Like most interesting subjects, assembly language programming requires a little background knowledge before you can start to appreciate it. In this chapter, we explore these basics. If terms such as two's complement, hexadecimal, index register and byte are familiar to you, the chances are you can skip to the next chapter, or skim through this one for revision. Otherwise, most of the important concepts you will need to understand to start programming in assembler are explained below.

One prerequisite, even for the assembly language beginner, is a familiarity with some high-level language such as BASIC or Pascal. In explaining some of the important concepts, we make comparisons to similar ideas in BASIC, C or Pascal. If you don't have this fundamental requirement, you may as well stop reading now and have a bash at BASIC first.