NORTON.ART ·
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1980-01-01 ·
from CompuLink-User-Group_Magazette_Vol-2-Issue-1_1986
BOOK REVIEW - The Peter Norton Programmer's Guide to the IBM PC
ISBN 0-14-087-144-6 Price £16.95
Microsoft Press (Penguin Books)
Reviewed by Robin Swale
There have been many hundreds of books written about the
IBM PC and most of them are of the "Introduction to ..."
variety. To find a good book with anything more than the
rudiments of using DOS has,in my experience, been very
difficult. Peter Norton's book "Inside the IBM PC" published
by BRADY ISBN 0-89303-556-4 has become a standard reference
work for programmers, but unfortunately, it deals only with
the basic IBM PC and DOS 1.0. Also, at £23.50 it was
overpriced and the presentation left something to be desired
- it always struck me as being cramped.
Norton is an acclaimed expert on the IBM PC family of
computers, and has now produced a truly worthwhile reference
book, stuffed full of the sort of information that the
programmer requires. All IBM computers from the Junior up to
the AT and DOS versions 1.0 to 3.1 are covered included.
The layout of the new book is a vast improvement on that
of the older one - the Contents now fits on one page and
lists only the title of each of the 20 chapters. On turning
to the relevant chapter e.g. Chapter 9 ROM-BIOS Video
Services, the reader is presented with a chapter-specific
Contents which lists the 20 available services together with
the page number for each. It's all very structured - just
what one might expect from someone worth his salt in this
industry!
To give the reader a feel for the contents of the book,
here is the Contents page including page numbers so that,
with the aid of a simple Basic program, the length of each
chapter can be determined. The information in brackets has
been added by me.
Chapter Page Title
======= ==== =====
1 1 Anatomy of the PC
(Discusses the internal hardware of
the various members of the PC family i.e.
PC,XT,JR,Portable and AT. at chip level)
2 19 The Ins and Outs
(8088 register, memory and I/O port
usage - a cross reference table of I/O
port addresses for all IBM family members
is provided)
3 41 The ROM Software
(Details Interrupt Vectors and
describes how to use Debug to snoop
around in the interesting data and
control areas)
4 67 Video Basics
(Describes the capability of the
various Video adaptors and monitors
including the EGA, the Enhanced Graphics
Adaptor)
5 99 Disk Basics
(Describes the disk's physical and
logical structures in detail including
formats,Boot record,File Allocation
Table, Directory and Subdirectory)
6 127 Keyboard Basics
(Describes the use of scan codes and
the interface with the ROM BIOS including
the use of special keys and key
combinations. Provides details of the
keyboard status byte held in the DOS data
area)
7 145 Sound Generation
(Describes the speaker/timer interface
and how to drive it. Additional
information is provided for the PC JR
system)
8 159 ROM-BIOS Basics
(Discusses ROM BIOS philosophy and
lists the 12 ROM BIOS services, which are
then discussed in detail in the following
chapters)
9 171 ROM-BIOS Video Services
(Provides details of the 20 ROM BIOS
Video services all of which are
accessible via Interrupt 16)
10 187 ROM-BIOS Diskette Services
(Details the 5 standard sevices -
Reset,Get status,Read, Write,Verify and
Format.Deatails the further 11 PC-AT
specific services)
11 203 ROM-BIOS Keyboard Services
(Details the 3 sevices - Read
Char,Report Character Ready, Get Shift
Status)
12 209 Miscellaneous Services
(Details the Serial Comms,Tape,Printer
and other services)
13 225 ROM-BIOS Service Summary
(Provides a short and long summary of
the ROM BIOS Sevices)
14 241 DOS Basics
(Discusses the relevance of DOS and
disk format differences)
15 247 DOS Interrupts
(Details the 5 main DOS Interrupts -
Terminate,Break and Error Handler
addresses, and provides details of the
Program Segment Prefix)
16 269 Universal DOS Functions
(Details the 46 DOS functions and the
File Control Block)
17 295 New DOS Functions
(Details the 46 new functions
introduced by DOS 2.1 and 3.0)
18 325 DOS Service Summary
(Provides a short and long summary of
all DOS services)
19 337 Program Building
(Discusses the essentials of program
building - Writing, linking and creating
libraries)
20 349 Programming Languages
(Discusses Assembly,Basic,Pascal and C
and their particular data formats)
Appendix A: Installable Device Drivers (p385)
(Provides a general overview of Device
Drivers and describes, in particular, the
pros and cons of the ANSI screen and
keyboard drivers)
Appendix B: Hexadecimal Arithmetic (p391) (All you
ever wanted to know about hex but were
too afraid to mask)
Appendix C: About Characters (p401) (Details the
Ascii, Box-drawing, Graph and Block
characters)
Index p413-426
Throughout the text Norton provides program examples in
Basic and Assembler to illustrate access to the various
services and facilities.
A small grey pointing finger icon is used to refer the reader to
other relevant information in the book on the particular topic under
discussion. He also uses stylised grey symbols to represent the
various PC family members so that the reader can pick out the areas
specific to his machine. The use of these devices greatly increases
the readability and usefulness of this book.
As with any book, there will be errors, and on opening the book the
first one was obvious - the photograph of the PC System Board is
labelled PC/XT System Board. In fact, the XT has a different System
Board from the PC and no photo is provided for this board. The
reproduction of the three photographs which are provided could have
been much better.
This book is certainly the most thorough book of its type that I
have seen and it lives up well to its title "Programmer's Guide". It
is good value for money and I highly recommend it to you. To complete
your IBM library I recommend you consider:
For detailed information on the operation of the IBM PC:
Interfacing to the IBM Personal Computer. Eggebrecht.
SAMS. ISBN 0-672-22027-X. £14.50
For detailed information on the operation of the 8086/8088:
The 8086 Book. Rector and Alexy.
Osborne-McGraw Hill. ISBN 0-07-931029-X. £23.95
For detailed information on 8088 Assembly language
programming specifically related to the IBM PC:
8088 Macro Assembler Programming. Dan Rollins.
Macmillan. ISBN 0-02-403210-7. £13.85
Postscript - There must be many of you out there who have
come across other good books relating to the IBM family. I
believe that it would be useful to produce a concise list of
such books together with brief comments on their usefulness.
This list could be published in every copy of the Newsletter
and added to as new books become available. The same could
be done with Public Domain and lesser known commercial
programs and utilities. This list could then become a
standard reference for newcomers to the labyrinthine field of
the IBM PC. Have you any feelings on this matter? Please
let Frank or myself know. My telephone number is
0734-784035.