Books

The 1982 book pairs an introduction to Spectrum machine code with forty routines for display and program manipulation. Its co-authors explain callable components rather than presenting a complete game.

BASIC Computer Games: Microcomputer Edition (1978) was David Ahl's collection of 101 type-in games, converted by Steve North to Microsoft BASIC from 101 BASIC Computer Games, which DEC had published in 1973. Published by Creative Computing and in a Workman trade edition, it included Hammurabi, Super Star Trek, Lunar, Animal and Hangman. By 1981 it and its 1979 sequel had sold over half a million copies between them.

Commodore's technical manual for the C64, copyright 1982 and sold separately from the computer for $19.95 through Howard W. Sams. Its six chapters and 16 appendices covered BASIC, graphics, the SID, 6510 machine code, the KERNAL and the I/O ports, and reprinted the data sheets for the 6510, CIA, VIC-II and SID chips, with a fold-out schematic at the back.

Daniel Isaaman and Jenny Tyler's 48-page Usborne book of 1982 printed thirteen short BASIC games, from Robot Missile to the graphics game Missile!, each listed once for the ZX81 with the changed lines for the Spectrum, BBC, VIC-20, Pet, TRS-80 and Apple marked underneath. It explained every listing line by line and ended with tips on writing your own games. Usborne made it a free PDF in 2016.

Atari’s technical book connects display lists, colour, player/missile graphics, sound and operating-system work. Its named chapter authors show how several specialists explained one computer together.

Duncan Smeed and Ian Sommerville’s 1983 book explains the Dragon through its processor, ROM software and hardware. Its worked assembly routines show how those layers meet, while identifying the related Color Computer as a separate machine.

Usborne's 1983 picture-book introduction to machine code taught the Z80 and the 6502 side by side, for the Spectrum, ZX81, VIC-20, BBC Micro, Atari, Oric and Commodore 64. Readers wrote mnemonics, looked up the hex by hand and poked it in with a BASIC hex loader. Sinclair User called it the easiest book on the subject on the market.

Sheldon Leemon's 1984 COMPUTE! Books reference explained the Commodore 64 through its memory locations. BASIC's working storage, screen memory, chip registers and ROM routines appeared in address order, with explanations of what programmers could do with them.

Toni Baker's Spectrum update of her ZX81 machine-code book, published by Interface Publications at the end of 1983: 315 pages at £9.95, starting from simple addition and building up to a game of draughts, with a dictionary of every Z80 instruction. It was still on offer in 1987.

Andrew Bray, Adrian Dickens and Mark Holmes’s 1983 guide follows the BBC Micro from programming and operating-system interfaces into its hardware. The original title must be distinguished from later “New” and Master references.

Ian Logan and Frank O'Hara's 1983 Melbourne House book printed the whole of the ZX Spectrum's 16K ROM as commented Z80 assembly language, named every routine, and pointed out the ROM's own bugs. It was the last of Logan's four ROM books, it was still being recommended by the Spectrum press in the late 1980s, and its annotations live on in the modern disassemblies that emulator and tool authors work from.

From 1982 the London children's publisher Usborne put out a range of cheap, colourful computer books: type-in games collections such as Computer Spacegames and Computer Battlegames, guides to BASIC and machine code, and adventure-writing books. Each listing was printed once, with the changes for other machines marked alongside it. In February 2016 Usborne made fifteen of them free to download as PDFs.