Upgrading and Repairing PCs: Technician's Portable Reference, Second Edition (Scott Mueller Library) [Paperback]

Mark Edward Soper (Author), Scott Mueller (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 20, 2000 | Series: Scott Mueller Library

The best of the best--all the essential reference tables and configuration settings without the bulk of the full version of Upgrading and Repairing PCs. This edition includes tables and charts on everything from BIOS settings to monitor sizing to jumper settings for corner peripherals IDE Drives to SCSI data-transfer rates and more! Troubleshooting and Error-code coverage includes AMI, Award, Phoenix, IBM and BIOS error codes, nonfatal system board errors, and personal computer Error Codes. This logically organized reference lets you spend less time searching and more time finding solutions. Information is broken up by component and listed alphabetically. Connector and port visual ID charts help identify a variety of input/output ports, such as serial, parallel, video and SCSI connectors.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Upgrading and Repairing PCs: Technician's Portable Reference is a vastly abridged version of Scott Mueller's excellent (and generally definitive) Upgrading and Repairing PCs, 12th Edition. The idea is that because this book is small you'll be better able to carry it to job sites, without having to invest in a forklift. Mueller cut out most of the material on old hardware, and focuses on motherboards, processors, memory, and other subsystems that have been state of the art since about 1998. This probably means that this book will come in handiest in organizational environments, which are more likely than home users to have reasonably current computing gear.

Murphy's Law dictates, however excellent this book is, that the bit of information you need will appear only in the mother book. On the other hand, the same infamous law also dictates--if you have the mother book at hand--that the information you need will be so obscure as to not appear there. In reality, you probably will be able to solve a fair number of problems with this volume, and rely on Web access at the job site to provide the rest of the information you need. Mueller has done a good job of condensing his encyclopedic work into a more portable format. --David Wall

Topics covered: Wintel PC hardware, documented and explained for technicians who have to diagnose, repair, and upgrade it. All of the major subsystems (including LAN) are covered. Diagnostic trees help locate trouble, and procedures explain, for example, how to recover from a failed BIOS flash. Charts document beep codes, some jumper settings, and variations among SCSI device types.

From the Back Cover

The best of the best--all the essential reference tables and configuration settings without the bulk of the full version of Upgrading and Repairing PCs. This edition includes tables and charts on everything from BIOS settings to monitor sizing to jumper settings for corner peripherals IDE Drives to SCSI data-transfer rates and more! Troubleshooting and Error-code coverage includes AMI, Award, Phoenix, IBM and BIOS error codes, nonfatal system board errors, and personal computer Error Codes. This logically organized reference lets you spend less time searching and more time finding solutions. Information is broken up by component and listed alphabetically. Connector and port visual ID charts help identify a variety of input/output ports, such as serial, parallel, video and SCSI connectors.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Que; 2 Sub edition (October 20, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0789724545
• ISBN-13: 978-0789724540
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 4.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,395,871 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Computer Repair For Users Of DOS And Windows, January 5, 2000

By 

Neil W. Fisk - See all my reviews

This review is from: Upgrading and Repairing PCs: Technician's Portable Reference (Scott Mueller Library) (Paperback)

Inside the book decribes most problems which all technicians are faced with at some point in time.The section on barriors from DOS, the BIOS, and Microsoft Windows I found most useful. Besides from all of that, the author gives you solutions to problems which may be time consuming if you need a rememdy fast, instead of wasting alot of time with a particular problem. Because of it's compact size I carry it in my laptop case, where ever I go. This book I would say is very close in detail to Upgrading PC's For Dummies, but much more advanced with technical reading, because the author assumes you have previous knowledge of DOS,the cmos setup, and configuring hardware to run in Windows 95/98.There are different sections on repairing hardware with charts inside the book which look fairly easy which sold me on buying it. If you have ever taken a computer apart, and looking to upgrade this is the book for you.