Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
looks promising, but the presentation fails to deliver., August 23, 1998
The book contains some good information, unfortunately most of it's hidden in the lightly documented examples at the end of each chapter.The design of the book is great, each chapter is divided into sections: Fundamental Knowledge, Tools, Library, Summary. This format is wonderful and looks promising, but the presentation fails to deliver. I can't say that I found nothing useful in each section, but I can say that the information I found in the entire book was not worth the price I paid for it. The code at the end of each chapter lets you know that the people who wrote it know a lot about PC assembler, I just wish they'd have shared more of it with me in the preceeding chapter. If I were re-writing this book, I would leave the format the same, but I would take smaller logical steps while explaining fundamentals in the Fundamental Knowledge sections, and put more example programs (lots of example programs) in the Library section and document, document, document, the example programs. For a programmer, the index is almost worthless, for example: it doesn't have an entry for all of the assembler keywords. The book is over 900 pages long; the index is 12 pages long and is obviously not indexed by content, but by occurence. When you do find a subject you're looking for in the index, you hardly ever get what you we're expecting when you turn to the referenced page. If you're a new to programming, this book is in no way for you. If you already know a higher level language, then you will benefit somewhat from the book, but if you're learning assembler because you have to do some low level system programming, this book won't help much. I'd recommend getting your introduction to assembler with Tom Swan's book, Mastering Turbo Assembler and then filling out your specific needs with one of the system's programming books available for your platform. I read a lot of technical books, and I find that frequently a book will cover the theory of a subject thoroughly, but skimp on real world examples and applications of the knowldege. Some other books are exactly the opposite. They go into detailed examples of specific applications of the technology, but fail to cover the fundamental areas well or at all. With the former type of book, you walk away with the knowledge of how things theoretically work, but your practical skills are none the richer. With the latter type of book so you may end up being an expert at installing Windows NT, but you still can't identify the principal functions of an operating system. Both types of books have their place, and if you stay in the Computer field long enough you'll probably end up needing both types of books for at least one or two areas. This book trys to cover both areas, but sadly ends up failing to adequately cover either.
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
GOOD IF YOU ALREADY KNOW A LITTLE ABOUT ASSEMBLY, October 21, 2001
By A Customer
I've been programming in assembly language (among other languages) since 1980, but just recently I decided I needed a book to brush up on some of the aspects of programming in assembly language on the 80x86 chip set. I bought this book because I felt like out of the books I reviewed, it was the easiest to read and the most well laid out in general. It also was very complete.The book covers most aspects of assembly language and how it can be used on the IBM PC and compatible computers. It details system (BIOS) calls available on the PC to the assembly language programmer and gives you a good working knowledge of what you are up against when programming in assembly language. However, as the author states up front, this book does not cover a few of the more advanced features of assembly language on the PC (protected memory modes, 32 bit instructions, etc). With that said, I don't think this should really be viewed as much of a short coming. In many cases, these commands aren't often used anyway and certainly their absence in this text doesn't detract from what this books sets out to teach you. The book (and one of the main reasons I bought it) also has a very nicely laid out reference section that clearly explains each instruction (aka the commands) available to the programmer in the Intel chip set. However, as good as this book is for someone wanting to get up to speed on assembly language, I would caution prospective buyers against assuming this is a book designed for the "total novice" when it comes to assembly language programming. Even if you already know how to program in a language such as Basic or Perl, programming in assembly language can sometimes be quite a change of gears in thinking. There are no "Print" commands in assembly language :-) There are macro functions in MASM 6, but at the same time when you program in assembly language, you largely are dealing directly with memory locations, registers and the core instruction set in the CPU. You have to think in terms of binary numbers, and raw data to a large degree. All that is fine if you already have a broad understanding of what's going on in assembly language to begin with. However, if you don't (i.e. if you are a total novice to the world of assembly language programming), then there is a chance this book may leave you a little confused at the start. When I first taught myself how to program in assembly language, it was at the age of about 15. At that time, I had no concept of what binary was, nor did I have any idea how memory locations, let alone how registers of a CPU fit into the big picture. Fortunately, the book I used to teach myself started from square one and assumed you knew nothing about binary or anything else. While those chapters were very hard to get a handle on initially, looking back they were very important to understanding the overall concept of how assembly language functions. Again, as good as this book is, my fear is that someone starting at square one might find themselves feeling a little left out in the cold by the author if they don't already have a solid understanding of what a High and Low byte are, or if they have no concept of what a Most Significant Bit is. In my view, the addition of a chapter on "what is going on here with assembly language and the binary numbering system" might be very helpful for those very who are new to the world of assembly language programming. Nonetheless, this is a very well laid out book and certainly should be part of any book shelf owned by anyone who has designs on programming in assembly language (which of course is the only real programming language - just kidding :-)
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
An alright book for reference., March 3, 1999
By A Customer
They have alot of interupts listed in back, but you'd be better off with Raplh Browns current list as this one is outdated. Much of this book is outdated, Pentiums are not covered at all, and 32-bit instructions and operations are only covered in the Appendix. The book is not to bad but they do no cover much in the way of direct hardware access, one of the benefits of using assembly. There is almost no coverage of todays graphics cards, and sound cards are not covered at all. Overall it can be used as an outdated but good reference. Especially if you only need to program in Dos and/or 16 bits. But there are a couple of better books available. Beginers and Advanced programers should steer clear.
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