Customer Reviews

The Indispensable PC Hardware Book (3rd Edition)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Hands down, this hulking book is the best in its class. It expansively covers CPUs (from the 8088 to Pentium Pro), Floppy Drives, AT bus, PCI, and Hard Disk Drives (MFM, RLL, ESDI, IDE, SCSI), PCMCIA, and just about everything you would ever want to know about the PC hardware.

Unfortunately, even a book this large must leave things out. What is not covered: USB (can fill a book of its own), AGP, DMI, SMBIOS, IMPI or newer specifications. Also, portions of the book are geared towards explaining a technology rather than giving hard details about using it.

Still, it is the best overall book I have found on the PC in a while.

You do, of course, need some extensive background on assembly language and basic knowledge computer architecture. If you have that, you'll be treated to quite a wide scope of material. This text is very clear, and the welth of information is staggering. From all Intel chips (alomst all, rather) to chipsets, to support chips to storage hardware. I have just this one book (in addition to some manuals from Intel) and I never needed any more sources.

Also, if you need even more info, you can supplement the book with free manuals from Intel.

excellent book, later editions better

first edition, 10/1993, 985pp ISBN: 0201624249

second edition, 3/1995, 1344pp ISBN: 0201876973

third edition, 7/1997, 1384pp, ISBN: 0201403994

third edition, 5/2000, 1408pp, ISBN: 0201403994 <- current

fourth edition, 1/2002, to be published, ISBN: 0201596164

Hans Messmer does a great job of arranging this vast body of knowledge into one book. I do agree w/the other reviewers on that point.

However, TransScript Alba, which is the company that translated this fourth edition, should have their heads slapped for their absolutely abhorrent use of the English language. You must put your linguistic sensibilities on the stack while your brain processes the text in this book. I'm actually suprised when I find a page that doesn't have incorrect punctuation, misspelled words, or incomplete sentences.

And as a final note, I disagree with the other reviewers that the old architecture info should be trashed to save room, because you can't appreciate change w/out a knowledge of history, and there are plenty of systems still using old PC technology. Until the fundamental architecture of the PC changes, every bit of information in this book is relevant.

This is the best overall reference I've found to date on the hardware systems that make up a PC. Every subsystem is covered, presenting pertinent historical and current information.

The architectural details of the various CPU families are covered, although not in as much detail as other books focused specifically on each processor family. This book does provide a great starting point for further research in these areas.

'The Indispensable PC Hardware Book' does a slightly better job covering hardware details than 'The Undocumented PC' which does a slightly better job covering information low-level software engineers need. Together, these books provide a complete reference for legacy and current PC systems.

I'm at a loss as to why Messmer's text hasn't become the standard text on PC Hardware. It's amazingly well-written. The bookshelves in Sydney, Australia don't seem to give this text its due credit ... there're PC textbooks of equivalent content, but not as clear and concise. For anyone considering a PC Hardware book, make sure you include this one in your comparisons.

This was a really great book in its day. Why on earth doesn't the author or publisher update it???

I have not been using this book so much recently, but in the past it has been absolutely invaluable. Definately the best single reference for technical specifics for the PC.

There seem to be dozens if not hundreds of "upgrade your PC", "Fix your PC" and so on - nearly all light weight and I consider not worthwhile.

It has tables on pretty well everything, and the information is quite dense. I have not found it to be inaccurate. Not merely factual tables (Addresses, IRQs, layouts of structure, PCI) it contains good descriptions of of what is going on.

Now in its fourth edition - and I think I have owned all of them, it has stood the test of time and continues to be updated.

The book entails a meager 1311 pages and covers every single concept, every obscure acronym, every undocumented feature (hard to tell since if they are undocumented I can't know about them and therefore not know if there are more). Overall the book is impressive in its scope and the organization is first-rate. The contents are laid out in a modular and non-linear fashion so that one chapter doesn't neccesarily follow another, and the reader is free to skip around, referring to it when convenient. It is also a very good book to have lying around near your computer because it commands instant respect for the owner by anyone who glances at the table of contents. Buy if you are sick of not knowing what a MOSFET is or what all the gold PCI connectors do and are called.

I was amazed by the fact that one author can put so much about the PC hardware in one single book. However, recently I have been playing with the PC keyboard and have expected useful info from the book only to discover, that the chapter on the PC keyboard is at least incomplete regarding the scancodes. More accurate info can be found on the Web.