[WhatTheDilly-O]

Could someone help clarify a few things about assembly language for me? First off, everywhere I look I find instructions on Intel "x86" assembly. I'm assuming this refers to the 386 and 486 processor families that Intel made. Is this correct? Now you should be able to take it for granted that I am not using any processor in those families in 2003. Specifically, I'm using a Mobile Pentium III. All tutorials I find for Intel assembly is for "x86" though. For that reason I'm assuming that Intel must have standardized the instructions to some extent when they made those processors, so their assembly is named after those processors. Is all of this correct? I also find it hard to believe that new functions weren't implimented in the later processor families, so I'd like to know if all those new functions can be found in tutorials for the "x86" language. And is the "x86" ONLY used in Intel processors, or was it adopted by other chip makers too? Finally, can someone confirm for me that an assembly language is in fact a direct result of the design of the chip itself?

Thanks a lot.

[repeatloader]

quite the contrary, your system is an x86..unless it is a mac. x86 means those classified under the 8086 family 80286, 386, 486, 586 & 686... being that those chips are all backward compatable they are referred to as x86 chips. and any of those docs you find for x86 will be accurate for your system but may need to find updated docs to be able to access the newer features available to your system.
hope this helps

[repeatloader]

sorry...forgot to mention... assembly language is the language right above the machines language... the machine talks in all numbers. assembly language takes verbal commands for each instruction and converts it to its numeric equivilent. there are high level assembly language compilers such as HSA but i prefer msasm myself. dont try to use debug for learning as you may overwrite some vital programming in your system resulting in who know what..hehe... look for msam tutorials and when your ready look into higher lvl assemblers to write for windows ect easier.
(otherwise.. a computers chip is designed around machine language(all numeric), assembly language is a means of using verbal commands to represent these numbers.)

[Harold III]

masm is easier to use cuz it has a friendly interface not like nasm that you have to assemble in console mode and all those crap...