REVIEW: "How Computers Work", Ron White
Rob Slade, doting grandpa of Ryan and Trevor
"How Computers Work", Ron White, 1998, 0-7897-1728-X,
U$29.99/C$42.95/UK#26.95
%A Ron White ron_...@zd.com
%C 201 W. 103rd Street, Indianapolis, IN 46290
%D 1998
%G 0-7897-1728-X
%I Macmillan Computer Publishing (MCP)
%O U$29.99/C$42.95/UK#26.95 800-858-7674 http://www.mcp.com
%P 324 p. + CD-ROM
%T "How Computers Work, fourth edition"
I was a little surprised at the sequence of topics in the book. I
suppose it makes some kind of temporal sense to have the boot process
first, but logically there is a lot going on in the boot process that
doesn't get explained until later, like how disks, and chips, and
other implements of destruction all work together. In any case, the
chapters in part one a) only cover the specifics of MS-DOS, rather
than the probably more common (by now) Windows 9x systems, b) get
bogged down in some very detailed minutiae, and c) if they are going
to go to that level of detail, get several things wrong.
Part two *does* concentrate on Windows 98, or, at least, it says it
does. These four chapters, on interrupts, BIOS and drivers, Plug and
Play, and memory, are confused, and even contradictory. While there
are some nice explanations (such as that for shadowed BIOS), overall
the material is hard to fit into a logical pattern. (A correct, one,
at least.) Part three finally looks at the hardware level where
perhaps the book should have started. On the other hand, while the
pages on transistors are quite clear, the chapter on memory loses the
advantage by turning everything into plumbing. Chapter nine, on logic
circuits, works fine until it misses a step just before producing an
adding circuit, and then jumps to a more complicated device, probably
losing most readers. The chapters on processors have almost no link
to the previous material.
Pat four, on data storage, has both good and bad parts. The pure
mechanics of magnetic, zip, magneto-optical, and floptical (oddly, CD-
ROM is missing) are covered well. Details are very poor. FAT32 is in
no way virtual. Win9x can store long filenames on FAT16 drives
(albeit in a somewhat kludgy manner). A mirrored drive array provides
just what the name implies--a kind of backup on disk, rather than any
kind of interleaving. Yes, compressed drives avoid underutilized
clusters, but they also use the same kind of compression that files
do. (Good explanation on file compression, though.) Defragmentation
is described well, but illustrated very poorly.
Part five looks at a variety of input, output, and related devices and
technologies; bus, port, keyboard, display, pointing device, game
controller, modem, PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card Interface
Association) card, scanner, optical character recognition, and even
GPS (Global Positioning System); so it doesn't do too bad with the
brief space allowed. (Again, when the book gets down to details it
makes mistakes, such as a confusion with the EIA-232 data pin
assignments.) We finally get to CD-ROMs (and DVDs) in part six,
making a rather odd introduction to multimedia. The Internet section,
in part seven, provides a good description of ethernet and token ring,
an odd diversion to star topology, a page that explains the OSI (Open
Systems Interconnection) model without naming it and the packet
concept very badly, reasonable stuff on email and streaming media, and
a non-explanation of the Web. Part eight does a consistently good job
on all aspects of printing.
While I was initially skeptical of this series, previous titles had
rather surprised me with their quality. It is disappointing,
therefore, to find that the fundamentals are treated so badly in this
volume. There is certainly enough to make this introduction to the
technology worth considering, as long as you don't consider it an
authoritative source.
copyright Robert M. Slade, 1998 BKHWCMWK.RVW 981106
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