In this issue I'm going to review two technical books that have been around for quite a while. The first being 'De Re ATARI'-A Guide to Effective programming. This excellent book comes to us from The ATARI Program Exchange. The second book,'Inside ATARI DOS', comes to us from Compute! Books.
    'DE RE ATARI' is a book that should be owned by every ATARI owner. This book takes a brief look at almost everything needed to become an effective programmer on the ATARI computer. The book starts out by giving a full overview of the ATARI, explaining a little about what the ATARI is and showing a coarse memory map of the computer.
    This book doesn't go into any real detail on how to use a lot of what it says, but it does give a very good explanation of what it is talking about. Many people say this book is above a lot of peoples' heads, but I feel that if you want to expand what you already know about the ATARI then this book is for you. When buying an ATARI computer a person doesn't know all the capabilities the ATARI has to offer and this book explains a lot of them with some short programs to help. There are ten chapters in this book and they are: 1)Memory Utilization, 2)Antic and the Display List, 3)Graphics Indirection, 4)Player-missile graphics, 5)Display Interrupts, 6)Scrolling, 7)Sound, 8)Operating System, 9)The Disk Operating System, and 10)ATARI BASIC Overview. On top of that is has five appendixes:A)Memory Utilization, B)Human Engineering, C)ATARI Cassette Overview, D)Television Artifacts, and E)GTIA.
    The book has some very excellent illustrations to help the programmer picture what he or she is reading about. With over a hundred pages, this book wiil enlarge anyone's expectations of the ATARI computer.
    This book can be bought directly from:

    The second book, "Inside ATARI DOS" is one that is 'very technical'. It doesn't try to help a person who has just purchase an ATARI but is more directed to one who is familiar with one. This book is for someone who really wants to get 'inside' ATARI DOS.
    The book, written by Bill Wilkinson of Optimized Systems Software, gives a very indepth look at the DOS. So indepth that in the back it includes an entire assembly-language listing of DOS version 2.0S. The book is very nice looking with steel rings and very good print. This book has twenty-one chapters, ranging form 'ATARI DOS Overview' to chapter twenty-one 'Maintaining BOOT Record'. In the earlier paragraph I said this book wasn't suitable for the beginner. I meant, if one didn't have any real programming knowledge at all this book might be a little heavy. This book also has a short appendix at the back directed to those people familiar with BASIC programming only. It has a brief look at assembly-language to make the book a little easier to understand. Overall this book will help anyone who wants to understand ATARI's DOS.