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Mini-Review:  "Real Time Programming"........Bob Sander-Cederlof

The other night at B. Dalton's (the book store you find in almost every shopping mall in America), I came across a new book you might like:  "Real Time Programming--Neglected Topics", by Caxton C. Foster, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1981, 190 pages, $8.95.

Are you serious about learning to program in assembly language?  Even to the point of learning how to interface your Apple to other devices?  Foster introduces such topics as interrupt processing, switch debouncing, timers, synchronizing processes, digital filtering, adaptive control loops, and network communication.

If you are still here, after all those frightening buzzwords, good!  Fear not!  The book was written for ordinary mortals like you and me, not mathematical wizards.  Each topic is amply illustrated with working programs, and actual hardware experiments you can set up with your own computer.  I found that I could actually read the book, without stumbling and going over and over the same passage to understand it.  Foster has made some very complex techniques comprehensible.  There are lots of interesting analogies and drawings to aid in understanding.

The examples are written in the assembly language of a mythical machine called FOSSOL.  A simple chart on page 3 shows the correspondence between these opcodes and those of the 6502 in your Apple.  Most of them are identical to the 6502 opcodes.  The same chart shows how to translate FOSSOL into Z-80 assembly language.  (Why in the world would anyone want to do that?!!)

If you are not quite ready to sink your teeth into this one, you might look over his previous book, "Programming a Microcomputer: 6502".  It was published about 3 1/2 years ago, by the same publishers, and is still available.
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More New Publications........................Bob Sander-Cederlof

MICRO Magazine has collected together another series of their best Apple-related articles, called "MICRO-Apple 2".  If you missed "MICRO-Apple 1", it is still available too.  Each book comes complete with a disk containing all the programs printed inside, is 224 pages long, and costs $24.95 (plus $2.00 shipping charges).

MICRO has also recently published an atlas to all the interesting locations inside your Apple, called "What's Where in the APPLE?".  It is 128 pages long, 8 1/2 by 11 inches, wire-circle bound to lie flat on your desk without fighting.  It retails for $14.95, plus $2.00 shipping charges.  Call 1-800-227-1617, extension 564, if you can't wait.  I will have some at the next Apple Corps meeting at a slightly lower price.

If you have been reading your SOFTALK magazine each month, you probably have noticed Roger Wagner's very helpful column.  "Assembly Lines" guides you each month through the a-MAZE-ing and mystifying world of assembly language programming.  The articles have been so popular that SOFTALK has collected the first 12 into a book called "Everyone's Guide to Assembly Language".  They have added some new material not yet printed in the magazine.  It costs $19.95 plus $1.50 for shipping charges.  Write to Softalk Book, 11021 Magnolia Blvd, North Hollywood, CA 91601.

"Graphics Software for Microcomputers", by B.J. Korites, will show you how to write your own graphics software.  Not just simple lines and shapes, but 3-dimensional drawing with interactive input, rotations, translations, perspective transformations, scaling, clipping, shading, and more.  Program listings written in Applesoft Basic are presented side-by-side the theoretical explanations.  The book costs $19.95 and the 61 programs are available on disk for an additional $18.95.  Once again, add $2.00 per item for shipping charges!  Write to Kern Publications, 190 Duck Hill Road, P. O. Box 1029, Duxbury, MA 02332.  Or call (617) 934-0445.  I am trying to get a dozen of these for the next meeting, but I can't promise anything yet.
