Why not just start with some embedded development then? 8-bit PIC and AVR microcontrollers have very simple instruction sets and can be connected to simple I/O

Why not just start with some embedded development then? 8-bit PIC and AVR microcontrollers have very simple instruction sets and can be connected to simple I/O devices like switches and LEDs, but they both use Harvard architectures, so you have different address spaces for code and data. The newer 32-bit PIC micros use a MIPS core, but the development tools aren't very open, despite being based on GCC. The 16-bit MSP430 is fairly simple, has good open-source development tools, cheap development hardware (check out the Launchpad), and a more conventional von-Neumann architecture. Check out some of Michael Kohn's sample code for the msp430 assembler he wrote: http://www.mikekohn.net/micro/naken430asm_msp430_assembler.php http://www.mikekohn.net/micro/naken430asm_msp430_assembler.p...