Recommended assembler and why?

[taj]

Hi all,

I am beginning the assembler thing. I see nasm, fasm, masm, ook, tasm, and a bunch of others all preferred by different people. Can someone tell me advantages/disadvantages of each one?

My first step will be a 32 byte intro but I hope to advance to making .o files to link to gcc C programs eventually. Any experience, thoughts, preferences are GREATLY appreciated.

[Jim]

nasm and fasm are free, ook I don't know anything about, tasm is ancient history.  masm is microsoft's assembler - the industry standard.  However it's not free and different versions tend not to be compatible with each other.
Most people here seem to be using fasm, which is as good a choice as any.
Jim

[Rbz]

Yeah, I prefer FASM, just because the simple IDE that works like a charm!
And there's a great FASM community that can help you with your start.

[taj]

I started with nasmw.exe and notepad :-)
Is there a decent debugger for 16 bit assembler?

uh - sorry for all the n00b questions.

[Rbz]

Try W32Dasm by URSoftware Co. for 32bits and 16bits, really good one.