No matter what you do, teaching yourself all that stuff will take months at least. It's not something you master in a weekend. The best people in that area pro

No matter what you do, teaching yourself all that stuff will take months at least. It's not something you master in a weekend. The best people in that area probably have a long history with (embedded) programming and started when computers were a lot simpler. So, this might sounds as really crazy advice, but I think it could help lot: find an Apple ][ on eBay and some old Apple ][ programming books. Then start hacking on some assembly code to understand the things you describe above. Another option would be to buy some more modern (:-) development boards for CPUs like the PPC or ARM. Some are very well documented and come with tutorials. The Apple ][ approach is more fun IMO and you will learn a LOT from it :-) S.