BKCPCUMG.RVW   990206

"The Complete PC Upgrade and Maintenance Guide", Mark Minasi, 1998,
0-7821-2357-0, U$59.99/C$87.95
%A   Mark Minasi mark@minasi.com
%C   1151 Marina Village Parkway, Alameda, CA   94501
%D   1998
%G   0-7821-2357-0
%I   Sybex Computer Books
%O   U$59.99/C$87.95 800-227-2346 Fax: 510-523-2373 info@sybex.com
%P   1559 p. + 2 CD-ROM
%T   "The Complete PC Upgrade and Maintenance Guide, Ninth Edition"

Chapter one lists a lot of interface standards, with a little bit of
discussion on some pros and cons.  Although it is somewhat
disorganized, chapter two has excellent advice and descriptions of
disassembling and removing parts of the PC.  Chapter three is
enormous, looking at CPUs, memory structure, expansion buses, and
peripherals.  A very useful section is the set of figures showing the
configuration of external connectors for a variety of expansion cards. 
A few of the common physical causes of computer problems are described
in chapter four.  Some generic troubleshooting guidelines, and a lot
of war stories, are in chapter five.  Chapters six through twelve look
at the configuration of new cards and boards, chip removal and
exchange, memory modules, power supplies and protection, hard disk
structure, hard disk installation, and the FAT (File Allocation Table)
file system structure used by MS-DOS.  Much of the material shows
definite signs of dating.  Preventive maintenance for your hard disk,
in chapter thirteen, has its good and bad points, but two stand out:
the instructions for backing up your master boot record with DEBUG can
be profoundly useful, and the section on viruses is extensive, and
extensively bad.  There is a lot of good information in chapter
fourteen, but much of the disk recovery advice relies on specific
programs that may not be available to the reader.  Chapters fifteen
through seventeen discuss floppy drives, SCSI (Small Computer Systems
Interface), and printer troubleshooting, with a fair number of gaps in
the material.  There is a lot of conceptual content on laser printers
in chapter eighteen, but practical advice is missing.  Peripherals are
dealt with somewhat tersely with chapters nineteen to twenty four
looking at modems, keyboards and mice, displays, sound, video capture,
and CD-ROM, in turn.  There is also "how to buy" advice, some points
on notebooks, and a confused section on using the Internet to get
computer information in the three closing chapters.  As well, a vendor
contact list and a table of hard drive specs is included among the
appendices.

The book is quite readable and even amusing.  There is a lot of
information in the text, a great deal of it useful.  However, there is
not the consistency of value that is presented, for example, in
Mueller's "Upgrading and Repairing PCs" (cf. BKUPRPPC.RVW).  While
this book is an improvement over many that I have seen over the years,
I could not recommend it unreservedly.

copyright Robert M. Slade, 1999   BKCPCUMG.RVW   990206