03-12-2004, 04:35 AM
<crotchety>
Hexadecimal? In my day, we had to key in code through the front panel in binary, both big-endian and little-endian. And we liked it!
</crotchety>
Seriously, I enjoyed assembly programming. It really gave you a feel for how the processor and surrounding chipset worked. There was an appealing simplicity to writing I/O drivers through an 8250, and a perverse joy in implementing a copy-protection scheme using the PC Junior (remember it?) keyboard interrupt vector. It's been a looong time, though, so I'm probably forgetting the dents in my cubicle from my head.
Hexadecimal? In my day, we had to key in code through the front panel in binary, both big-endian and little-endian. And we liked it!
</crotchety>
Seriously, I enjoyed assembly programming. It really gave you a feel for how the processor and surrounding chipset worked. There was an appealing simplicity to writing I/O drivers through an 8250, and a perverse joy in implementing a copy-protection scheme using the PC Junior (remember it?) keyboard interrupt vector. It's been a looong time, though, so I'm probably forgetting the dents in my cubicle from my head.