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Title: Peter Norton's Inside the Pc/Premier by Peter Norton ISBN: 0-672-30624-7 Publisher: Macmillan Computer Pub Pub. Date: 01 February, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.55 (11 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: An excellent reference
Comment: Back in the 80's, many of us first learned about PC hardware from Peter Norton's excellent "Inside the IBM PC." John Goodman carries on the tradition with the 8th edition (probably 4x the size of the original). Covering this much material thoroughly, understandably, and accurately isn't a simple task. John has done a great job both in attention to detail and in making the text a pleasure to read. This book also has an excellent index (46 pages!), which you don't often find these days and which makes it easy to locate what you're looking for.
Rating: 3
Summary: Confusing & quite often complex
Comment: .. I was not overly impressed. Being new to the inner workings of a PC I was immediately lost. I've had to read chapters over in order to understand what the authors are trying to say. What has helped me was another computer manual that was beutifully illustrated and helped me to recognize the parts & pieces of hardware that Mr. Norton referred to in his book. I did like the glossary though. This book is definitely not one to recommend to beginners.
Rating: 5
Summary: Fabulous book. Belongs on every interested owner's bookshelf
Comment: Eighth edition:
This book is fabulous. No argument possible, it's a great book. It may be better suited to some experience/interest levels than others, but by any standard it's an excellent book.
It's like an "Encyclopedia of the IBM-PC," but with in depth treatment of the topics. If you've ever wondered what any acronym (PCMCIA, e.g.) means, you will find it in this book. The difference is that whereas another book may explain that acronym with only a sentence or a paragraph, Norton gives you seven pages on that and related technologies including: ATA protocol, CardBus, Card Services, CIS, flash, Media storage format, Socket Services.... Multiply that level of detail times every computer acronym you've ever wondered about and you have a valuable resource.
The book is an in-depth overview to the PC. You get deeper coverage of each topic then you would normally get in a book of this type, and therein lies the main value. Still, since it's an overview, if you want to dig into a topic you are given excellent references to external sources.
As expected, given Norton's roots in the disk utilities area, great depth is given to the subject of hard and floppy disks and their structure and organization. You won't find a better or deeper treatment of this material anywhere other than Norton's materials. If you want to understand the FAT, FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, master boot block, master boot record, partition table, etc., this is the place.
The book targets beginners to experts, and I think that's a strength. Beginners get introductory material (like what is a byte or a serial cable) explained, while experts get deep treatment (like why a 16550A UART is better than a 16550 p429). That makes this single book a great reference for anyone, especially a newbie. You may have to study some pages carefully or even look up external resources, but isn't that unavoidable?
Sadly, tragically, this book is left over from an earlier, better, time of computing. The first edition of this book is from a day when you owned your own computer, not Microsoft. In that day, fun, excitement, experimentation, discovery, fascination, and programming the hardware yourself were still part of the equation. In that day it was popular to use a tool like DEBUG and poke around in the portions of memory managed by the operating system and really understand what was going on. Now, Windows is so complex and sophisticated that poking around like that is of limited usefulness. Still, tell me where are you going to get anyone to tell you about DEBUG or using I/O ports to talk to the CMOS or real-time clock these days?
Also the info on understanding the hard and floppy disks, while fascinating, is of limited use in modern times. Back in the day when a 10MB hard disk cost you $1000, yes, you might take the time to use DEBUG to poke around the sectors and repair the partition table. In modern times I would not do that. I would just go to "Best Buy" and buy a new one for $50 and use the other 2 days of my weekend for reading this excellent book.
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Title: Peter Norton's New Inside the PC by Peter Norton, Scott Clark ISBN: 0672322897 Publisher: SAMS Pub. Date: 12 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $39.99 |
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Title: Peter Norton's Assembly language book for the IBM PC by Peter Norton ISBN: 0136619010 Publisher: Prentice Hall Press Pub. Date: 1986 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Peter Norton PC Programmer's Bible: The Ultimate Reference to the IBM PC and Compatible Hardware and Systems Software (Microsoft Press programming classic) by Peter Norton, Peter Aitken, Richard Wilton ISBN: 1556155557 Publisher: Microsoft Pr Pub. Date: 01 June, 1993 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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