Direct Addressing Mode

The instruction mov al,ds:[8088h] loads the AL register with a copy of the byte at memory location 8088h. Likewise, the instruction mov ds:[1234h],dl stores the value in the dl register to memory location 1234h. By default, all displacement-only values provide offsets into the data segment. If you want to provide an offset into a different segment, you must use a segment override prefix before your address. For example, to access location 1234h in the extra segment (es) you would use an instruction of the form mov ax,es:[1234h]. Likewise, to access this location in the code segment you would use the instruction mov ax, cs:[1234h]. The ds: prefix in the previous examples is not a segment override.

The instruction mov al,ds:[8088h] is same as mov al, [8088h]. If not mentioned DS register is taken by default.

Register Indirect Addressing Mode

The 80x86 CPUs let you access memory indirectly through a register using the register indirect addressing modes. There are four forms of this addressing mode on the 8086, best demonstrated by the following instructions:

mov al, [bx]
mov al, [bp]
mov al, [si]
mov al, [di]

Code Example

MOV BX, 100H
MOV AL, [BX]

The [bx], [si], and [di] modes use the ds segment by default. The [bp] addressing mode uses the stack segment (ss) by default. You can use the segment override prefix symbols if you wish to access data in different segments. The following instructions demonstrate the use of these overrides:

mov al, cs:[bx]
mov al, ds:[bp]
mov al, ss:[si]
mov al, es:[di]

Intel refers to [bx] and [bp] as base addressing modes and bx and bp as base registers (in fact, bp stands for base pointer). Intel refers to the [si] and [di] addressing modes as indexed addressing modes (si stands for source index, di stands for destination index). However, these addressing modes are functionally equivalent. This text will call these forms register indirect modes to be consistent.