interesting book

On Fri, 29 Jan 1999, Lawrence LeMay wrote: I found the same book a while back. The pages are falling out, but the content is good. This post is probably a good lead-in to the books I dragged home yesterday. Actually, ten books and one piece of software. It was the first time I've gone thrifting since before Christmas and it was great to see that so many interesting books had collected in one place during my absence. Too bad all of the computer hardware was thrown out again. I haven't had time to look it over yet, but the list of stuff is as follows (listing only title, author, and date): "Assembly Language Programming for the VAX-11" by Karen A. Lemone and Martin E. Kaliski, 1983. It was just cool to find something VAX-related. It looks like it was used as a textbook, and several pages are highlighted in orange. "Computer Olympics" by Stephen Manes and Paul Somerson, 1984. Cheap book printed on acid paper, containing many almost-generic BASIC listings. Advertises "For the Commodore 64, VIC 20; Apple II, II Plus, IIe; IBM PC, PCjr; Atari 400, 800, XL Series; Radio Shack Color Computer, and TI 99/4A" on the cover, and it also includes notes on the Coleco Adam. Kind of useless, but interesting as a contrast to the current computer market. "Making Tracks into Programming" for the TI Programmable 57, Texas Instruments 1977. "Microprocessor Data Book 1990/1991" - OKI Semiconductor. Not a classic, but it's only the second data book I've come across. Includes info on OKI 8085, 8086, and 8088 variations as well as some other stuff I don't recognize. One of these days I hope to understand these things. "PL/I Structured Programming" (2nd edition) by Joan K. Hughes, 1979. Beginner programming book. Big heavy thing, probably another textbook (it has a name and what looks like a student ID# in it). I missed some PL/I stuff a few months back, so this makes up for it a little. (The other was an actual language reference, though.) "Programming Your Timex/Sinclair 1000 in BASIC" by Mario Eisenbacher, 1983. Probably not a book I'll ever use (my TS-1000 is blecherous), but what the heck, it cost less than a buck. "TRS-80 Level II BASIC" by Bob Albrecht et. al., 1980. This one should prove useful as I've only got documentation for Level I BASIC and my own TRS-80 has Level II in it. "Turbo Prolog Primer" by Dan Shafer, 1986. I've got an assignment due in a week that has to be done in Prolog, and had no Prolog text and nobody to teach it to me. Too bad Prolog doesn't seem to have a standardized syntax - this book is useless for what I'm doing. :/ At $0.69 Canadian, I'm not going to complain, though. :) (A bunch of students got together tonight with books from the library and I think we now know most of what we need to know.) "Videotex: The New Television/Telephone Information Services" by R. Woolfe, 1980. This one looks like interesting reading. Quite a few colour photos from Prestel. A bit of a moral dilemma, though, as the book appears to have been taken out of a (non-local) university library in 1991 and not returned. "Without Me You're Nothing" by Frank Herbert and Max Barnard, 1980. I just found this one intriguing. I'm not expecting "Dune". :) I left some generic "Programming the Commodore 64" type books behind. The software that I picked up yesterday is "Story Maker" for the Apple ][ series, minus the poster that was supposed to come with it. I usually ignore childrens' software, but I've got so little legitimate stuff for my 8-bits that I thought I should pick it up. Before Christmas I also found "Typing Tutor IV" for the C64/C128 with the disk still sealed in its plastic envelope. The paper in the manual is going yellow, though. My collection of books is getting to be just as hard to manage as my computers. :) -- Doug Spence ds_spenc(a)alcor.concordia.ca http://alcor.concordia.ca/~ds_spenc/