I coded in ASM for last time 4 years ago, so things could have changed since then.

VirtualBox is popular. This is the main plus of it. Although Virtual Box is an emulator(it is slower). I don't know if it changed in the last years.

KVM is super mega fast in my own experience. But it is Linux…. at the risk to touch the feelings of some Linux-Akbar members of the forum, in my own experience, Linux is very unstable. I can watch a simple video and it can crash in all possible ways. In windows you can see a blue screen with some vague explanation. On Linux you can see green aliens on screen, or it can start painting picassos around. But if you want to super mega learn, Linux is your option.

Personally, i developed in Hyper-V. It is a hypervisor, not an emulator, so it is much faster than Virtual Box. It is stable. You have not hardware choices more than the number of the CPUs, the number of the HDDs etc. If you download the 90 days trial of Windows enterprise, Hyper-V is free, because it is included in the Windows Enterprise version.

For Hyper-V you need to create by hand a virtual disk file. It is just a header and then your code. I don't know if Virtual Box is allowing you to just copy paste the content of the disk in a file and go. Hyper-V requires a header.

If you work with the drivers of BIOS, all you need to cover as hardware support is AMD and Intel. They are similar, but they have differences. I worked only for Intel because of my own choice and needs.

I used NASM to code in ASM, never had a single problem with it. I hope it still exists! It was 4 years ago i coded for last.

Some DOS games to inspire you:

https://www.dosgames.com/game/chex-quest-2/

You can play it in the browser.

https://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/137943-relentless-twinsen-s-adventure-dos-screenshot-trip-to-principal.gif

https://www.mobygames.com/images/promo/l/99532-ancient-domains-of-mystery-screenshot.jpg

(If you want to learn ASM in order to find a job in ASM… think twice… ASM is so specific, if you did amazing things in OS, you might not be able to find a job in ASM app programming. Because you are not specialized in the field. Anything you do in ASM is very specific and you can find a job ONLY in that very specific field. Not like with high level languages where you could be coding an App for Windows a day and another kind of App the other day… for a fridge.)

NikiTo said:
(If you want to learn ASM in order to find a job in ASM… think twice… ASM is so specific, if you did amazing things in OS, you might not be able to find a job in ASM app programming. Because you are not specialized in the field. Anything you do in ASM is very specific and you can find a job ONLY in that very specific field. Not like with high level languages where you could be coding an App for Windows a day and another kind of App the other day… for a fridge.)

Yes exactly, asm games programming is clearly hobbyist and homebrew territory now. Although understanding the fundamentals is useful is embedded/ drivers /fpga type work.

NikiTo said:
I coded in ASM for last time 4 years ago, so things could have changed since then.

I’ve not written any meaningful assembly for nearly 27 years, although before HLSL was the norm GPU programming had a deja vu feel to it.

desiado said:
Although understanding the fundamentals is useful is embedded/ drivers /fpga type work.

There are few new things I want to learn. I want to learn HDL for FGPA and Lisp.
Sadly i have not the free time to learn them.

NikiTo said:
VirtualBox is popular. This is the main plus of it. Although Virtual Box is an emulator(it is slower). I don't know if it changed in the last years.

Don't recall it ever having an emulator version, only the hypervisor. What has generally been an issue on many hypervisors is good graphics and other hardware support, unless you pass the device through exclusively so it can use normal drivers.

Although for doing basic ASM stuff the graphics support should be more than good enough, mostly my problem has been with 3D accelerated stuff.

For something a little bit higher level (for programming a game with very minimal OS, drivers, etc.), something like DOSBox comes to mind. Which I think is fully emulated.

desiado said:
Yes exactly, asm games programming is clearly hobbyist and homebrew territory now. Although understanding the fundamentals is useful is embedded/ drivers /fpga type work.

I sometimes find it useful more for reading dissembler than writing new code. Seeing if the compiler actually optimised things in the way I expected along the hot path rather than blindly trusting, and occasionally debugging when don't have the source, or its an optimised release build where the IDE can't always give a good source view (local variables, some inlined functions, etc.).

Well, you need your program to come from somewhere. A disk drive has the advantage of being writable. Another common option is a virtual “CD drive” and mount a bootable .iso (or some other formats) file to it (also how you might install Linux/Windows/etc. to a virtual machine).