Great compilation on basic topics to understand the aspects of PC hardware seen with a programmer's focus.Introduction (page 8)A few years ago, my computer was a small home computer. When I became interested in the IBM PC, I had to learn a lot of new things. I learned about MS-DOS and became familiar with 8088 assembly language. I soon reached a point where I started developing commercial PC programs in partnership with my friendAxel Sellemerten.All of this happened some time ago, but I still clearly remember sitting at my desk, looking through dozens of PC books and technical manuals, trying to find a critical piece of information.These books and manuals were expensive and hard to find. Besides, none of them covered all aspects of the PC. Some books tell you about PC hardware or the BIOS or DOS. I could never find a book that dealt with the PC as a total system. No single book was able to provide me with a complete system overview.This book is the result of my experience with all of these references. The three main areas of the PC (hardware, the BIOS and DOS) are combined in this book from a software developer's point of view. This book was written to serve as an instruction book as well as a reference manual. It is not, and was never intended to be, a book for the beginner. The book assumes that you're familiar with MS-DOS and are able to program in one of the four most popular PC programming languages (machine language, BASIC, Pascal or C).