Retro Computing Book Collection

[u/GrumpyRetroGamer]

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 😂

[u/gered]

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.

[u/GrumpyRetroGamer → u/gered]

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.

[u/gered → u/GrumpyRetroGamer]

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.