Unfortunately, nothing quite as cool as what you've got there.

My current book is the authorised Steve Jobs biography. The earlier portion of the book gives some small insights into the burgeoning computer culture at the time the Apple II emerged. "Computers" was only just becoming a hobby independent of "Electronics", I guess in the same way that "Electronics" became a separate hobby to "Radio Engineering".

I'm interested in reading something specifically on Jobs - does "authorised" translate to "censored" do you think? The Commodore book I'm reading questions how much of an impact he had on the early success of Apple, the bulk of it is being credited to the first major investor in apple who helped with the marketing.

Woz is described as not coming across as smart or interesting - not someone you want at consumer electronics shows for example - and who's initial design was flawed to the point of needed a revision by engineers hired specifically for that purpose. He's described as a "technician", not an "engineer".

badmojo wrote:

I'm interested in reading something specifically on Jobs - does "authorised" translate to "censored" do you think? The Commodore book I'm reading questions how much of an impact he had on the early success of Apple, the bulk of it is being credited to the first major investor in apple who helped with the marketing.

To be honest, I'm not sure, I guess I'll have to read an unauthorised biography and compare to find out! 😀

The impression that I get is that without Jobs, Woz's creation could have wound up being "just another computer kit" among the Altairs and such.

badmojo wrote:

Woz is described as not coming across as smart or interesting - not someone you want at consumer electronics shows for example - and who's initial design was flawed to the point of needed a revision by engineers hired specifically for that purpose. He's described as a "technician", not an "engineer".

That sounds right-ish I guess, at least in the context of "back in the day". They all did a lot of growing up in the intervening time.

DOS and system manuals for my Philips 286.

I was just flipping through and reading parts of my color computer 3 Extended BASIC manual the other day mostly for nostalgia reasons...🤣....I can't believe how many lines of code I used to write just to make the computer do the most mundane things like play sounds and change screen colors and move the cursor...🤣

Well ‘Commodore: A company on the edge’ was worth the effort but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't specifically interested in Commodore - its non sequential stream of consciousness style could be hard work at times.

I've since read 'Replay: The History of Video Games' which was great for the most part, very well written and while it obviously didn't cover close to everything in the history of video games, it did a good job of visiting a range of genres, hardware and locations.

Now I'm reading 'My Loser Phase - Reflections on Video Game Retail from 1992-1997', which is the lighthearted memoir of a guy who worked in EB games as a kid during the 90's. Not particularly educational, but that was my loser phase too so I'm enjoying the flashback. It cost $1 I think - eBook. Can't go wrong.

retrofanatic wrote:

coco3book2.jpg

I was just flipping through and reading parts of my color computer 3 Extended BASIC manual the other day mostly for nostalgia reasons...🤣....I can't believe how many lines of code I used to write just to make the computer do the most mundane things like play sounds and change screen colors and move the cursor...🤣

i used to have one of the color computers
oh those were the days!
first use of the dos system
and most programs you had to write yourself in basica
and a good lesson in beginners programming

badmojo wrote:

Well ‘Commodore: A company on the edge’ was worth the effort but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't specifically interested in Commodore - its non sequential stream of consciousness style could be hard work at times.

I've since read 'Replay: The History of Video Games' which was great for the most part, very well written and while it obviously didn't cover close to everything in the history of video games, it did a good job of visiting a range of genres, hardware and locations.

Now I'm reading 'My Loser Phase - Reflections on Video Game Retail from 1992-1997', which is the lighthearted memoir of a guy who worked in EB games as a kid during the 90's. Not particularly educational, but that was my loser phase too so I'm enjoying the flashback. It cost $1 I think - eBook. Can't go wrong.

there were a few viruses that were written from a decompiled commodores spin-rite program (caused hard drives to spin out of control and burn up)
if you remember right spin-rite was used to tune the drive rotation speed for better read and write function
it would make a hard drive scream before dying

I've been reading about x86 assembly out of curiosity, and just can't put this one down:

Ohhh great thread! I have tons. Will dig through, see if I can gather together my list. I still haven't read all of them!

Well, I can't document EVERYTHING. But as it turns out, computer books and magazines (and books in general) can be said to be the ONE physical item I collect. Not to keep on a shelf only but to be treasured, read, re-read and/or used.

Ballpark estimate: 132 titles
- including some college textbooks
- not counting my old MCSE training binders

Here's some of my faves:

• Ambient Findability - Daniel J. Barrett (O'Reilly)
• The Art of Deception - Kevin Mitnick
• The Art of Intrusion - Kevin Mitnick
• The Best of 2600: A Hacker's Odyssey - Emmanuel Goldstein (autographed)
• The Code Book - Simon Singh
• Crypto - Steven Levy
• The Cuckoo's Egg - Cliff Stoll
• Dear Hacker: Letters to the Editor of 2600 - Emmanuel Goldstein
• Dreaming in Code - Scott Rosenberg
• Dungeons and Dreamers - Brad King and John Borland
• Extra Lives - Tom Bissell
• Geeks - Jon Katz
• Google Hacking - Johnny Long (coulda written the Long books, sadly)
• Googled - Ken Auletta
• Hackers - Steven Levy
• Hardware Hacking - Joe Grand (autographed)
• In The Beginning Was The Command Line - Neal Stephenson
• Information Trapping - Tara Calishain
• iWoz - Steve Wozniak
• Just For Fun - Linus Torvalds
• Masters of Doom - David Kushner
• Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book (Special Edition) - Michael Abrash
• The Old New Thing - Raymond Chen
• Phoenix: The Fall and Rise of Video Games - Leonard Herman (autographed)
• Racing The Beam - Nick Montfort and Ian Bogost (autographed)
• Renegades of the Empire - Michael Drummond
• Revolution in the Valley - Andy Hertzfeld
• The Search - John Battelle
• Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking - Christopher Hadnagy
• The Soul of a New Machine - Tracy Kidder
• The Ultimate History of Video Games - Steven L Kent
• Upgrading and Repairing PCs: 21st Edition - Scott Mueller (I get a new one every few years, I call it "the Bible". 😀)
• Videogames Hardware Handbook - Retro Gamer (ed.) ("bookazine")
• Weaving The Web - Tim Berners-Lee
• You Are Not A Gadget - Jaron Lanier

Ambient Findability - Daniel J. Barrett - in theory, was simply a book about user experience and structuring data so that it can be easily found. However, I felt there was an underlying subtext that synched well with my own. (non sequitur.)

What I'm reading currently? I picked up an O'Reilly book on MediaWiki most recently.

[ROTT] IanPaulFreeley, read Michael Abrash. I can say I've read all 1342 pages. Understanding? ehhh, maybe 10%. 😀

I actually bought a massive box of Atari and Tandy related books last year and haven't read a single one of them yet. I'll have to get on that. 🤣

stiletto - mmm, Mitnick.

Not that I'd say "currently reading" but more in the category of "did enjoy" -

- Silence On The Wire (Zalewski, 2005)
- The Myth of the Paperless Office (Sellen & Harper, 2001)

Stiletto wrote:

Well, I can't document EVERYTHING.

Wow, great post! That'll give me plenty to go on with thanks. Although as much as I appreciate Michael Abrash's work, I'll be giving his book a miss!

Thanks to Amazon's suggested books function I'm now reading 'The Final Day at Westfield Arcade', which is an easy read and somewhat enjoyable but is amateurish, twee, and not in any way educational, so I can't really recommend it.

Just found a couple radio shack catalogs (I know...they're not really books 🤣)...just a flip through made me nostalgic.

I’ve read a couple of ‘history of computing’ type books lately and they’ve been ‘OK’, with the exception of ‘Hackers: heroes of the computer revolution’, which is well written, comprehensive, and objective. I’m still only half way through it but not only do I feel like I have a much fuller understanding of the history of computing, but I also feel like I have a much better understanding of people’s relationship with computers – particularly my own, which has always been a bit of a mystery to me. I’m certainly not a hero of any revolution – and actually I don’t agree that the obsessive, otherwise deficient personalities described in this book are either – but this book dissects people’s attraction to the computer and it’s a good reminder of how far we’ve come in a short time. It really has been a revolution and the message I'm taking away from this book is that we’re lucky to have been a part of it.

I recently finished the authorised biography of Steve Jobs, and it was a pretty freaking interesting read. He came across as a pretty revolting person, but the things he achieved really did "put a dent in the universe" as he claimed.

Next I attempted iWoz, written by Woz, but I only made it about 25% through before rage quitting. Woz may be a genius on some level but he seems to have the personality of a 12 year old kid. His bragging, simpleton tales were punctuated with "gosh" and "man oh man", and in the end I just wasn't interested.

Now I'm reading "Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry". Great so far.

Wow you guys have neat computer books.
I'm not reading anything computer related at the moment though, well unless you count flipping through the Commodore 64's User Manual. I have the 1983 edition and the 1984 edition, I have to say so far the 1984 edition is more useful.

Oh and I've been reading the SuSE Linux Personal 8.2 version's giant manual. It's pretty neat, mainly because it came in a big box copy of suse linux, which I had no idea shipped physical copies back in the day.

I recently finished 'The Intel Trinity: How Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove Built the World's Most Important Company'. Not a particularly unbiased book I get the sense - the author clearly worshiped Bob Noyce - but it was still an amazing read.

Now I'm reading 'Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World'. This book describes another mind boggling advancement in science that changed the world. I did physics and chemistry in high school, and yet this fascinating story is all news to me. They just weren't teaching it right.