From: amcphail@hookup.net (Alex McPhail) Newsgroups: misc.books.technical Subject: Review: The Indispensable PC Hardware Book Date: Fri, 21 Oct 1994 15:54:47 GMT The indispensable PC Hardware Book Your Hardware Questions Answered Hans-Peter Messmer Addison-Wesley, 1994 ISBN 0-201-62424-9 983 pages Translated from the German edition PC-Hardwarebuch: Aufbau, Funktionsweise, Programmierung. Ein Handbuch nicht nur fur Profis I teach a university course on computers and technology management, and I have found this book to be extremely valuable to my course preparations. This fairly up-to-date examination of the PC and all its hardware components provides sophisticated and detailed explanations of all aspects of the PC. It lacks only in the latest PC technologies: the Pentium, the VL bus, etc. The book dedicates an exhaustive chapter to each of the following topics: the PC Motherboard; the 80286; the i386; the i486; memory chips; peripheral and support chips; floppy disk drives; hard disk drives; serial and parallel interfaces; keyboards and mice; and graphics adapters. A host of appendices also offers detailed reference material for machine code instructions, interrupts, BIOS and DOS function calls, floppy and hard disk controller command sequences, parallel and serial port access strategies, keyboard and mouse interfacing, and access to the graphics adapters. A fairly comprehensive glossary and a cross-referenced index closes the last pages. The author peppers the book with hundreds of examples, diagrams, tables, sample assembler routines, detailed timing diagrams, pin- out displays, flow chart sequences, and detailed command and data word structure diagrams to complement his thorough, graceful narrative. Messmer effortlessly reduces complex and abstract concepts to straight forward technical descriptions. This book is not for beginners. You will need a solid technical background to appreciate this work, and a science or engineering degree won't hurt either. Messmer starts right from first principles when describing how chips, disk drives, optical drives, etc. work starting with their most fundamental concepts. Messmer is after my own heart, for he tries to let you understand how things work before telling you what they do. Understanding how dynamic RAM works, for example (right down to the MOS-FET substrate construction), lets you appreciate why the PC needs to refresh it. He also illustrates the inner workings of static RAM, and before he explains it, the reader appreciates why this memory needs no refresh. Most other detailed PC technical books I have read simply tell you the PC has to refresh dynamic RAM but not static RAM. Although I purchased this book strictly for reference, and my intention was to jump from section to section as needed, I found myself reading the text starting at page one. I discovered such a rich wealth of knowledge in every page, I grew eager to learn everything I could. Some aspects interest me less, and have only browsed through these sections, but I must confess I knew a lot less about computers than I thought I did before I read Messmer's Indispensable book. If you are looking for a fairly high level introductory description of PC's, I should warn you away from Messmer's book. You will probably become frustrated by the intense focus and depth of detailed coverage. But if that is what you are looking for, either to better understand the details of PC's and general computer technology, or (as I originally planned) to understand only specific but detailed aspects of PC technology, I highly recommend Messmer's "The Indispensable PC Hardware Book". Incidently, I was surprised to learn this book was translated >from the original German text. The book uses the English language competently and skilfully. You'll find no traces of awkward translated utterings in this edition. ____________________________________________ Alex McPhail TeraScope Research amcphail@hookup.net Voice: +1 (613) 730-1416 Fax: +1 (613) 730-1408