ORG 100h



START:

     MOV AX,3D00h      

     LEA DX,FILENAME  

     INT 21h



     JC ERROR

     

     INT 20h



ERROR:

     MOV AH,09h

     LEA DX,ERRORMSG

     INT 21h



     INT 20h

 

FILENAME  DB 'TEST.TXT',0

ERRORMSG  DB 'Unable to open [test.txt]$'

MAIN ENDS

END START



If you have a file called test.txt in the current directory the program will simply 

quite.  If the file is missing it will display an error message.  So what's happening

here?

1.  We move 3D00h into AX.  This is a shorter way of saying:

    MOV AH,3Dh

    MOV AL,00h

    3Dh is the interrupt 21h function for opening files.  The interrupt checks the AL

    register to how it should open the file.  The value of AL is broken down into

    the following:

    

    Bit 0-2: Access mode

    0 - Read

    1 - Write

    2 - Read/Write

    

    Bit 3: Reserved (0)

    

    Bit 4-6: Sharing Mode

    0 - Compadibility

    1 - Exclusiv

    2 - Deny Write

    3 - Deny Read

    4 - Deny None

    

    Bit 7: Inheritance Flag

    0 - File is inherited by child processes

    1 - Prive to current process



    Don't worry too much about what all this means.  We will only use the Access mode

    bit.

2.  We load the address of the file name into DX.  Note that the filename has to be an

    ASCIIZ string, meaning it is terminated with a NULL character (0).

3.  We call interrupt 21h

4.  If an error occured while opening the file, the carry flag is set and the error

    code is returned in AX.  In this case we jump to the ERROR label.

5.  If no error occured, the file handel is stored in AX.  Since we don't know what to

    do with that yet, we terminate the program at this point.







Reading files

-------------

Having optained the file handle of the file, we can now use the file.  For example

read it.  When you use interrupt 21h's file read function, you have to set up the

registers as follows:

AH = 3Fh

BX = File handle

CX = Number of bytes to read

DX = Pointer to buffer to put file contents in

Than you simply print out that buffer using interrupt 21h's print string function.

However notice how you have to specify the amount of data to read.  That's not good

since most of the time we don't know how much data is in a file.  So we can use a 

little trick.  If an error occured, the error code is stored in AX.  The error code 0

means that the program has encounter a EOF (End Of File).  So we can simply make a 

while loop that prints a single byte from the text as long as AX is not equal to zero.

If it is, we know that the file ended and we can terminate the program.  Note that it 

is good coding practise to use interrupt 21h's function Close File to do just that.

Here is the code for this thing:



MAIN SEGMENT

     ASSUME CS:MAIN,DS:MAIN,SS:MAIN,ES:MAIN

     ORG 100h



START:

     MOV AX,3D00h

     LEA DX,FILENAME

     INT 21h



     JC ERROR



     MOV BX,AX



READFILE:

     MOV AH,3Fh

     MOV CX,0001h

     LEA DX,CHARACTER

     INT 21h



     CMP AX,000h

     JE ENDPROGRAM



     MOV AH,02h

     MOV DL,CHARACTER

     INT 21h



     JMP READFILE



ENDPROGRAM:

     MOV AH,3Eh

     INT 21h          



     INT 20h



ERROR:

     MOV AH,09h

     LEA DX,ERRORMSG

     INT 21h



     INT 20h



FILENAME  DB 'TEST.TXT',0

ERRORMSG  DB 'Unable to open [test.txt]$'

CHARACTER DB ?

MAIN ENDS

END START



This is a fairly big piece of code, but you should be able to understand it.



1.  We get the file handle using the method discussed in the previous chapter.

2.  We move the file handle from AX into BX.  This is because interrupt 21h's 

    function to read a file requires the handle to be in BX.

3.  We move 3Fh into AH, tells interrupt 21h that we want to read a file

4.  CX contains the bytes to read, we only want one

5.  The read byte is put into buffer that DX points to.  In this case its called 

    CHARACTER.  Notice how we set up CHARACTER is an unitialized variable.

6.  We compare AX to 0, which it would be if a EOF is encountered.  If it is, we

    end the program.

7.  Otherwise we use interrupt 21h's function Print Character to print the character

    in the buffer.  You should be familiar with that from previous chapters.

8.  We return to the label READFILE to read another byte.

9.  If EOF is encountered, we use function 3Eh to close the file and terminate the

    program.







Creating files

--------------

To create files you have to:

1.  Create an empty file

2.  Move a buffer into the file handle

The following code will do that for us:



MAIN SEGMENT

     ASSUME CS:MAIN,DS:MAIN,ES:MAIN,SS:MAIN



     ORG 100h



START:

     MOV AH,3Ch

     XOR CX,CX

     MOV DX,OFFSET FILE_NAME

     INT 21h



     JC ERROR1



     MOV BX,AX

     MOV AH,40h

     MOV CX,9

     MOV DX,OFFSET SHIT

     INT 21h



     JC ERROR



     INT 20h



ERROR:

     MOV AH,09h

     MOV DX,OFFSET ERROR_WRITING

     INT 21h

     INT 20h



ERROR1:

     MOV AH,09h

     MOV DX,OFFSET ERROR_CREATING

     INT 21h

     INT 20h



FILE_NAME       db "blow.me",0

SHIT            db "123456789"

ERROR_WRITING   db "error writing to file$"

ERROR_CREATING  db "error creating file$"

MAIN ENDS

END START





1.  We create the file using function 3Ch.  Register have to be set up like this:

    CX - Type of file.  0 - normal, 1 - Read Only, 2 - Hidden

    DX - Name of the file.  Has to be an ASCIIZ string.

    This function returns the file handle of the new file in AX.

2.  We check for an error, and jump of necessary

3.  We move the file handle from AX into BX

4.  And choose interrupt 21h's function Write File (40h).  For this function we need

    the registers set up  like this:

    BX - File Handle

    CX - File size to write (9 in our case)

    DX - Points to buffer to be written

5.  We check for an error, if so we jump, otherwise we terminate the program.





Search operations

-----------------

In assembly you have two search functions at your disposal, Search First and Search

Next.  Out of those to search first is the more complicated one.  As the name implies,

Search Next can only be done after a Search First function.  So first thing we do to

search for a file is set up a Search First routine.  The register have to be setup as

follows:

AH - 4Eh

CL - File Attributes

DX - Pointer to ASCIIZ path/file name

The file attributes are set up in a wierd way, and I will not get into those.  It's

enough for you to know that we will be using 6h, which is a normal file.  Well actually

DOS will read 6h as 00000110, and each bit has a different meaning.

This function will return an error in AX.  If AX is zero the search was successful, 

otherwise we know it wasn't.  If it found the files to search for, DOS will setup

a block of memory 43 bytes long in the DTA.  DTA stands for Disk Transfer Area and for

now it's enough to think of it as a "scratch pad" for DOS.  In this tutorial I will

not get into reading it, but it doesn't hurt telling you what these 43 byte contain:

0  - 21: Reserved for the Find Next function.  This saves us from having to do the

         setup again.

21 - 22: Attributes of the file found

22 - 24: Time the file found was created

24 - 26: Date the file found was created

26 - 30: Size of the file found (in bytes)

30 - 43: File name of the file found.



So our Search First function will look like this:

SEARCH:

    MOV DX,OFFSET FILE_NAME

    MOV CL,6h

    MOV AH,4Eh

    INT 21h

    OR  AL,AL

    JNZ NOT_FOUND

Notice how we use a bitwise operator instead of a CMP?  Bitwise operations are insanly

fast, and CoMParing 2 values is bascily subtracting which is slower.  Remember how OR

works?

0 OR 0 = 0

1 OR 0 = 1

0 OR 1 = 1

1 OR 1 = 1

So OR AL,AL will only return 0 if every single bit in AL is 0.  So if it doesn't return

0, we know that it contains an error code and the search failed.  We wont bother

checking what the error code is, we just jump to a label that will display an error

message.  If the search was successful we move on to the Search Next function to check

if anymore files meet our describtion.  Search Next is a fairly easy function.  All we

have to do is move 4Fh into AH and call int 21h.

FOUND:

    MOV Ah,4Fh

    INT 21h

    OR AL,AL

    JNZ ONE_FILE

This code will perform the Search Next function, and if it fails jump to the label

ONE_FILE.  But what happens if it found another file?  Well we could do another 

Search Next function.

MORE_FOUND:

    MOV AH,4Fh

    INT 21h

    OR AL,AL

    JNZ MORE_FILES_MSG

This will check if yet another file is found.  Now we should implement a way of knowing

how many files we found.  We can do so by setting a register to 1 after the Search First

function was successful, and incremeant it each time it finds another file.  So lets

put all this together and create a program that will search for a file, search again 

if it found it and start a loop that keeps searching for files and keeps track of how 

many it found:



MAIN SEGMENT

     ASSUME CS:MAIN,DS:MAIN,ES:MAIN,SS:MAIN



     ORG 100h



SEARCH:

    MOV DX,OFFSET FILE_NAME

    MOV CL,6h

    MOV AH,4Eh

    INT 21h

    OR AL,AL

    JNZ NOT_FOUND



FOUND:

    MOV CL,1                 ;the counter that keeps track of how many files we found

    MOV Ah,4Fh

    INT 21h

    OR AL,AL

    JNZ ONE_FILE



MORE_FOUND:

    INC CL                   ;here we increment it

    MOV AH,4Fh

    INT 21h

    OR AL,AL

    JNZ MORE_FILES_MSG

    JMP MORE_FOUND



MORE_FILES_MSG:

    MOV AH,02h

    OR  CL,30h               ;convert counter to number (see blow)

    MOV DL,CL                ;and display it.

    INT 21h



    MOV AH,9h

    MOV DX,OFFSET MORE_FILES

    INT 21h

    INT 20h



ONE_FILE:

    MOV AH,9h

    MOV DX,OFFSET FILE_FOUND

    INT 21h

    INT 20h



NOT_FOUND:

    MOV AH,9h

    MOV DX,OFFSET FILE_NOT_FOUND

    INT 21h

    INT 20h 





MORE_FILES     DB " FILES FOUND",10,13,'$'

FILE_NOT_FOUND DB "FILE NOT FOUND",10,13,'$'

FILE_FOUND     DB "1 FILE FOUND",10,13,'$'

FILE_NAME      DB "*.AWC",0                   ;this is the file we search for



MAIN ENDS

END SEARCH





Returns:

FILE NOT FOUND

If not files with extension .AWC are found

1 FILE FOUND

If the current directory contains 1 file with the extension .AWC

X FILES FOUND

If more than one file with extension .AWC was found.  X stands for the number of

files found.  Remember how function 2h will print the ASCII value of a hex number?

Well we don't really want that.  So to convert it to a number we OR it with 30h.

That's because if you look at an ASCII chart you'll notice that the numeric value

of a ASCII number is always 30h more than the hex number.  For example, The number

5 is equal to 35h, 6 is 36h, etc.  So to convert it we OR it with 30h:

 5h = 000101

30h = 000110

35h = 110101     (ASCII Value: "5")



 6h = 000110

30h = 110000

36h = 110110     (ASCII Value: "6")



etc.



Exercises:

1.  Create a program that will display how many files are in the current directory

2.  Create a program that will create a new file, write something to it, close it, 

    open it, and read its contents.









Basics of Win32

===============





Introduction

------------

I didn't want to include this as I absolutly HATE microsoft, but I guess I have to face

the fact that it sadly took over all other good operating systems and people have

started to switch to it.  This chapter will be quite a bit different from the previous

ones as Win32 programing is not really low level.  Basicly all you're doing is making

calls to internal windows .DLL files.  But the most signicant differance is the fact

that you will be working in Protected Mode.  This is the mode a briefly mentioned where

you have a 4 gig limit instead of the old 64k you've been working with so far.  I

won't heavily get into what protected mode is and does as that is out of the scope of

this tutorial (my next asm tutorial will though), but you will need to refer back to

.EXE file layout I talked about in chapter 3.





Tools

-----

Well first of all you will have to download a new assembler.  That's because my version

of TASM is older and doesn't support Win32.  So for this chapter get yourself a copy of

MASM.  That's an assembler by microsoft that has now become freeware.  Why didn't I

mention MASM before since it's free?   Well the only thing MASM is now good for is Win32

programing.  TASM uses something called IDEAL mode which is a much better way of 

programing in assembly.  MASM uses MASM mode which quite frankly blows.  Get MASM from:

<url>

Download and install it, than move on to the next section







A Message Box

-------------

First of all you have to get familiar with the program layout:



386 

.MODEL Flat, STDCALL 



.DATA 



.DATA? 



.CONST 



.CODE 



LABEL: 

    

END LABEL 



This should look fairly familiar to you.  If it doesn't, let's go over it again:



386  -  This declares the processor type to use.  You can also use 4 and 586, but

        for the sake of backwards compadibility you should stick with 386 unless you

        have to use something higher.



.MODEL FLAT, STDCALL  -  This declares the memory model to use.  In Win32 program you

                         don't have the choices you did before anymore, FLAT is the only

                         one.  The STDCALL tells the assembler how to pass parameters.

                         Don't worry about what that means just yet, you will most 

                         likely never use anything buy STDCALL in Win32 programming as

                         there is only 1 instruction that needs a different one (C).



.DATA  -  All your initialized data should go in here



.DATA?  -  All your uninitialized data should go here



.CONSTS  -  Constants go here



.CODE  -  And your code goes here



LABEL:  -  Just like before, you have to define a starting label



END LABEL  -  And END it





Now I'm gonna ask you to take a different look at this whole assembly thing.  So far you

have been manipulating memory and the CPU, with Win32 you manipulate memory and Windows

components.  I'm sure you know what Include files are, files that will be included with

your program when you compile it.  Well in Win32 programing you're using windows include

files in the form of DLLs.  These files are known as Application Programming Interface

or API for short.  For example, Kernel32.dll, User32.dll, gdi32.dll are APIs.  Again,

I won't bother getting into details on how APIs work.  Assuming you have included all

the .DLL files you need, you call specific Win32 functions in the following format:



INVOKE expression,arguments



So for example, to exit a program by making a call to the exit function you do:



INVOKE ExitProcess,0



So let's make a program that does just that, exits:







386 

.MODEL Flat, STDCALL 

option casemap:none                             ;turn case sensitivity on

include \masm32\include\windows.inc             ;the include files that we need

include \masm32\include\kernel32.inc

includelib \masm32\lib\kernel32.lib

.DATA 

.CODE 



START: 

INVOKE ExitProcess,0    

END START 



To get an .EXE out of this, get into your MASM directory and then into BIN.  Then

assemble with:

ml  /c  /coff  /Cp filename.asm

And link with:

link /SUBSYSTEM:WINDOWS  /LIBPATH:c:\masm32\lib  filename.obj

This will get you a file called filename.exe, run it and ph33r.

Now lets make this into a message box.  We use the INVOKE command again, but instead

of using the ExitProcess function, we use MessageBox.



INVOKE MessageBox, 0, OFFSET MsgBoxText, OFFSET MsgBoxCaption, MB_OK



Let's disect this thing:

MessageBox tells windows what function we want, and add a 0, just like we did with

ExitProcess.  This is done because all ANSI strings in windows must be terminated with a

0.  Next we put the location of MsgBoxText in there.  This is done just like you would

do it using INT 21h, OFFSET LOCATION.  We do the same with MsgBoxCaption and finally

specify what kind of message box we want.  In this case MB_OK is a constant representing

the familiar box where you can only press Ok.  Usually this would be a number, but we're

including a file that contains defintions of them.  So how did I know what goes where?

A Win32 refrence will tell you.  We also have to define MsgBoxText and MsgBoxCaption.

We do this the way we always did:

MsgBoxCaption DB "ph33r b1ll g473z!",0

MsgBoxText    DB "Yes, I ph33r",0



So throwing it all together, the code would look like this:



.386 

.MODEL FLAT,stdcall 

option casemap:none 

include \masm32\include\windows.inc 

include \masm32\include\kernel32.inc 

includelib \masm32\lib\kernel32.lib 

include \masm32\include\user32.inc 

includelib \masm32\lib\user32.lib 



.DATA

MsgBoxCaption DB "ph33r b1ll g473z!",0

MsgBoxText    DB "Yes, eYe ph33r",0



.CODE 

START: 

INVOKE MessageBox, 0, OFFSET MsgBoxText, OFFSET MsgBoxCaption, MB_OK 

INVOKE ExitProcess, 0 

END START



NOTE:  Instead of offset you could have use ADDR.  ADDR does basicly the same, but it

       can handle forward refrences and OFFSET can't.  In other words, if you would have

       declared MsgBoxCaption and MsgBoxText after you use them (INVOKE.....), using

       OFFSET would return an error.  So you should get the habbit of using ADDR

       instead of Win32.



Now assemble and link with:

ml  /c  /coff  /Cp filename.asm

link /SUBSYSTEM:WINDOWS  /LIBPATH:c:\masm32\lib  filename.obj

By the way, you should have made a .bat file by now that does this for you.  If you

haven't, make a file containing the following lines and save it as whatever.bat:

@echo off

ml  /c  /coff  /Cp %1.asm

link /SUBSYSTEM:WINDOWS  /LIBPATH:c:\masm32\lib  %1.obj







A Window

--------

As I said, I hate Win32 programming, so I'm thinking of scratching this part as it's

quite a bit more complex than a message box.  E-mail me with your opinion, if enough

people think I should do it, I will.  So far I have recieved no E-mail of any kind.















Appendix A:

Resources

=========



http://awc.rejects.net

  My homepage, check the sk00lingz and k0d3 sections.  Also, this is where you will find

  the newest version of this and other tutorials by myself.  So check it out as some of

  the other sites that have this tutorial might not be updating it regularly.



http://www.intel.com

  Good selection of white papers on intel's CPUs



http://www.borland.com

  Homepage of the makers of TASM



http://asmjournal.freeservers.com/

  Assembly E-Zine.  Very good.  Also has a few links to other assembly sites, which

  than link to even more, which link to still more....



http://www.sandpile.org/

  Good info on hardware programming



http://webster.cs.ucr.edu/Page_asm/ArtofAssembly/ArtofAsm.html

  Very good book on assembly, although it's MASM specific, most t3kn33kz apply to 

  TASM as well.



http://grail.cba.csuohio.edu/~somos/asmx86.html

  Assembly links



http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/user/ralf/pub/WWW/

  Ralph Brown's website.  He made a huge listing of interrupts, go there now!



http://www.packetstorm.securify.com/papers.html

  Has a few links to ASM related shit, mostly other shit though.  Kick ass site.



http://www.crackstore.com

  Has a shitload of tutorials on cracking and some on assembly.



http://www.coderz.net

  Very good site for virus related shit.  They also host tons of other good sites.

  If you're into or planning on making viruses, check em out.



htt://code.box.sk

  Don't have too much on assembly, but some is better than nothing.  Great site for

  other programming related resources though.



http://sennaspy.8m.com/

  Nice site with some cool source code on it.  Including DOS 6.22, Quake 1/2/3, and

  various versions of the Award BIOS.



http://www.fastsoftware.com/index.htm

  Has some cool stuff, but is MASM specific.  Still worth checking out though



http://www.ice-digga.com/programming/

  A few tutorials, mainly on multimedia.  Including SoundBlaster programming and

  2D/3D graphics



http://www.text-files.org/

  Kick ass site by RedPriest from #HackPhreak and Condemned.  Stilll under construction

  but already has thousands of text files on everything computer.  I'll be uploading 

  all my assembly resources there as well.  ph33r it!



http://www.coderz.net/29a/29a-home.html

  One of the great sites hosted by Coderz.net.  29A is a virus coding group, and their

  E-Zine is one of the best around, not just for virus writers.  To give you a hint,

  issue 8 consists of 8 megs of tutorials.



http://www.mandrag0re.net/

  Great guy who has helped me alot.  His site has lots of source code on everything from

  viruses in Linux and DOS to various exploits, all done in pure assembly.



http://bobrich.lexitech.com/

  More assembly shit.



http://www.x86.org/

  Great hardware site.  Has lots of shit on undocumented x86 shit, and even CPU exploits



http://www.programmersheaven.com/

  Also a nice site.  Their assembly section has lots of tutorials, sample source code,

  and libraries.









Appendix B:

Credits, Contact information, Other shit

========================================



Credits

-------

First and foremost I would like to thank all assembly programmers out there who have 

helped people like me by sharing what they have discovered in form of books, text

files, and sample source code.



Special thanks to:

cozgedal  -  For his occasional "kick ass"

rpc       -  For always helping me with shit, ph33r him

zcyl      -  See previous

#unholy   -  It just 0wnz



People who have "beta tested" this thing:

snider

cozgedal



Other cool people who have helped me with various things (some without knowing it):

skin_dot, moJoe, lindex, RedPriest





Contact information

-------------------

E-Mail : fu@ckz.org

Website: http://awc.rejects.net

ICQ    : 42439352

IRC    : irc.ckz.org in #Security/#Unholy/#Computers





Other shit

----------

If you find a mistake (technical, speling, etc) contact me asap



I need feedback!  If you have comments please direct them to the e-mail address above.

Constructive negative comments are welcome, but if you just wanna bitch to me try 

e-mailing root@microsoft.com instead.  After all, that's what microsoft is there for.



If you made use of this tutorial, please contact me as well.  I wanna see what people

have done with this.



If you plan to make commercial use of this tutorial (yeah right), contact me.



If you fuck up your computer as a result of this tutorial, don't blame me.  All code

has been tested and works great, but I cannot be held responsible for anything that

happens to you as a result of using this information.



You may freely distribute this text as long as you don't change anything.  If there's

something you think should be changed, contact me first.



And finally, I'm already working on the sequel to this tutorial.  If you didn't get

enough of assembly, check it out.  Might take a while to get done though.  It will cover

shit like:

Multi-dimensional Arrays

Structures

Code optimization

Macros

Procedures and functions

Reading and Writing directly to sectors

Protected Mode

Multi-Tasking in DOS (well kinda)

OOP (Object Orientated Paradigm)





Some final words:

The key to mastering assembly is LOTS of practise!  Don't worry if you don't understand 

half of the stuff I talked about here.  Put this thing aside and just make lots and lots

of little programs.  If they don't work, debug them, even if that takes you all night or

longer.  Than come back to this.  And don't bother trying to find help.  There are only

very few people who know assembly, and if you can figure it out yourself you learn more.

By the way, 4 months after I first opened up a text file on assembly my tasm directory

contains 93 working .asm files coded by myself.  On average that's almost 1 program 

a day.  Remember, you don't have to start coding something big, as long as you code 

_something_!

Don't expect to learn everything in this tutorial within a few days, I would say that

if you can do it in 4 months or so you are doing great.





Quote of the month:

The only good is knowledge and the only evil ignorance.

                                        - Socrates



EOF



