John Snape has remastered the Apple II programming classics “Beneath Apple DOS” and “Beneath Apple ProDOS” and put them in one 450 page volume titled “Beneath Apple DOS and ProDOS 2020.”
Remastering a book is no small effort, as I well know, and John has done a fine job of preserving and upgrading the work of authors Don Worth and Pieter Lechnner. Besides re-typesetting everything, he has redrawn the figures and tables. John also put his own special touch on the book by replacing all of the internal cartoons – images from the 1800s Punch series are used with Beagle Bros-style captions. These cartoons give the work a fun new twist, although I’m glad to also have the original editions with the original art.
Beneath Apple DOS contains these chapters: Introduction, The Evolution of DOS, Diskette Formatting, Diskette Organization, The Structure of DOS, Using DOS From Assembly Language, Customizing DOS, DOS Programming Logic, and Appendices for Example Programs and Disk Protection Schemes.
Beneath Apple ProDOS contains these chapters: Introduction, To Build a Better DOS, Disk II Hardware and Diskette Formatting, Volumes / Directories / Files, The Structure of ProDOS, Using ProDOS From Assembly Language, Customizing ProDOS, ProDOS Global Pages, and Appendices for Example Programs, Diskette Protection Schemes, Nibblizing, The Logic State Sequencer, ProDOS / DOS / SOS, and Differences Between the ProDOS 8 Versions.
There’s also a new Miscellanea section with a “Setup.System” ProDOS article by Sean Nolan, “No DOS Boot Sector” program, “Sample Decryption Log” (and Passport) by 4am, and Acknowledgements.
In John’s words, “As seminal books of the early computer era, Beneath Apple DOS and Beneath Apple ProDOS showed Apple II users how their operating system was put together and how to exploit it for their own purposes. They were must-have books for programmers and those who were just curious about how their computer’s operating system worked. This is an amalgam of the two books, cleaned up and re-typeset.”
John provided us one copy of the book to give away to one lucky reader, and the winner has been chosen.
The book is available to purchase in Paperback, Hardback and Coil editions at Lulu. Thanks John for keeping the Apple II programming spirit alive with this invaluable technical resource!
