IBM PC Assembly Language and Programming (5th Edition)

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Overview of Assembly Language
Review: While not perfect for the beginning x86 assembly language programmer, Abel's text is an excellent overview of the basic and intermediate concepts of x86 assembly. This text covers many of the commands of the x86 instruction set and is an excellent introduction to learning about various BIOS and DOS interrupts. Herein lies a slight problem with the text. Relying too heavily on the "old world" of DOS and Windows 95/98 (and possibly - depending on your system - Windows 2000), this text often takes for granted that you are running on an older Microsoft-based x86 system. As long as you can overcome this compatibility "hurdle", this text is an excellent source for learning about x86 assembly. It covers the topic of machine code, which is of prime importance for those who are interested in writing assembler and compilers (and for writing succinct assembly), and also has copious notes on all the instructions taught in the text.