Derek Martin said his interest in x86 Assembly is academic.
Well, OK, I can sort of understand that, particularly if you might be thinking of tinkering in the embedded market, or doing some esoteric real-time stuff. However, I'd strongly encourage looking more at what might be coming up in Itanium, and rather than doing Assembly-level stuff, be looking at what it REALLY takes to migrate existing C/C++ code to a 64-bit environment. In a sense, it shouldn't take ANY migration work at all, if the programmer paid attention to the difference between pointer sizes and integer sizes. But, there is a lot of sloppy code out there that assumes a 32-bit object, and that's an erroneous assumption, as 9+ years of experience with Alpha has shown. I submit that this may prove to be more interesting/lucrative than twiddling bits on a small system. But, that's strictly MHO. You may find that Assembly programming to be some of the most frustrating and esoteric stuff you'll ever work on; your "lines per day" of code development will plummet - it still amazes me how much design and implementation work went into the Alpha PAL code and the Alpha console firmware releases. But, you will also learn a hell of a lot about computer architecture. Cheers, Bayard ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Bayard R. Coolidge N1HO DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed are Compaq Computer Corp. solely those of the author, and not Nashua, New Hampshire, USA those of Compaq Computer Corporation [EMAIL PROTECTED] (DEC '77-'98) or any other entity. "Brake for Moose - It could save your life" - N.H. Fish & Game Dept. -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GCS/CC d+ s:+ a++ C+++$ UO++$L++>$ P L++>$ E-@ W+ N++ o- K? w--- O? M? V-- PS+ PE+ Y+ PGP- t++ 5? X? R* tv b++ DI+++ D? G e++ h-- r++ y? UF++ -----END GEEK CODE BLOCK----- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ***************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the text 'unsubscribe gnhlug' in the message body. *****************************************************************
