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Assembly languages are processor-specific low-level languages. They are rarely used any more except for handling very low-level machine-specific tasks, since languages like C can generally satisfy most requirements, even low-level ones. The other main use of assembly language is to provide the "glue" to enable different languages to be used in a single program. It is however useful to know something about assembly language to get a feel for what goes on inside a processor, as well as for understanding code generation in compilers and for debugging when there is no source code available.
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| A86, a very good shareware 80x86 assembler |
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| Arrowsoft Assembler, a free 80x86 assembler |
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| Magic Assembler 1.10, another free 80x86 assembler |
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| A cross-assembler for the Motorola 68000 which includes an emulator, so you can write and test 68000 assembler programs on a PC |
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| x68k.zip, another cross-assembler and emulator for the Motorola 68000 |
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| Several additional development tools (debuggers etc.) |
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| An 80x86 assembly language tutorial by Gavin Estey, the maintainer of the rec.games.programmer FAQ |
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| The 8086 family assembly language FAQ |
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| The A86 FAQ for the shareware A86 assembler (see above) |
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| The Microsoft MASM FAQ |
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| The Borland TASM FAQ |
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| The Game Developer's FAQ for the newsgroup rec.games.programmer |
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| The PC Games Programmer's Encyclopedia: a collection of source code and text documentation related to games programming for MS-DOS |
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| Several source code examples |
| A list of Assembly Internet Resources at EG3 Communications |
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| Tore's Programming Page has links to several tutorials |
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| Strange Creations, Gavin Estey's excellent collection of programming resources (especially information about games programming) |
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| Intel Secrets: What Intel doesn't want you to know. An excellent site, with lots of information about undocumented "features" of Intel processors |
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| X2FTP, an excellent FTP archive in Finland with lots of material related to games programming |
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| Processor manufacturers: Intel and Motorola |
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| Assembly language links at Yahoo (or at Yahoo UK) |
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| The newsgroup comp.lang.asm.x86 |
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| The newsgroup comp.os.msdos.programmer: a good source of information on programming PCs, although it is not restricted to assembly-language programming |