This book has been written for fortunate owners of Amstrad machines which have built-in disc drives, as well as owners of CPC 464s who are able to take advantage of the low-cost drives available. The book covers a wide range of topics, starting with connecting the micro to the drive and/or beginning to use the discs, depending on the machine involved. The author discusses both available operating systems, AMSDOS and CP/M; he pays particular attention to Amstrad-specific commands and any differences among the CPC micros. Many books would stop here, but The Amstrad Disc Companion has two further sections. The first is aimed at programmers who wish to turn away from Basic and Z80 Assembly language to something new. The author briefly looks at Logo, Pascal and C. These pages are only meant to be quick introductions, giving the reader some idea of what each language can do for him; nevertheless, he will find them very interesting. Simon Williams is good at explaining himself and even readers with little knowledge of high-level languages will be able to understand what he is saying. The last section of the book is taken up with details about business software and file handling, with emphasis on three commercially available software packages. Taken together, all this information should show readers how to use their micros to their greatest advantage. The layout of the glossary and index is good; they will help to make this a good reference guide long after the reader has digested most of the information in it. ACU #8811 |
