Overview

The Assembler Boot Camp is a sequence of five eLearning modules that provide a quick and easy introduction to the most important elements of the IBM mainframe's Assembler Language. Each session covers key concepts to help you understand and write simple assembler programs, and provides illustrative examples as brought to you by expert speakers, Michael Stack and John Ehrman.

Assembler Boot Camp Module 1

The first module of the Assembler Boot Camp series is available free of charge and is presented by expert speaker, Michael Stack.

Click here to view Assembler Boot Camp Module 1

What you'll learn in Module 1:

• Binary, hex, and decimal; number representations (1s complement, 2s complement, unsigned), and conversions among them
• Basic hardware data types: binary, decimal, character (EBCDIC)
• Main storage organization
• Basic forms of binary arithmetic
• How to get started with ASSIST/I

Assembler Boot Camp Modules 2 - 5

Assembler Boot Camp Modules 2 -5 will be recorded at SHARE in Boston, August 1-5, 2010, and presented by expert speaker John Ehrman.  Stay tuned for these upcoming session recordings.

What you'll learn in Module 2:

• Basics of machine architecture and program execution
• The assembly process: Assembler Language and machine language
• Differences between data and instructions
• General Purpose Registers and addressing
• Basic instruction formats: symbolic and machine formats
• Common Assembler Language programming standards and conventions
• Program entry and exit rules
• A complete program example

What you'll learn in Module 3: 

• A complete program: how it assembles and executes
• The Program Status Word and instruction fetching
• The USING instruction and implicit addressing
• The Condition Code
• Conditional branching: BC instructions
• ASSIST/I and its 'X-Instructions' for I/O and conversion
• A complete program that reads and converts data, and prints output

What you'll learn in Module 4: 

• The EQU directive
• Extended branch mnemonics
• Literals as 'constant constants'
• Looping
• The LOAD ADDRESS instruction
• Internal subroutines
• Multiplication and division

What you'll learn in Module 5:

• SI and SS instruction formats
• Decimal data and instructions
• Converting among binary, decimal, and character
• Instructions for logical and bit operations