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Anyone have or read Bowkers Complete Sourcebook of Personal Computing?

barythrin

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This book came up when I was searching for games for one of the early portable systems (can't remember which) but the search result portrayed itself like this book might be a catch all with programming/source code for lots of vintage systems. Does anyone have a copy of this book? I can't find any good samples of what it would contain. If it covers multiple systems from the era with code and internals, etc it sounds like a great read but since I can't tell and I'm not really wanting to buy it that blindly I thought I'd ask.
 
I don't think I have a copy (I'll look though) but a DealOz search turns up a LOT of copies in several different editions. From the descriptions (Used - Acceptable Slight wear to cover, corners, and edges; loose glue to binding inside cover but book remains sturdy; creased cover; some highlighting and writing) it sounds like a textbook more than a do-it-yourself manual (if that makes any sense).
This one is only $6.19, not a huge gamble. :)
http://product.half.ebay.com/Bowker...r-1984/4978377&item=343077486115&tg=videtails
 
Yeah thanks, I did see those and was sorta hesitant to ask vs buy it cheap lol. But in reality I'm really curious what the book is about. Sounds like a potentially great resource but for the life of me I can't find any details :-( I did find an odd link in archive.org which acts like someone perhaps uploaded it (although perhaps in some reading disabled format?) but as far as I can tell there is no download link. Perhaps I need an account to make that an option? Anyone dealt with this before?
 
Well as an update to myself I couldn't find any references to what the book contained so I ordered one and I'll post when it arrives :)
 
Following up from a while back, I did end up ordering it and it arrived. Not at all what I expected. I found the book from some google results while I was searching around for games for I think a Kyocera or NEC portable. Either way, what the book really is is just a price guide for the year covering most common computers and then the rest of the 800 pages are lists of companies and addresses, accessories, software titles (not all with prices), user groups in each city/state, etc. So it's interesting and would be a great pdf to search through for prices or products during the era some day but not all that useful unfortunately. Mostly a salesman catalog and company yellow pages type of book.
 
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