AustinTech

I’ve recently ventured back into the realm of HLA and Assembly Language programming. One of the tools I’ve decided to finally get set up correctly is RadASM written by Ketil O. It’s really quite a remarkable IDE written entirely in ASM for developing ASM applications. It is also flexible enough to work with several flavors of assembly language including MASM, FASM, NASM, GoASM, TASM, and HLA. It’s definitely more suited to MASM/MASM32 development, but he has done a fantastic job of expanding the capabilities and including default setups for each of the language syntax’s mentioned.

Another related IDE is Sevag Krikorian’s HIDE which I believe uses some of the RadASM dll’s as well. Sevag’s IDE is not as feature-rich as RadASM but it has the distinct advantage of being extremely easy to get setup and it is made specifically for HLA development. He has also included his own versions of the HLA command-line executable and his own make tool. Nice job.

I’ve decided to stick with RadASM for a couple of reasons. 1) I liked the general feel of the tool a little better. The HIDE windows were separated and it didn’t suit my development style. 2) I was interested in some of the more advanced capabilities of the RadASM tool set. However, I have taken to learning a great deal from HIDE, and I suggest anyone interested in HLA development should take a serious look at it.

The steps that follow are my notes taken after a successful install and setup of the RadASM environment for the FreeHLA system.

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An ongoing set of links to various assembly language related sites on the internet.

• Art of Assembly Language Programming - Randall Hyde Excellent resource on beginning Assembly Language programming. This site and the associated book concentrate on using the HLA (High Level Assembler), which is somewhat controversial with the veteran assembly programmers. Being a beginner though, this site was exactly what I needed to get me started. The book is available online, but I went ahead and bought the book as it’s much easier to read and the number of printed pages was astronomical.
• Flat Assember - Tomasz Grysztar A very popular and useful assembler. This assembler is open-source and can also be used with HLA.
• ASMSource Assembly Language Programming - John A. Lyons Interesting list of links and examples for both 16-bit and 32-bit assembly programming.
• Iczelion’s Win32 Assembly Homepage A highly regarded site with the “standard” tutorials for Win32 Assembly programming. Most of the examples and tutorials use MASM (especially the MASM32 distribution).
• The Netwide Assembler (NASM) NASM is an 80×86 assembler designed for portability and modularity. It supports a range of object file formats including Linux a.out and ELF, COFF, Microsoft 16-bit OBJ and Win32.
• Win32 NASM - Unofficial Homepage - Tomcat Linksand examples on using NASM to create Win32 applications.
• Assembly Language Programming - Wayne J. Radburn Links and examples for Win32 Assembly programming, including a set of skeleton source code for building bare bones Win32 applications
• Chris Dragan’s Corner Several well-done example programs built by Chris Dragan including graphics examples and CPU identification
• Dr. Dobb’s Microprocessor Resources The magazine extension on Intel processors. Includes technical details and Intel Secrets.
• GoASM Assembler Sourcepage - Jeremy Gordon Homepage for the GoASM assembler and related tools (e.g. GoLink). Includes several examples and documentation.
• Small Is Beautiful Assembly Page - Steve Gibson Assembly Page of the Gibson Research site. Steve Gibson’s site is what inspired me to persue the idea of assembly programming. Excellent source of information and examples of what can be done with assembly. Steve only programs in assembly and it’s amazing what he’s created
• Nuvision Miami Assembly Links A great list of various links on assembly language including free resources and books
• MadWizard.com - Great resource for WinSock programming as well as other MASM oriented assembly topics.
• Win32Asm Forum - Community driven message forum on various assembly related topics. Contains lots of example code and tutorials. Also includes an HLA sub-forum.
• Masm Forum - Masm32 oriented form with various topics. Lots of flame wars (kind of annoying), but good information nonetheless. Also includes an HLA sub-forum.
• Bill’s Win32ASM Page - Good articles on general Win32 ASM programming. I was looking for more specific information on what the EAX, EBX, ECX, etc. register names stood for and this site had a nice little article on it. Of course, I should probably just read the Intel manuscripts…

Here’s a quick little class I wrote to encrypt text files from a web-server using GnuPG. I’ll post updates to it as the code improves, but this was a simple and useful start that helped me encrypt messages and then send them via email from the webserver.

Some uses could be:

• Encrypt and send credit card information via email without storing the numbers on the server
• Encrypt and send sales order information
• Encrypt and send membership information
• Encrypt and send database and server statististics
• …basically anything you don’t want others to see!

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