#x86 assembly

Trying to fix ESXi 6.7.0 boot issue, part one

Published at March 4, 2020 · Krystian Hebel ·  14 min read

First mentions that updated versions of VMware's ESXi 6.7.0 installer doesn't start on PC Engines platforms come from the beginning of 2019. Older versions of ESXi worked fine. 'Shutting down firmware services...' is the last line printed before hang or reboot....

Categories: firmware os-dev


Basics of x86 assembly (AT&T syntax)

Published at May 17, 2018 · Bartek Pastudzki ·  12 min read

Nowadays, application of programming in assembly language is very small. Writing production code in assembly may be found in the most demanding tasks in embedded. Even in modern firmware (coreboot, EDK2) most of the code is written in C. Honesly, that’s quite undestandable, assembly code isn’t easy to read nor write and some state that it’s no longer needed to be known. In my opinion, that’s far from the truth....

Categories: programming


The art of disassembly

Published at April 27, 2018 · Bartek Pastudzki ·  12 min read

Probably there was never a programming language that would fascinate me as much as assembly. In fact, it was my second “real language” (after Pascal/Delphi and DOS batch) and the first one I would really understand. Of course, the internals of protected mode initialization was too much for 15-year-old and I finally moved to C and *nix shell. Anyway, I always liked the feeling that I know what I’m really doing but more complex languages are needed nowadays....

Categories: programming