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help me remember the title of a old build your own clone book!

eXTended8088

eXTended8088

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Central PA/Upstate NY
Hi all,

I am trying to remember a old book i read many years ago about building your own clone. I do believe it was published in the late 80's I cold of sworn it was something like build your own 286 or 386 clone. I know I know.. generic. What vividly remember was the cover. the cover had a clone pc on a desk, the monitor shows some sort of graphical chart. the desk was made out of wood, I remember was a bookshelf with books titled on it, a lamp on the desk, green i think, and a fake tree or plant near it. Can anybody help me? i got this at the library about 17 years ago and can not find it since.:mrgreen: lol...

thanks!
 
eXTended8088 said:
Hi all,

I am trying to remember a old book i read many years ago about building your own clone. I do believe it was published in the late 80's I cold of sworn it was something like build your own 286 or 386 clone. I know I know.. generic. What vividly remember was the cover. the cover had a clone pc on a desk, the monitor shows some sort of graphical chart. the desk was made out of wood, I remember was a bookshelf with books titled on it, a lamp on the desk, green i think, and a fake tree or plant near it. Can anybody help me? i got this at the library about 17 years ago and can not find it since.:mrgreen: lol...

thanks!
Click to expand...

Libaries tend to have somewhat good archives. Have you asked the people at the library if they know anything.

Do you recognize it from one of therse titles? http://www.allbookstores.com/Computers/Microprocessors/Intel_80386_(Microprocessor).html
 
per said:
Libaries tend to have somewhat good archives. Have you asked the people at the library if they know anything.

Do you recognize it from one of therse titles? http://www.allbookstores.com/Computers/Microprocessors/Intel_80386_(Microprocessor).html
Click to expand...

Thanks for the response! Unfortunately, that library was closed down due to budget cuts here in wonderful western new york... I have gone to a bunch of the other local branches, but nothing.

Thank you for your list.. It MIGHT be this one..
Build Your Own 80386 IBM Compatible and Save a Bundle
Author: Aubrey Pilgrim
Format: Paperback
Publish Date: November 1988
Edition: 1st
ISBN-10: 0830631313
ISBN-13: 9780830631315
List Price: $17.95

If i had a pic of the cover that would confirm it.
 
Guys, Sorry to bump this.

I still cannot find any images of the dust covers on the hard cover editions of these book's...

Build Your Own 80386 IBM Compatible and Save a Bundle or Build your own 80286 IBM compatible and save a bundle or Build your own IBM compatible and save a bundle

It might not even be one of these, not 100 percent sure. What I do remember is the cover of the book had a picture of a clone PC on a wooden desk, with a green bankers lamp and I believe a plant near it. The PC was showing some type of color bar graphs on the monitor I believe. What ever this book is, it's one of the first books on PC's I used and would love to get a copy for nostalgia purposes.

Thanks! :)
 
Last edited:
Here are 3 nice books to know about on the topic of building a vintage PC from scratch... "Build your own Computer" by Walter Fuller, "The 8088 Project Book" by Robert Grossblatt, and "Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar Volume IV" by Steve Ciarcia. The Fuller book was written for an introductory computer class and is a very basic type of 'how to wire stuff together' and make an 8088 CPU do a few things. The book by Grossblatt is somewhat similar but goes into more detail and is written in a kind of 80's 'spaced out' style... for lack of better way to describe it. :) The Ciarcia book contains 3 magazine articles for building the MPX-16 computer system. This was a real clone computer and the bare board PCB was available for $300, or the deluxe kit for $2400.

And no mention of building a PC computer from scratch should fail to point out that IBM Technical Reference Manual has the complete circuit diagrams and BIOS source code for the 5150 IBM PC.

FullerSM.jpgGrossblattSM.jpgCiarciaSM.jpg
 
Those books look fascinating, thanks!

eXTended - I applied my best google-fu and couldn't find the book you are looking for :(
 
If you go to the auction site and search for Aubrey Pilgrim using Title and Description search.....
both of those books (286/386) are listed with pictures. Or just search for
the string "Build Your Own 80*86 IBM Compatible"

But neither picture matches your description.
 
Thanks everyone! My search continues... Sadly, I'm not even sure what the book I'm searching for is.. lol. All I remember is the cover.

If anyone has a book about building a clone PC from the late 80's that has it's cover showing a clone PC on a wooden desk, with a green bankers lamp and a plant near it, and the monitor showing some type of color bar graphs, Let me know :)
 
mikey99 said:
If you go to the auction site and search for Aubrey Pilgrim using Title and Description search.....
both of those books (286/386) are listed with pictures. Or just search for
the string "Build Your Own 80*86 IBM Compatible"
Click to expand...

I believe the first book in the series, from the PC/XT era, was simply called "Build Your Own IBM Compatible".

There was even a "Build Your Own Macintosh" book, many years before there were any legal Mac clones. I believe it involved taking the guts from a Mac Plus and installing it in a PC-clone case, and using an external monitor.
 
vwestlife said:
There was even a "Build Your Own Macintosh" book, many years before there were any legal Mac clones. I believe it involved taking the guts from a Mac Plus and installing it in a PC-clone case, and using an external monitor.
Click to expand...

Here's a link to a description of the Mac related book.

http://www.vintagemacworld.com/build_own.html

A Mac Plus board would certainly be the most desirable thing to use but the template "Hackintosh" of the time generally depended on getting a gray-market 128k or 512k motherboard (usually handed down from a Plus upgrade) and fitting it with third-party SCSI, memory, and (preferably) accelerator boards in a cobbled-together case. Good times.
 
mmruzek said:
Here are 3 nice books to know about on the topic of building a vintage PC from scratch... "Build your own Computer" by Walter Fuller, "The 8088 Project Book" by Robert Grossblatt, and "Ciarcia's Circuit Cellar Volume IV" by Steve Ciarcia. The Fuller book was written for an introductory computer class and is a very basic type of 'how to wire stuff together' and make an 8088 CPU do a few things. The book by Grossblatt is somewhat similar but goes into more detail and is written in a kind of 80's 'spaced out' style... for lack of better way to describe it. :) The Ciarcia book contains 3 magazine articles for building the MPX-16 computer system. This was a real clone computer and the bare board PCB was available for $300, or the deluxe kit for $2400.

And no mention of building a PC computer from scratch should fail to point out that IBM Technical Reference Manual has the complete circuit diagrams and BIOS source code for the 5150 IBM PC.

View attachment 7723View attachment 7724View attachment 7725
Click to expand...

"The 8088 Project Book" is an awesome one, i have that. it is not about building a full clone though. it's more about the theory and practical knowledge of designing your own 8088-based platform.
 
Westveld, That's it!! Thank you!!!! I've been going nuts trying to find this book based on what i remember of it.

Mikey99, you kinda called it first, the book you posted first is by the same author and looks very close to the one Westveld posted, minus the bankers lamp. Thank you so much!!!!
 
westveld said:
The AT guide looks pretty close to the description!

http://www.humanityquest.com/Projects/Bios/EdwinRutsch/images/IBM-at-book-cover-big.jpg
Click to expand...


Yes, well done westveld, but this thread isn't over yet.

Tell me, what was that switchbox under the monitor for?
I remember having one of those things but I can't for the life of me remember what it did.
It can't of been just for powering printers/monitors on and off (who would need that many?) - there was some other stuff it did.
 
It's just an under monitor surge protector. Each outlet is individually switched.
 
Yup, was just a handy device to get all your power switches within reach opposed to crawling under the desk to the surge protector, plus the added benefit of turning off a device individually as Plasma pointed out. I remember all the cool geeks had one heh.
 
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