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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Wed Jul 20, 2016 4:26 pm

I picked up this book this week, the AmigaWorld Official AmigaDOS 2 Companion, for a mere $3.99. That included shipping, so it was essentially free plus the shipping cost. Not too shabby. It was published by my old company IDG back in 1990.

The book was written by Bob Ryan, who also wrote for AmigaWorld the magazine, and happened to write game reviews from time to time, too.

In any case, AmigaDOS 2 was a huge departure from AmigaOS 1.x, and was completely re-written in C. In addition, version 2 and version 3 are pretty close to being the same native species, while version 1 was entirely it's own entity. The main thing version 3 brought to the table was compatibility with the newer hardware models (e.g. 1200, 4000).

I won't get into all of the confusing labels of AmigaDOS, OS or Workbench here. Suffice to say, this book is a nice companion for users of both 2.x and 3.x Amiga OSes, especially for beginners. It also has a short section at the back for anyone interested in the ARexx scripting language.

What's nice about the book is Ryan's writing style. It's extremely conversational and approachable; you don't have to be a computer scientist to understand what's being taught. To that end, for anyone well-versed in computers, some of the explanations seem rather elementary for contemporary readers. (See section "The Pointer and the Mouse" or "Dragging Icons".) But it also does a very nice job of going through every single Workbench menu item, and every single System icon, to give a nice explanation about things you might pass over and have always wondered about. In some ways, this could be considered one of the missing manuals for Amiga users as the original manuals were rather sparse.

So, it'll sit on a shelf near my station. Should I ever fee the need, it'll be right there. For the rest, you could simply download an electronic PDF of the book. But I'm willing to bet mine gets read more.
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AmigaWorld Official AmigaDOS 2 Companion - front cover

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Back cover. Book originally cost $24.95 U.S. ($46.01 in 2016 dollars).

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This companion book is great for newbies or Intermediate users looking for a complete shelf-reference.

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The book is over 400 pages thick






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