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COMPUTER BITS
BY PAUL LYNCH
Good books on the PC can
be well worthwhile
It's possible that today's secondary schools are
teaching their pupils properly about computers,
and particularly about PCs, but I doubt it. They
would be better off reading a few decent books.
While researching a story on computers in schools some 18 months
ago, I spent a melancholy morning in
one of Sydney's "show installations"
and watched hapless, eager, interested
children pecking their way across their
keyboards, rather like laboratory animals not quite sure which button
would produce the desired grain of
seed.
My own children have attended five
schools between them and at none
have they found a computer club. At
one school - one of the most famous
schools in the state - my son told me
that there would be no computer instruction at all in the first year but
thern might just be an hour a week in
the second.
While there are secondary schools
offering good computer courses, I
gather that these tend to be places
lucky enough to have one or two truly
enthusiastic and largely self-taught
computer-loving teachers. This may
be bad news for Australia but it's good
news for the publishers of self-help
books about how the PC works. And
it's good news for us PC users that
some of these books are very good,
indeed. I review two of the best ones
this month.
I know quite a number of PC users
who spend $30 a month and more on
magazines, because they know no
other way to find out what's actually
going on inside their computers.
While computer textbooks and refer70
SILICON CHIP
ences are generally expensive (the two
volumes I review here each cost
$59.95), they're a cheaper way than
the magazine route for us all to learn
about our PCs. The documentation
supplied with most computers doesn't
help all that much.
Two of the better reference books
are Peter Norton's Inside the IBM PC
and PS/2 and The PC Users Guide by
Nick Anis and Craig Menefee.
Peter Norton's guide
Peter Norton is one of the legends
of the PC era. Some six or seven years
ago, based on his reputation as a man
who knew the innards of PCs, he was
writing a regular column in a US magazine. In particular, I remember one in
which he explained that you could
make a buck out of selling commercial software from your home or ga-
rage. His article included an explanation of how to buy cheap floppy discs,
how to get cheap labels printed, and
how to put the software on using the
MS-DOS diskcopy command.
'
I think he established that you could
hope to mail your software out at a
cost of something like $US1.50 a disc
using all these cheap tricks. Presumably, these costs have not changed
much but if you wanted to buy all
Peter Norton's software today, you'd
be spending the thick end of $A1000.
For this, you would get your money's
worth and more, because Peter Norton
has proved one of the most brilliant of
all those shirt-sleeved programmers
of the early eighties at working out
where the holes were in MS-DOS,
and how the Intel processors and other
hardware bits operate under DOS.
Yes, this is the Peter Norton of
Norton Utilities. His book, as you
might expect, is a reasoned step-bystep guide to how computers do the
things they do. In US textbook style,
it also concludes each chapter with a
list of possible projects. But his new
book (the review copy is the fourth
edition of a standard text and was
published late in 1991) is not just a
textbook. It's a true reference volume.
One of its ornaments is an appendix called a "narrative glossary",
which in 12 pages takes you through
a coherent, interlocked account of virtually everything you need to know
about in your PC. The technical words
and phrases are printed in bold letters, thus: When a computer uses a
common data path - a special set of
circuit wires - to pass data from one
part to another, this path is called a
bus. The narrative then goes on to
name various buses.
DVORAK~~1•
regard his book highly and recommend it for your computer desk.
The PC User's Guide
NickAnis&
Craig Menefee
Wh at if you want to know more
about what a bus is? The index refers
you t o a section in the main body of
the book which describes them in detail.
A famous programmer, Norton has
written a special BASIC program for
readers of the book, so they can write
their own simple computer game. His
section on programming is, of course,
excellent but so is his information on
hardware. The book's title is a trifle
misleading. While it is indeed about
the IBM PC and the PS/2, it's also
about the PC clones and compatibles
that most ofus buy and use. It's up-to-
Nick Anis and Craig Menefee have
written their reference book from a
different perspective. It's 722 pages
long, in comparison with Norton 's 398,
and evidently the authors believe you
should buy it before you decide on
your next computer, or else should
pick it up after you've handed over
payment for your PC. There are sections on which type of machine to
buy and on how to put your system
together. There's a chatty, friendly
style of writing that many will find
encouraging (one example: "When
IBM jumped into the personal computer market in 1981, it was like the
arrival of Shamu the whale in the
backyard inflatable swimming pool") .
Unlike Norton, Anis and Menefee
offer a valuable 40-page troubleshooting guide. While this does not cover
every possible trouble that you might
want to shoot one day, it does warn
you bluntly about the risks of the more
dangerous DOS commands, and it explains many of the hardware and software problems that arise.
The authors also prudently tell you
the difference between troubleshoot-
"The PC User's Guide is equipped with an excellent
index that makes it easy to use as a reference. It also
offers extra treasures whose values may become more
apparent to you as your expertise grows"
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date in the sense that it discusses the
i486 processor and the characteristics
of laptops and portables, although
(with one exception) Norton offers
little brand-specific information.
He firmly believes that IBM's ideas
for the PC are the best in a number of
respects. His section on IBM's Micro
Channel Architecture explains MCA
clearly and gives · the best argument
I've read for going the high-priced
IBM route. But it also gives the best
argument for not going the same route,
which is that the peripherals you have
working with your clone's ISA and
EISA boards won't work on an MCA
mach ine. He expects, he writes, that
the n on-IBM manufacturers will start
to produce MCA machines one day
but I have my doubts about whether
this is right. In every other way, I
ing (working out what's wrong, and
fixing it) and service (handing.the job
over to a trained specialist).
The "PC User's Guide" is equipped
with an excellent index that makes it
easy to use as a reference. It also offers
extra treasures whose values may become more apparent to you as your
expertise grows.
One appendix is a table of hard
disc drive geometries and, from this, I
learned that the disc in my 386DX
was configured by the dealer to hold
six fewer megabytes than its capacity.
The book tells me elsewhere how I
can get them back. I must get around
to that some day, real soon.
PS: in May 1992, I referred to an
advertised computer with a 486
40MHz CPU. This was a mistake: the
computer had a 386 40MHz chip. SC
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Unit 4, 62 Gt. Western Hwy,
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Phone (02) 633 5477
Fax (02) 891 5640
Credit Cards Welcome
JULY 1992
71
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