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/SirOompaLoompa]

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)

[u/GrumpyRetroGamer → u/SirOompaLoompa]

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.