[Nasm-users] Complete newbie question

[cerise-nasm@l.armory.com]

I'm using nasm 0.98.39 and I'm trying to assemble plain binary
which will spit out a string when plopped onto a floppy disk and made to
boot.

I've done this a couple of different ways, but what I'd really like to do
is have the string pointed to by ds:si.

The string is defined as:
message db "Hello!", 0x0D, 0x0A, 0x00

I've tried:
lds si, message (invalid comination of opcode and operands)
lds si, [message] (which gives ds:si f000:ff56, not 0000:7c03)

The latter struck me as odd because I took [message] to be accessing the 
memory address contained in message, not the address of message -- which
isn't what I want.

I also attempted defining a pointer (ptr dw message, 0) and using
lds si, [ptr] which inexplicably gives me f000:ff53.

I also tried setting it through eax (mov eax, message ; mov si, ax ; 
shr eax, 16 ; mov ds, ax ) with no luck.  I tried setting ds to seg message
and si to message, but I can't use seg in plain binary.

Using the tremendous power of mathematics, I can do 
mov eax, 0x00007c03
mov si, ax
shr eax, 16
mov ds, ax
call putstr

and I get my string AOK, but there is seemingly no symbolic form I can use.
What is the correct form to make this work?  I'd prefer to let the computer
do the adding.  8)

-Phil/CERisE

P.S.  If you really want to see the rather amateurish code, here it is.  I used
to have message right after the hlt command, but when plain arithmetic became
a necessity, I used the more conventional format.  I've also tried all my
labels with :s -- odd that it's optional, but kinda cool.  I imagine it'll
bite me hard some day when I mistype an identifier in a ton of code though.  8)

jmp start
message db "Hello!", 0x0D, 0x0A, 0x00
ptr dw message, 0

start 
lds si, [ptr]
;mov eax, 0x00007c03
;mov si, ax
;shr eax, 16
;mov ds, ax
call putstr
hlt

putstr
mov ah, 0x0E
xor ebx, ebx

putloop
lodsb
or al, al
jz putend

int 0x10
jmp putloop

putend
ret