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x86 Assembly on Mac OS X

Posted by Cliff on from the cross-compiling-heaven dept.

Quicksilver31337 asks: "I am currently taking an Assembly course which requires that I be able to compile ASM for the intel x86; however, I am stubbornly a Mac user. Having no desire to switch from my Powerbook, what can I do to work with, compile, and run x86 ASM short of running VirtualPC?" While Mac OS X does use gcc and its associated tool-chain, an old Slashdot discussion seems to imply that cross-compiling is better under OpenDarwin than Mac OS X. Has anyone tried cross-compiling under both operating systems? If so, what suggestions on setting up a working tool-chain do you have?

4 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. DOSBox + NASM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Get NASM (Netwide Assembler) and DOSBox or Bochs (x86 emulators).

  2. Don't by kalidasa · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I would think that if you want to take an assembly class for a particular architecture, you'd want to know how that architecture REALLY responds: no kind of emulation is going to guarantee you that knowledge. You're being too stubborn; get (or borrow) a cheap beige box to do the assembly work on and just rdc or vnc into it. Then turn around and sell it when you no longer need to do assembly.

  3. Here's my advice, you may hear lots similar by biglig2 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sweet Baby Jesus and the Orphans, if you don't want to use anything except a Mac, then go on a PowerPC assembler course!

    Dear Auntie Slashdot,

    I'm going on a course to learn how to stab people. But I don't like knives, nasty sharp things, I much prefer my sock full of spagetti. Can you suggest a way I can stab people with a sock full of pasta?

    Also, I don't want to ride a bicycle, any way I can learn how to ride one while on a train?

    etc. etc.

    --
    ~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
  4. Horse nuggets. by kma · · Score: 5, Informative

    What do you mean, "how that architecture REALLY" responds?" The whole point of an "architecture" is that there can be more than one implementation of said architecture. AMD and Intel provide hardware implementations of the x86; VirtualPC, bochs, et al. provide software implementations of it. Differences amongst those different implementations come down to either unspecified parts of the architecture, or bugs, be those bugs in hardware or software.

    Bochs is every bit as real an implementation of the x86 as a Pentium 4. In the outrageously unlikely event that bochs doesn't run this guy's assembly code correctly, he should report a bug, just as he would do in the even more outrageously unlikely event that an Intel processor runs his code wrong.