8

Intel 8085 micro-processor, anyone?

In my graduation, one of the semesters had Intel 8085 programming in the curriculum. It's because of that dev-kit I understood what assembly-level language means.

A simple scenario of adding two numbers would result in half a page long sequence of commands that literally didn't excuse any mistakes.

It made me understand the semantics or basically what we get taught as "middle level" languages.
We had to memorize the exact pins of the thing and had to draw it from memory. And we had to learn the instruction set it had.

Later we had to learn Intel 8086 but its instruction set was way too complicated and I gave up on it.

I know it sounds geeky but I randomly remembered it today.

Comments
  • 9
    Why on earth would anyone need to memorize this shit? Reference manuals were made for a reason.

    Yeah, we had a class on 8088 computers we had to write assembly for. I also had a book that showed how to create the machine code itself from bits. I never got into that book.

    I did build an 8088 computer on a pcb and booted it with a simple program. That was a lot of fun. I used GALs to program the basic chip interface logic instead of TTL chips.
  • 3
    in comparison I found an asm 86 book in the library and ate it all, not that I remember or need that nowadays...
  • 5
    buut there was a time when all that was useful...

    back when the win programs were not protected and you can crack it by changing the right je or jne which was the check for the correct license key and just make it to work with any incorrect one ;)
  • 2
    @Demolishun because practical exams.

    How that works is the invigilator calls you in a room, gives you 10 folded papers and asks you to pick 2 from it.

    The 2 that you pick are your questions and you have to implement them on the microprocessor.

    We were told to memorize the entire instructions set because that is better than memorizing specific use cases.
  • 3
  • 2
    @Demolishun It could be. But I think at this point I would have to re-study what I did in college.
  • 4
    @We3D hacking apps is awesome. I've learned from this book. One of those Diamonds that turn your brain on
  • 2
    @SidTheITGuy I wish I had such stuff in education
  • 1
    MC 68000 anyone ? :)
  • 4
    we had ARM assembly, like half of the class eventually just generated the code with Python because writing an entire separate code generator in a dynamically typed language and using it to generate the code was cumulatively less error-prone than writing Assembly. I learned how logic gates are chained from redstone and low level semantics from metaphors on C++ forums. All it had taught me is why nobody uses assembly unless they need obscure instructions
  • 1
    @retoor the book looks legit =]
  • 3
    @retoor that's funny I've got that one in Dutch (first edition). Definitely taught me some basics though I did already know asm. That too gives a lot of insights of how memory and CPU's really work. Memorising and repeating stuff is what we have computers for, any course in computing that relies on that is stupid.

    A lot of the exploits in the book were already not working due to extra protections of the OS when I got it.
  • 2
    @hjk101 it's one of the not many books that made me think / triggered me. Also, the book I'm reading now learns me so much I almost get high reading it. So much quarters fall (yeah, i negeld a Dutch saying)

    As a dutchy, do you know Peter Kassenaar? That was THE writer 😁
Add Comment