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From: jww@bonnie.UUCP (Joel West)
Newsgroups: net.micro.68k
Subject: Re: what are the best 68k books?
Message-ID: <451@bonnie.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 20-Mar-85 12:20:36 EST
Article-I.D.: bonnie.451
Posted: Wed Mar 20 12:20:36 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 21-Mar-85 02:28:08 EST
References: <1944@sdcc6.UUCP> <629@mako.UUCP>
Organization: CACI -- La Jolla, Calif.
Lines: 58

Message-ID: <629@mako.UUCP>
Date: 8 Mar 85 21:31:32 GMT
Date-Received: 11 Mar 85 04:40:35 GMT
References: <1944@sdcc6.UUCP>
Reply-To: jans@mako.UUCP (Jan Steinman)
Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville OR
Lines: 26
Summary: 

In article <629@mako.UUCP> jans@mako.UUCP writes

>As for more depth, my favorite is "68000 Assembly Language Programming",
>Leventhal, et. al, McGraw-Hill, 1981.  Lots of diagrams, with about 1/2 page
>ENGLISH! describing each instruction.  About %80 of the book is devoted to
>assembly language techniques, using M68000 code sequences as examples, with
>the other 20% describing the instruction set.  Their examples are generally
>not very good assembly language style (non-reentrant, non-position-
>independent, embedded literals and absolute addresses, etc.) but the 20% of
>the book describing the instruction set is quite good.

I won't attack someone for his/her personal opinions, but my own
reaction is 
	THIS BOOK IS ABSOLUTE UNADULTERATED JUNK!
and I would not recommend it to my mother-in-law.

My own bias is that I never read any technical book, either skim it or
flip to the index when I have a question.  This book has 80% useless material
as far as I'm concerned (translation: "boilerplate", which is why there
are very similar books from Osbonre/McGraw-Hill for the 6052, 8080, etc. etc.)
and I would be ashamed to have my name on the cover.

In fact, if I had the time, I would write my own.  As far as I'm concerned,
a good book would introduce the instructions in reference form one group
per chapter.  It would list all the possible variations and spell out all
assumptions.  New concepts could be explained at the beginning of the
chapter.  For example, in the 68000 world I get confused by the optional
".b" ".w" ".l" -- I come from a VAX where you look at the instruction ("MOVZBL"
"CASEL") and you know exactly what the operand size is.  As a reference
book to be used by people who don't know the 68000 (that's why they bought
the book, remember?) all assumptions should be spelled out, even if it seems
repetitive.

I tried to figure out whether a "dbf" used a 8, 16, or 32 bit data value.
I couldn't find it in the McGraw-Hill, but my Motorola 68020 User's Manual
said:
	DBcc
		....
	Attributes:  Size=(Word)
as part of its 1.5 page description.

Now is this too much to ask?
-- 
	Joel West				     (619) 457-9681
	CACI, Inc. - Federal 3344 N. Torrey Pines Ct La Jolla 92037
	jww@bonnie.UUCP (ihnp4!bonnie!jww)
	westjw@nosc.ARPA

   "The best is the enemy of the good" - A. Mullarney