1.4 What You Need to Get Started

This book assumes that you are an experienced assembly-language programmer, and that you are familiar with the Intel 80386 instruction set and system architecture. In particular, you should understand:

Protected and virtual 8086 mode operation

Flat memory model

Interrupt and exception processing

Protection and privilege levels

Segment and page memory management and fault handling

Input and output protection and fault handling

For more information about these topics, see the Intel 80386 Programmer's Reference Manual.

This book also assumes that you are well acquainted with the features of your hardware device and any corresponding ROM BIOS routines or other installable software. If your software is a protected-mode application, you should review the DOS Protected Mode Interface Specification, version 0.9 for information about the required method of accessing and using protected-mode features. You can obtain a copy of this specification from Intel by phoning 1–800–548–4725.