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Comment by pan69 | Hacker News Reader

> The majority of the book was about detailed optimization for the 8088 and 8086, yet it was published when the 80486 was showing up in high-end desktop PCs.

The book goes all the way up to discussing the 386. It's just that the foundations is rooted in 8086, which is a large chunk of the book.

My favorite books (or the ones I have spend most time with) and that have been most formative for me are:

Mastering Turbo Assembler by Tom Swan

Zen of Graphics Programming by Michael Abrash

The Zen Of Assembly Language by Michael Abrash

Programmer's Guide to the EGA, VGA, and Super VGA Cards by Richard F. Ferraro

The Indispensable PC Hardware Book by Hans-Peter Messmer

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Excellent. I was just looking for the title for Abrash's graphics book.

Another from the same publisher is

Assembly Language Magic: Programming for the 8088-80386 by William H. Murray

https://openlibrary.org/books/OL2192212M/Assembly_language_m...

I really enjoyed my intro to RISC assembly:

SPARC Architecture, Assembly Language Programming, and C by Richard P. Paul

https://openlibrary.org/books/OL9285324M/SPARC_Architecture_...

Any recommendations for VAX or 68k or 6502 assembly (or ARM)?

This looks like a fun book (that my library so far won't order..):

Classic Game Programming on the NES: Make your own retro video game

by Tony Cruise -- published 2024.

https://www.manning.com/books/classic-game-programming-on-th...

Do you have an amazing idea for a NES game you’ve been itching to turn into reality? Classic Game Programming on the NES will show you how. This all-practical beginner's guide is full of step-by-step guidance on everything from graphics and music, to enemy AI, to the 6502 Assembler language you need to get the most out of the NES.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1633438015

Oh, those are good choices. Some other recommendations that you might be interested in:

See MIPS Run: Second Edition by Dominic Sweetman

ARM System-on-Chip Architecture by Steve Furber

I love both of these books.

I was thinking of See MIPS Run. Always wanted a copy, checked it out once or twice long ago.

Why not go straight to Patterson & Hennessey?

Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach

https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2664271W/Computer_architectu...

Computer Organization and Design: The Hardware/Software Interface

https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2956523W/Computer_organizati...

Another book on modern ARM:

Blue Fox: Arm Assembly Internals and Reverse Engineering

by Maria Markstedter

https://www.wiley.com/en-au/shop/general-introductory-comput...

Wow. I need Furber's book too.

The Sweetman book on MIPS is one of the best to learn OS internals from and how exactly it interfaces to the hardware.

Complementing that is the excellent Unix Systems for Modern Architectures: Symmetric Multiprocessing and Caching for Kernel Programmers by Curt Schimmel.

Complementing the Furber book is the excellent Computer System Design: System-on-Chip by Michael Flynn and Wayne Luk.

And of course the classic ARM System Developer's Guide: Designing and Optimizing System Software by Andrew Sloss et al. is also a must read.

> Programmer's Guide to the EGA, VGA, and Super VGA Cards by Richard F. Ferraro

This one is really good.

The Abrash books are these days just for nostalgia, and wouldn’t recommend them to a junior dev wanting to level up (except the chapter on using timers).. instead I’d recommend:

- Latency by Pekka Enberg

- Rust Atomics and Locks by Mara Bos

- Code Optimisation by Kris Kaspersky

abrash black book reads like a thriller

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