BKMSDOSB.RVW 940725 SAMS Publishing 11711 N. College Ave., Suite 140 Carmel, IN 46032-5634 317-573-2500 317-581-3535 800-428-5331 800-428-3804 hayden@hayden.com haydenbks@aol.com 76350.3014@compuserve.com "MS-DOS Bible", Simrin, 1991, 0-672-22789-4, U$29.95/C$37.95 The MS-DOS Bible holds a preeminent, and generally deserved, place on the bookshelf of the average DOS user. It contains both introductory and reference materials. In many ways, this is the manual that should have come with DOS, although some of the contents are beyond the user level. Part one of the book gives a series of "tutorials" on various aspects of MS- DOS. There are chapters on invocation, files, directories, batch files, configuration, redirection, DOSSHELL, EDIT, ANSI controls, disk structure, memory structure, expanded memory, TSRs, device drivers, DEBUG, and LINK. The technical level of the material varies enormously, as does its usefulness. The first nine chapters are accessible to the beginning user at any point. Chapter ten is very detailed. The material on memory and drivers is possibly interesting but, generally, not of use to anyone trying to tune their system. The chapter on DEBUG is excellent. Part two is a much clearer command reference than you will find in the DOS manuals. Part three contains a very mixed bag of appendices, probably the most useful of which is documentation for EDLIN (if you still use it). It is odd that the book has not been updated to include MS-DOS 6.x. Odd, but understandable. Aside from the third party add-ons, there is, essentially, no change in the basic OS. The updating in this edition, in fact, seems to be more of a matter of form than substance. The technically aware reader will find numerous passages obviously written about older versions of DOS. As mentioned, the material on memory management is very generic, and of little practical help. The appendix on "Some Undocumented Features of MS-DOS" is a joke: not even the well known bugs make it into this book. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1994 BKMSDOSB.RVW 940725 ====================== DECUS Canada Communications, Desktop, Education and Security group newsletters Editor and/or reviewer ROBERTS@decus.ca, RSlade@sfu.ca, Rob Slade at 1:153/733 Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" (Oct. '94) Springer-Verlag