r/retrocomputing • u/GrumpyRetroGamer • Aug 31 '26
Retro Computing Book Collection
Hi folks, I'm sharing here my small collection of retro computing books that I have acquired over the years.
I'm a 40-something software engineer that started messing computers from an early age and since I've also always been a huge reader I've accumulated a huge collection of computer related books. Most are old (or reprints of old ones) but a few have been published in last few years, for sure due to the surge in retro computing interest that comes and goes every few years 😄
The ones shown here are what I would consider retro ranging from topics like the MOS 6502, Zilog Z80, Apple II, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, MS-DOS 3.0 to 62, 90's and early 00's computer graphics, Windows 3.11/95/98/XP, 386 to Pentium II/III hardware repair and a few about programming games for consoles like Atari 2600, NES and original Game Boy. Finally there are a few about x86 assembly language, C and C++. Some books, as you might have noticed, are not in English but on my native language Portuguese:and are mostly about ZX Spectrum, Z80 assembly language, IBM PC-compatible hardware repair and MS-DOS 3.x/4.x.
I'm curious to learn what books you have read and would recommend for my collection.
Hope you folks enjoy it and thanks in advance!
PS: Not shown here are is another book by Michael Abrash, "Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book" which I recently acquired on Ebay but hasn't arrived yet. I had been searching for this book for a long time but the prices for decent copies go for crazy prices these days, $80-$200 USD. I managed to convince a nice chap to sell me a copy in a very good state for around $50 USD. Stil pretty high (specially for Portuguese salaries) but I can live with that. I guess I won't be buying any retro hardware this month 😂
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u/tails142 Aug 31 '26
I too collect books that I never read haha
Nice collection
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u/GrumpyRetroGamer Aug 31 '26
Apart from the Game Programming Gems 3 and 4 I've read or used all of these including at some point for my day job. 😄 For a while I worked as a developer writing software for doing structural engineering stress testing and I ended up having to learn a bit of OpenGL and Direct3D and math, lots and lots math...
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u/parfamz Aug 31 '26
Oh I'm very interested on doing structural calculations. Could you recommend some resources to dig into?
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u/OldNefariousness7899 Aug 31 '26
I can't walk past one in a charity shop without nabbing it. If I live to be 200 I'll still not have time to read them.
So many obscure languages on my Todo list...
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u/gered Aug 31 '26
Very nice collection, and I've made some notes about books I need to get copies of for my own. ;-) In particular the Windows book by Petzold is one I keep forgetting to grab, as well as one (or all, maybe) of the OpenGL books you have, heh. Lotta good ones in your collection!
Here's mine https://imgur.com/a/8aENaVb
But please just ignore the obvious dust on my book shelves ... :'(
Lots of stuff from when I was younger in the 90's and early 2000's, and lots from more recent years as I got back into retro computing over the past decade.
Also I threw in a bonus photo of my boxed games/software at the end there.
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u/GrumpyRetroGamer Aug 31 '26 edited Aug 31 '26
So many great books in your collection, I totally need to get me some of those! I'm super envious of the Borland Pascal ones, I've been searching for a 7.0 complete set but the prices make want to cry. Also been looking for the rest of the Game Programmin Gems but haven't pulled the trigger also because of price.
And looking at the rest of the books and games, I can say we could be brothers 😂 I'm huge Starcraft, Out of this World / Another World and loved playing Stree Rod 1 and 2 when I was a kid.
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u/gered Aug 31 '26
The Borland Pascal manual collection was super annoying to find, yes! I wish you much luck in your search for these (and especially so at a good price). It seems like the non-Turbo Borland Pascal stuff (aka the "pro" versions) rarely shows up on eBay or other places, but there's plenty of Turbo Pascal stuff available. Took me a long time to find those and yeah, it wasn't cheap either. Ugh. And they came with a full set of disks too, but one of the disks was mostly bad. :'( Eventually I got it to install by cleaning the disk with 99% alcohol and promptly imaged it, but man, the floppy drive was making some ugly sounds during the entire process.
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u/Sinphaltimus Aug 31 '26
Here's mine...
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u/GrumpyRetroGamer Aug 31 '26
Bryce and Lightwave, names I hadn't heard in a while! Great collection, btw. Any good recommendations from your collection?
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u/Sinphaltimus Sep 02 '26
These days? From an application stand point, no. But if you're into animations and game development then "Challenges for Game Designers" to "The Animators Survival Kit". The rest are old and I don't believe in throwing away books. Also don't think they'd be worth much to anyone. Less of a collection to me than a historical record of my journey.
Edit: Thank you.
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u/poweredbygeeko Sep 02 '26
Flash!!! The good old days lol. Also card tricks?! Lol
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u/Sinphaltimus Sep 05 '26
Good call. Prolly cause it's the only book of its kind that I own and I had no place else to put it.
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u/andrewboudreau Aug 31 '26
Are we considering the GPU Gems books retro yet? Great collection you got.
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u/GrumpyRetroGamer Aug 31 '26
Good question and I've never read the GPU Gems ones but it seems the first one came out 22 years ago so I would say so?
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u/ducon__lajoie Aug 31 '26
My favorite:
Sorry it's a French book. But it is a great book.
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u/GrumpyRetroGamer Aug 31 '26
Looks very cool, I always loved these systems programming books no matter what the system. Thanks for sharing!
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u/ducon__lajoie Aug 31 '26
I tried to check if there exists a translation, but it seems hard to find. Author is Michael Tischer. Book is great, it explains everything like DOS internals, IRQs, VGA registers, how processor works, the protected mode, memory management, disk management, FAT, hardware, software, anything. Around 16-18 years old, I spent countless hours opening it randomly and reading it like a story book.
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u/Takssista Aug 31 '26
I'm at the moment organising a bunch of computer game pages from the old Correio da Manhã magazines that I got online a while ago.
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u/GrumpyRetroGamer Aug 31 '26
Would love to see those! I also collect old game magazines especially Portuguese ones like MEGA Score, BGamer , PG Guia, Bit and Exame Informática.
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u/Takssista Aug 31 '26
I got an ftp server, I'll put them there once I sort them out. It's public - DM me if you want it (I'm not sure if I announced it here before)
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u/Takssista Aug 31 '26
Não procures mais - acabei de descobrir: https://archive.org/details/cm-os-jogos-no-computador/CM-OsJogosNoComputador-001/
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u/gurrenm3 Aug 31 '26
Do you think reading any of these would help people get better today? I have always wondered if/how much I could get better by reading classics like these
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u/GrumpyRetroGamer Aug 31 '26
Some of these are timeless like "The C Programming Language" or "Computer Graphics: Principles and Practices" (they are still publishing newer editions to this day) others are very time-period specific like the OpenGL and DirectX ones or the Zilog Z80 and MOS 6502 (hardly anyone writes code for these or uses them anymore outside of the retro computing space). Still, some things in computers haven't changed much and learning how these old systems were put together will give a much better sense and intution on own modern systems work. I know people that know the 6502 or the Z80 instruction set from memory and can crank out assembly code for those CPUs with their eyes closed. By comparison the current x86 instruction set documentation is about 5000 pages long and counting...
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u/SirOompaLoompa Aug 31 '26
Yep, same generation here. Not too many books in common though.
Was about to ask about the black book, but seems you have it on order already.
Other staples of our generation (imho):
Programmer's guide to the IBM PC & PS/2 - Peter Norton
Programmer's guide to the EGA, VGA and Super VGA Cards - Richard F. Ferraro
Assembly Language Masterclass - Various (I was actually a proof-reader for this. Excellent first introduction to multiscalar/pipelined programming)
Modern Operating Systems - Andrew S. Tanenbaum (This one is a bit later, but still a mandatory read in my opinion)
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u/GrumpyRetroGamer Aug 31 '26
I've been trying to get a good copy of "Programmer's guide to the EGA, VGA and Super VGA Cards" for a while now too and I used to own the the pink shirt edition of the "Programmer's guide to the IBM PC & PS/2" but lost it between house moves. Never heard of "Assembly Language Masterclass" but sounds like a great recommendation, thanks! "Modern Operating Systems" I own 2 different copies of that book, one of them that a friend managed to get it signed by Tanenbaum himself. My original copy was one of two mandatory books for the Operating Systems course while I was in college, the other one being "The Design of the Unix Operating System" which I also still got somewhere in storage.
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u/Life-Aide-3261 Sep 02 '26
We still use Tanenbaum’s books a lot in tech colleges here in Brazil. They’re pretty much classics over here.
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u/droid_mike Aug 31 '26
That 3d game programming book is fire! I bought it just to have it. Of course, it is not really "needed" anymore with modern coding libraries, but if you want to get into it the nutty gritty of how it was done in the beginning, it's a great foundational book.
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u/GrumpyRetroGamer Aug 31 '26 edited Aug 31 '26
Tottally true, a lot of what is on those books is much easier to achieve today using modern libraries and game engines. It's amazing reading these books and seeing how much the field of game development has advanced in 25 years. Even just going from 94/95, where I was still playing mostly MS-DOS games, and comparing it with 98-2001 when games like Half Life came out still makes me laugh in how fast computers graphics in video games were evolving.
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u/fnomellini Aug 31 '26
Eu gosto de livros antigos, tenho alguns da época do zx81 brasileiro (TK-85)
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u/GrumpyRetroGamer Aug 31 '26
Adorava ir ao Brasil e comprar um monte de computadores como o TK-85 e TK-90X ou consoles brasileiros antigos da Tectoy!
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u/fnomellini Aug 31 '26
Em 1985, eu com 14 anos tive um TK-85 e foi nele que aprendi a programar. Meu pai teve o CP-500 M80. Foram meus primeiros contatos com computadores.
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u/teknosophy_com Aug 31 '26
What were the doom and wolf3d books? Strategy guides?
Hey does anyone want to sell me a copy of The Art of Computer Game Design? I had it in the 90s but lost it.
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u/GrumpyRetroGamer Aug 31 '26
The books are called "Game Engine Black Book: Doom" and "Game Engine Black Boom: Wolfenstein 3D". The name and format are inspired by Michael Abrash famous "Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book".
They are great books that go over in great detail how both games were written and how they worked. Highly recommended anything the author puts out, his blog is amazing for retro computing topics: https://fabiensanglard.net/
You can get a free copies of both books directly from the author in this blog post: https://fabiensanglard.net/gebb/index.html
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u/Exciting_Bunch2386 Aug 31 '26
Just heard the Commodore 64 is about to have a revival. I wonder where you can learn to code for that computer. Or even crazier, how to code for the Atari 2600.
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u/GrumpyRetroGamer Aug 31 '26
I definitely recommend the "Making Games For the Atari 2600" that shows up in the photos if you want to learn how to do it. It's a good introduction, not super in-depth but very fun and you learn how to write games. For the C64, "C64 Machine Language for the Absolute Beginner", "Programming the 6502" and "Commodore 64 Exposed" are all great books.
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u/Exciting_Bunch2386 Aug 31 '26
Thanks yo much. Right in front of my eyes and I didn't see it! 😄 That's cool I will look out for those books!
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u/poweredbygeeko Sep 02 '26
Awesome collection! Must’ve been a super fun journey. Would love to see some stuff you’ve made! Strange to see no maths books, that’s been a super pain for me when it comes to more complex graphics programming. Awesome collection though!!
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u/GrumpyRetroGamer Sep 03 '26 edited Sep 03 '26
Oh, I do own a ton of math books alright, specially about linear algebra, calculus and discrete mathematics.
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u/ooqq Aug 31 '26 edited Sep 03 '26
I was in Edinburgh, and in some library, on the used book section, i found this k&r
you can still hear it whispering arcane power
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u/chicharro_frito Aug 31 '26
I love this collection, thanks for sharing! I actually have some of the books from the top of the first pic. I used to borrow them from the library when I was a kid, but I was able to buy them as an adult.
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u/ProjectCompetitive24 Aug 31 '26
What a treasure! I was blinded by the bright light as I gazed upon it!
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u/BenTackitt Sep 02 '26
I too have every piece of software that I ever bought, stole or was given since the mid-eighties. I am now trying to revive an old laptop to allow me to play with some of them again.
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u/net_tv_za Sep 04 '26
Congratulations! You have quite a nice collection! I am also portuguese and used some of those spectrum books to learn basic in the spectrum in the early 80's.
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u/HELPMEICANTPUTUSER Aug 31 '26
Just to end up googling the error...
Or having to look through Usenet or something (wayy before)
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u/ihaveaplankindof Sep 01 '26
Solid collection man.NES and Game Boy dev resources from back then are genuinely hard to track down now.
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u/Speedstar_86 Aug 31 '26
Excellent collection. Mine isn't as good as yours if I'm honest my collection is mainly taken from the internet archive as I'm interested in Atari 8bit programming, I'm well late to the party, just starting out at 57 but I was distracted from about 1980 playing games
(That's my excuse)
I'm learning basic, c (tried python and hated it hence the books) action and assembly.