As you'll only end up toying with it, because let's face it no one sane actually learns assembly languages, let alone uses them, you're probably best off sticking to an ARM instruction set rather than x86. It's a lot simpler, but no less powerful. The main difference is in the interaction with memory. To do something with an ARM cpu, you've basically got to take the stuff out of memory and put it in something called a register, then you can work with it. x86 can work with memory and registers simultaneously, making things a smidgen more complex. We used an emulator/debugger called KMD at uni. It's a bit retro and will need to be run under Linux, but is ideal for what you want. http://brej.org/kmd/ The resources we used are also publicly available here http://www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/ugt/2012/COMP15111/ Be warned, assembly language is not for the faint of heart. Don't worry if, after a couple of hours, you just go "-blam!- this shit" and delete the lot.