The Personal Computer from the Inside Out

Miss a lot of things in this book. For example, there is no good and right explanation about intersegment jumps and calls.

If you really want to know what really makes the PC works, read this one. It really helps people to understand the logic process that is inside each PC component. It teaches you the bases of electronics, from the diode to the serial ports, and Pentium processor. The explanations are simple, but it does not goes in deep, leaving you with the necessary knowledge to just understand the innerworkings of the computer, no to make one from the scratch.The assembler part is very good,but it is intended for people with medium level skills in programming, hard to understand if your are a beginner.I gave 4 stars because this book is a bit older, it does not cover things like the new USB, PCMCIA III, and DVD topics. I really use it as a reliable refference material.

This book goes into all the nitty-gritty details that all REAL programmers are after. Although I'm a CS major at Ohio State, I knew little about computers except how to program them. Their inner-workings were still a mystery to me. This book was used for one of my courses and was exactly what I needed. It gives both a high-level view of the x86 architecture, and all the fine points down to the individual pins on the hardware components. It also covers x86 assembly language in some detail. This book has just about everything you need to know for programming in the Intel x86 architecture. Look no further.