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My Currently Available Books

This page is a guide to all the books I’ve written that I consider current. A lot of my technical books are now very old; the first edition of Complete Turbo Pascal appeared in 1985. All of my technical books from traditional publishers are now formally out of print except for x64 Assembly Language Step By Step and Learning Computer Architecture with Raspberry Pi. That said, nearly all of my technical books are available on the used books sites (including Amazon) for a few dollars. Most of the books listed here are my self-published science fiction and fantasy, which are either ebook or print-on-demand editions and thus will never go out of print.

My fiction tends toward the technical, toward ideas, and (especially) toward AI. I’m an upbeat person, and with only one (possible) exception, none of my stories are downers. I also do humor: Ten Gentle Opportunities is a humorous romp, and Firejammer is a deliberate tribute to Keith Laumer and his light-hearted Retief adventures.

The Cunning Blood

TCBCover-165HighSample Chapter (PDF)
Kindle EBook ($3.99; also available on KU)
Trade paperback (360pp. $12.99)
First edition hardcover book (360pp. $28)

Caught violating the Zero Tolerance for Violence laws, Peter Novilio is sentenced to a one-way trip to Earth’s prison planet in the Zeta Tucanae system. Hell is forever: Its ecosphere is infected with microscopic nanomachines that destroy electrical conductors, condemning its inmates to a neo-Victorian steam-and-gaslight society without computers, spaceflight, or any hope of escape. Peter had in fact been framed by Earth’s paranoid world government, and is offered a pardon in return for conducting a reconnaissance mission to Hell and back. There were hints that Hell was developing impossible technologies or had somehow evaded the wire-eating nanobugs entirely. How Peter would return from Hell is a secret known only to his grim mission partner Geyl Shreve.

But Peter has a secret as well: He is a member of the outlawed Sangruse Society, and in his blood flows the Sangruse Device, Version 9, the most powerful nanocomputer AI ever created. Although supposedly Peter’s protector and advisor, the Device answers to no one but the Society’s mysterious leader, and has reasons of its own for visiting Hell. Peter soon discovers that he is little more than a disguise, caught in a covert war among Earth, a revolutionary group bent on overthrowing Earth’s government, Hell’s ingenious inmates, and the deadly mechanism in his veins. For as fearsome as it is, the Device itself is afraid – and the fates of whole worlds would be decided by the threat that The Cunning Blood had discovered outside of space and time.

Ten Gentle Opportunities

Ten Gentle OpportunitiesKindle Ebook ($2.99; also available on KU)
Trade Paperback (310pp. $12.99;)

Having been caught cheating a powerful magician out of ten nuggets of pure uncommitted magic in a rigged card game, Bartholomew Stypek needs a place to hide. As a spellbender he is at best a partial magician, who can read and change magic spells, but, absent a stash of magical force, cannot cast his own. With his anarchic familiar spirit Pickles and the ill-won kitty of magical Opportunities, Stypek throws himself on the mercy of the all-powerful Continuum and leaps blindly across universes, hoping to be dropped someplace far away, boring, and utterly without magic. As the Continuum chuckles in the background, Stypek lands in the break room of a small-town advertising agency in Upstate New York.

Because this new universe doesn’t support spirits, Pickles manifests as the nearest local equivalent: AI software in the agency’s heavily networked copier. She wanders into a nearby corporate network looking for allies, and discovers a virtual universe where AIs live in virtual bungalows and meet in virtual coffee shops for virtual doughnuts. Pickles is soon seducing Simple Simon, an earnest but naive AI tasked with controlling an immense robotic assembly line in the corporation’s manufacturing plant. Stypek, meanwhile, is mistaken for a penniless Eastern European computer science intern, and is taken in by Carolyn Romero, the ad agency’s copywriter. Expecting the usual suspicion and contempt, Stypek is humbled by the kindness he’s shown, and one by one uses the stolen Opportunities to help his new friends with their problems, including Carolyn’s failed marriage.

But Jrikk the magician isn’t so easily thwarted. Soon Stypek, Pickles, Simple Simon, and their human and virtual friends must fight for their lives against the evil force sent to retrieve Stypek to the magician’s dungeons.

Dreamhealer

Kindle Ebook ($3.99; Also available on KU)
Trade Paperback (369pp. $12.99;)

By day, Larry Kettelkamp keeps ancient PDP-8 computers alive in a collapsing industrial bakery. By night he wages war on nightmares, and has been waging that war for thirty years. As a young man, Larry discovered that he could enter other peoples’ nightmares, end them, and then vaccinate the dreamers against that nightmare with an ancient symbol that alters the relationship between the two hemispheres of the brain.

For nightmares are not random concoctions of our dreaming imaginations. Strange creatures called archons living in the subtle realms of the collective unconscious craft horrifying dreams to drop into sleeping minds, and then feast on the terror those dreams evoke. This scheme goes back 15,000 years, to the dawn of human history. It was created by a sort of super-archon who claims to be the Demiurge of ancient Persian myth.

Once Larry learns how to destroy archons instead of merely banishing them from dreams, this architect of all nightmares hunts Larry down and demands that Larry stop destroying the monster’s archon servants. Thus begins an escalating conflict that draws in a bored title-search agent, a witch and a lightworker, two teenage prodigies, a modern-day cult practicing ancient Persian death magick, dream mechas a quarter-mile high, and a very very large number of dogs.

Firejammer

Print Book ($6.99)
Kindle Ebook ($2.99)

Having dropped a snooty alien-contact anthropologist on a newly discovered inhabited planet to establish a relationship with the aliens, starship Richard M. Nixon and its crew returns two years later on a trade mission. The corporations of the Tripartisan Economic Combine are eager to buy the aliens’ internally generated epoxy glue, which is among the best ever seen in known space. Vincent Icehall, the starship’s young shuttle pilot, has little to do during the mission but hang out with what he assumes is the alien community’s jester and village idiot. Icehall can’t pronounce the alien’s name and dubs him “Turkey,” but slowly realizes that Turkey is anything but. Ignoring all of Turkey’s warnings for the crew to leave the planet immediately, Icehall stumbles on a plot by the anthropologist and the aliens’ chieftain to steal the Nixon‘s shuttle for use as a weapon of war.

Dedicated to Keith Laumer and very much in the wry style of his Retief adventures, Firejammer is a tribute to the man who taught a whole generation of SF authors how to write funny aliens.

Drumlin Circus / On Gossamer Wings

Drumlin Circus / On Gossamer WingsPrint Book ($11.99)
Kindle Ebook ($2.99)
Nook / EPub Ebook ($2.99)

In a tribute to the legendary Ace Double paperbacks, the first Copperwood Double combines two short novels back-to-back, each with its own cover, both set in Jeff Duntemann’s Drumlins world. On an abandoned alien planet, 700 castaways from Earth find thousands of alien manufacturing machines, which can produce anything you want…if you know the 256-bit code. The artifacts (dubbed “drumlins”) that come out of these “thingmakers” are themselves mysterious, and seem to understand what humans are doing and perhaps even thinking. 250 years later, drumlins have allowed the unwilling colonists to create a thriving society resembling 19th Century America, with steam power and a very wild West. Some want to use drumlins to repair their starship and return to Earth. Others prefer the life they’ve created in partnership with the thingmakers, even though rumors hold that some drumlins are dangerous and even deadly, or at very least not what they appear to be.

Drumlin Circus: When a circus master’s wife learns how to make smilodons as docile as housecats using a drumlin whistle, agents from the cultlike Bitspace Institute abduct her, hoping to use the whistle to create animal assassins. One of the circus’s clowns, himself a former Institute man, returns to Institute HQ to free Pretty Alice and settle some unanswered questions about his early life. In doing so he sets off an escalating battle between the Circus and the Institute that draws in a coven of witches, a miniature hydrogen airship, and a steam calliope that speaks to the deepest minds of men, animals, and the half-sentient drumlins themselves.

On Gossamer Wings: In a hardscrabble town among the rye fields of the sparsely-populated West, a mute and aphasic teen girl dreams of constructing a flying machine out of drumlins. Lacking the power of words, she has an unobstructed grasp of the mathematics of flight. She also has a mysterious rapport with the thingmakers that allows her to locate the drumlins she needs, even when their bit-pattern is unknown–including spheres of elemental iron and ducted-fan engines running on zero-point energy. Drawn by rumors of unnaturally pure iron, a ruthless Institute agent seeks her out in the hope of harnessing her talent before fearful townfolk expel her from town and destroy her dream of flight.

Cold Hands and Other Stories

Print Book ($11.99)
Kindle EBook ($2.99; also available on KU)

Jeff Duntemann’s second collection of short fiction runs the gamut from spaceflight to mathematically rigorous witchcraft. The volume includes “Cold Hands,” (nominated for the Hugo Award) “Our Lady of the Endless Sky,” “Inevitability Sphere,” “Whale Meat,” “Born Again, With Water,” “Drumlin Boiler,” “Drumlin Wheel,” and “Roddie,” plus a new excerpt from his hard SF nanotech adventure novel, The Cunning Blood.

Souls in Silicon

Souls in SilconPrint Book ($11.99)
Kindle/Mobi Book ($2.99; also available on KU)

Veteran computer book author Jeff Duntemann turns his talents to the challenges that “strong” artificial intelligence may face in this, his first collection of SF shorts. Stories include: “The Steel Sonnets”; “Guardian” (Nominated for the 1981 Hugo Award); “Silicon Psalm”; “Marlowe”; “Borovsky’s Hollow Woman” (with Nancy Kress); “Bathtub Mary”; “STORMY vs. the Tornadoes”; and “Sympathy on the Loss of One of Your Legs”; plus an excerpt from his novel of nanotech AI, The Cunning Blood.

“Whale Meat”

"Whale Meat"Kindle / Mobi Ebook (99c)

In one of Jeff Duntemann’s few works of short fantasy, two 700-year-old witches in modern-day Chicago must confront a demand from the community of whales living in Earth’s oceans, that their unborn son join in their effort to heal the broken soul of humankind–with death the outcome should he fail. Homeless, hungry, and mostly without hope, Yonnie and Mara find help in some unlikely places, including a young mathematics student struggling to understand calculus, and an alcoholic bum who is much more than he seems. (Note that this story is also included in the author’s collection, Cold Hands and Other Stories.)

Odd Lots: Essays, Ideas, Parody and Memoir

Print Book $12.99
Kindle / Mobi Ebook $2.99

Jeff Duntemann began writing about technology in the mid-1970s, at the dawn of the microcomputer era. In his role as a technical magazine editor and early blogger, he wrote literally thousands of essays, editorials, blog posts, and humor pieces, many of which exist only in paper magazines from decades ago. In response to requests from his fans, he’s collected the best of his non-technical writing, and thrown in a little memoir to cast some light on the odd man behind these truly odd lots. Some highlights:

  • His favorite writing tips
  • His prediction of Wikipedia in 1994
  • His prediction of selfies in 1983
  • How nanotechnology might eventually create computers as small as dirt particles
  • How dogs helped early humans survive their genocidal impulses, making civilization possible
  • What tweener boys learn from monster movies
  • The challenges of truly long-horizon thinking
  • The benefits of contrarian thinking
  • Why tribalism may be the worst problem facing humanity
  • Where anger came from and how it kills
  • What it means to be truly free

…and much else, including a number of items never before published.

x64 Assembly Language Step By Step, Fourth Edition

x64 Assembly Language Step By StepPrint Book
Kindle EBook

Now in its fourth Wiley edition (and fifth overall since the book’s first publication by Scott, Foresman in 1990) Jeff Duntemann’s award-winning newcomer’s tutorial to Intel 64-bit assembly language teaches Linux programming in x64 assembly without completely ignoring x86. From the fundamental concepts of computing itself (including hexadecimal math) the book takes the reader through the basics of the x64 instruction set, Linux system access via SYSCALL and finally calls into the standard C library. Unlike many books on assembly language, the  primary focus is on memory addressing, which the author considers the core skill in assembly language programming.

Learning Computer Architecture with Raspberry Pi

Kindle Ebook
Print Book

(With Eben Upton, creator of the Raspberry Pi, and others.) The inexpensive Raspberry Pi single-board computer is now everywhere, with twelve million sold. This book uses the board as a foundation for teaching computer architecture at a secondary-school level. No previous coursework is required. After an introductory chapter by Eben Upton on how the Raspberry Pi came to be, veteran computer explainer Jeff Duntemann begins at the very beginning, and in chapters 2 through 7 covers computer fundamentals, electronic memory, the ARM processor family, programming, non-volatile storage, and wired/wireless Ethernet. Then the other authors take over and cover operating systems, video CODECs and compression, 3D graphics, audio, and bitwise I/O.

FreePascal From Square One (Free Ebook Download)

Free PDF Ebook

The FOSS (free open source software) FreePascal compiler and its GUI builder/component framework Lazarus occupy the same niche in the FOSS world as Delphi and its internal Pascal compiler do in the commercial software world. Jeff Duntemann is adapting his classic Complete Turbo Pascal book (especially its final edition, retitled Borland Pascal 7 from Square One) for FreePascal and Lazarus…as a completely free, printable PDF-format ebook. This first volume of what will become a series covers basic programming concepts, installation of the product, and the fundamentals of the Pascal programming language, using the Lazarus IDE as a code editor.

51 Comments

  1. […] course, I have a Drumlins World story concept that involves simple electromechanical wireless voice transmission systems. The […]

  2. […] and “Sympathy on the Loss of One of Your Legs.” (Both are in my collection, Souls in Silicon.) In 1978 I wrote a (still unpublished) lighthearted 27,000-word action/adventure hard SF novella […]

  3. […] story was “Our Lady of the Endless Sky,” now in my collection Cold Hands and Other Stories. It’s about a slightly clueless Roman Catholic priest who manages to be sent as the Catholic […]

  4. […] morning while reading email with an iced coffee in hand that Phil Foglio posted a rave of my novel The Cunning Blood, both on the Girl Genius Facebook page and his LiveJournal. (Thanks abundant to Alice Bentley for […]

  5. […] humanity. I caught myself wondering what it would be like if seven hundred million people had read Drumlin Circus. I would probably have a new minivan–and little or no trouble selling Ten Gentle […]

  6. […] for other books and magazines over the years. This past year, he did a pair of covers for Copperwood Press, for a revival of the “Ace Double” concept. As for personal projects, he’s been working on […]

  7. Peprita Heart says:

    Hello Jeff,

    How much longer till your next book on Assembly Language?I have been working through Assembly Language Step by Step with delight.
    Though I am thinking of developing software for 64bit Windows Intel, and a book on this would be helpful.Any suggestions on where I could get detailed reliable information on this?

    High Regards,

    Peprita

    1. Well, that isn’t completely my decision. When the publisher wants a new edition, they contact me, and then I begin writing. I don’t see a new edition on the horizon for a couple of years yet. Worse, I need additional pages to cover 64 bit issues, and the number of pages I have in the book is limited. Unless I can persuade the publisher to go beyond the 600-page mark, I’m going to have to eliminate other material to cover 64-bit assembly.

      I still haven’t seen a book on 64-bit Intel that I respect, especially for people just learning. Most assembly books still on the market are old (mine included) and few devote the space to 64-bit issues that those issues deserve. So I’m not sure what to suggest. Keep looking, and check back here to my blog every now and then. Good luck and thanks for writing!

      1. Anon says:

        What about just putting out a small supplementary book? Perhaps just 100 pages or so?

      2. Jay Craswell says:

        Per the previous comment. For the last couple of days I also did a search for a good book on assembler/linux. I rejected all the books that start with source in C and those that cuss out anyone who would write code in assembler. So…. Today I bought your Step by Step book (A Kindle) I almost cried when I read the bit “Why on earth would you want to do that.” You define the type so well and without using any four letter words! P.S. I tried to compile Insight from source with the “easy” programming language “C” You can probably guess how well that went. Suddenly Fortan and paper punch aren’t looking so awful to me. Any tips on a front end for gdb (is it?) Anyway – thanks for a little relief from the madness. Anyway – I’m really enjoying your book (soon to be books)

        p.s. Tom Swift Jr was very good but I enjoyed Rick Brandt and Brains Benton a tad more.

  8. Brian Tkatch says:

    I read Assembly Language Step-By-Step (first edition, though i seem to have lost it and now own the second edition) for an excellent introduction to Assembly Language. Though i felt the section on binary to be wanting, when it matters, this is the book i recommend for understanding Assembly.

    Great job, Jeff!

  9. jic says:

    Is there any chance of a Kindle edition of The Cunning Blood?

    1. It’s in my plan file, but I’d hoped to do another pass on it before creating an ebook version. I do have the novel in PDF format. The mobi and epub versions will take a little work. Certainly, when I’m ready to release it I’ll post an announcement here. I appreciate your interest in it, and I boggle to remember that it was first published nine years ago.

      1. Status update: The ebook edition is almost complete, and an artist is working on a brand-new cover. I expect to get it posted on the Kindle store some time this summer, as time permits.

        1. jic says:

          I’ve read the hardback since I asked the question, but the ebook edition is good news: it deserves a wider audience. By the way do you have any plans for a sequel, or for other stories set in the same ‘universe’?

          1. Yes, though it’s less of a sequel than another book set in the same universe. It’s called The Molten Flesh and is about the nanotech society called Protea, and a Protea instance that thinks it’s Oscar Wilde. The main character is Peter Novilio’s girlfriend Laura Rocci. I have a concept for a third novel called The Subtle Mind but my subconscious hasn’t given me too many details yet.

            I will probably do a Drumlins novel before The Molten Flesh.

          2. I wanted to make sure you knew that The Cunning Blood is now available as a Kindle ebook, available either from the Kindle store for $2.99, or as part of a Kindle Unlimited subscription, at no extra charge.

            I also just posted an unrelated novel, Ten Gentle Opportunities, also $2.99 and on KU.

  10. Mike Wenczel says:

    Hi Jeff,

    I just found this diary and must take a minute to thank you. In 1990, after a second less than satisfactory job in sales had ended, I came across your book “Assembly Language from Square One” at the local bookstore. Its not an exaggeration to say the book started me on a new career path. The clear writing style and encouraging tone of the book gave me confidence that I could actually learn to program. I also seem to remember you recommending us to sample the new Microsoft Access desktop database for the intro price of $99. I did. Learning that and VB brought me immediate, much need income back in the early/mid 90’s. 24 years (and many books and languages) later I am still working as a full time developer in NYC. And I think I shall check out your latest update covering Linux. Thanks again for your great work.

    warm regards, Mike Wenczel

  11. Julian says:

    Hi Jeff,
    First, off I wanted to say you have created a wonderful book. I have tried reading other assembly language book but they seems to be written to confuse me more than to teach me. I love your style of writing.

    Second, I was tracking all the way up to page 268 (chapter 8) the uppercaser1.asm example then I stumble onto uppercaser2.sam and that it where it all fell apart for me. On page 276 of the uppercaser2.asm example you do the following, “mov esi, eax”.
    I had no idea what you were doing until I re-read chapter 8 page 269. The section that say “sys_read” and I figured out you said there was a return value.

    Third, I know many people are having problems with Insight but I found a solution that works for the current version of Ubuntu 16.04. I installed Ubuntu, then followed the directions below for insight.
    http://www.dalfonso.co/blog/2016/04/23/setting-insight-debugger-on-ubuntu-16-04-lts/

    next I installed the packages below per the website you mentioned

    http://www.stepbystep.ishipaco.com/

    and I got a working copy of everything needed for the class. I created all of this in VMware just in case I had a system crash. Some of the package below are not necessary because they are for insight but I didn’t know which ones so I left them. Someone smarter than me can tell me which ones they are.

    apt-get -f –force-yes –yes install tofrodos nasm kate bless kdbg ktechlab kile konsole build-essential xorg-dev libncurses5-dev libpthread-stubs0-dev libpthread-stubs0

    Once again thanks for a great book, I am off to Chapter 9.

  12. Dean says:

    Hi I can’t seem to access either of the url’s listed in chapter 5 for the source code. One is unavailable and the other is forbidden, any chance you could resolve please?

    1. This is weird. The copperwood.com/pub directory URL has worked for years. But you’re right; it’s not accessible. I’m working on the problem; in the meantime I’ll email you the archive for the book. Thanks for letting me know–this is the first report I’ve received telling me that something is wrong.

      –73–

      –JD–

      1. Jim Allen says:

        Never mind. I found it at:

        http://www.duntemann.com/assembly.html

        Thank you

  13. Alain says:

    Hi Jeff. Any news for the next edition of your wonderfull book Assembly language step-by-step ?

    1. Alas, no. It’s been since 2009, so it’s more or less time for a new edition, but I don’t get to make that decision. When the publisher wants a new edition, they ask for one. Of course, when they ask next time I’m going to ask for another 100 pages to cover 64-bit issues…but I may not get them. It then becomes a question of what to cut so I can cover 64-bit as it deserves.

  14. Gene Buckle says:

    Jeff, could you add your Free Pascal book to this list? I had no idea it existed until I stumbled across this blog post: http://capecodgunny.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-lazarus-effect.html.

    I’ve been a fan of your work for 30+ years – thanks for doing it!

    1. Heh. I never thought of doing that, but I will. I haven’t finished it yet, but there’s enough in it to be useful, and it needs updating. I’ll a note to that extent. Thanks for the noodge.

  15. Tim Fidler says:

    Jeff. I think that the 6T9 compactron Tx is a great idea .. antenna loading built in and all that but a single freq xtal lockd Tx is not real practical now on the bands..Why don’t you put a link to this – as a suggestion.. on your site.http://www.qsl.net/wn2a/MOuSeFET4.pdf. These monobanders are not as simple as the design you have but will produce 20 W (ie. Atlantic spanning ) and are frequency agile. Fred at Far ccts is still producing the PCBs as far as I know.. may have spider webs on em of course.. There is an alt. simple Tx design (hybrid Fet/ Compactron PA) that is freq agile.. I can discuss it with you if you come back to me. cheers Tim Fidler in NZ.

  16. Mehmet Ali Can says:

    Is there maybe dutch language same book?

    1. Some of my Pascal books are available in Dutch. Which book do you mean?

      1. Mehmet Ali Can says:

        Assembly Language Step By Step, Third Edition

        1. Alas, as best I know there’s no Dutch edition of that particular book. Most of my older Pascal books can be had in Dutch on the used market. Some are now 30+ years old.

  17. Mehmet Ali Can says:

    Assembly Language Step By Step, Third Edition

  18. Joshua says:

    Is it possible to get a listings diskette for your Assembly Language book that used DOS? This must be the first edition. I’m at the chapter on JED and would really like to check it out. Thanks.

    1. Look at the indicia page (copyright information) and tell me the copyright year. That’ll tell me which book it is (there are actually four editions, starting in 1990) I’ll look in my archives and find the listings zipfile and email it to you. My guess is that it’s 1992; that’s the edition with my picture on the cover.

      You can email me: Put my first name (jeff) together with my last name with an at sign in the middle, followed by .com.

  19. Naveen Arora says:

    Sir,

    Any update regarding
    “Assembly Language Step By Step, Fourth Edition” (64 bit)?

    Hope to get reply from the master who knows how to teach assembly as a first programming language.

    Thanks & Regards
    Naveen Arora

  20. Wong Jawa says:

    First, i am learning python some years ago.
    And stuck with that language until recently.

    I am learning java for advancing my programming skill set.
    And then going to C.
    And, i had a hard time to grasp “pointer” concept in C.

    I am almost feeling hopeless to at least understand the concept of “C pointer”, until i found your book. Just reading from chapter 1 to chapter 4, magically, without my own intention, the pointer concept coming in naturally to my mind.

    Thank you very much for all of your work.

    And like any other people, I am too waiting your “Assembly Language Step By Step, Fourth Edition” book.

  21. Joe says:

    Hi Jeff,

    I’ve been reading FreePascal from Square One. Very nicely done and looking forward to the additions on OOP etc. Just thought I’d point out a typo on page 189 near the foot of the page : you say Vowels >= Alphabet will evaluate to TRUE, but in fact the expression is FALSE (because Vowels isn’t a superset of Alphabet). So to be correct you must either change the relation to <= or change the result to FALSE.

    1. Thanks! Was an easy fix. I need to budget a little time to finish up the last little bits so I can consider it done and complete. No news on further books beyond the note-taking stages, though I have a lot of material I can borrow from my Delphi books and some articles. Thanks again!

  22. jad says:

    Just an FYI. The Amazon links for Firejammer actually lead to the Amazon pages for Drumlin Circus / On Gossamer Wings.

    1. Thanks for letting me know! All fixed now. I much appreciate your taking the time to tell me. And I boggle that I didn’t find that bug when I added Firejammer to the list back in 2019!

  23. Brett Markham says:

    Seldom have I eagerly anticipated a non-fiction book, but looking through your Freepascal from Square 1 … I am anticipating the second book!

    I became familiar with Freepascal in a strange way. Back in DOS/Windows days, I had done most of my programming in Borland Pascal and then Delphi. Then I went into Linux administration … and one day, I needed to write a piece of software wherein one Linux box transmitted info to another, the other would listen for it, and react a certain way. Today there are a lot of (large, resource-intensive and complex) frameworks to do this out of the box, but in 2002 there wasn’t a lot available. Rather than approach such a complex thing in C, with which I was familiar but not good, I searched for a Pascal compiler for Linux … and found what was then called “FPK Pascal” — the previous name for Freepascal. It even came with a very very familiar text mode IDE!

    A great recent study, ranking programming languages by energy efficiency, still shows Pascal to be as solid as C in terms of performance and efficiency. Pascal is dramatically underutilized, and I think already solves the problems languages like Rust and Go try to address. A great and modern series of books on Freepascal is the solution, and I applaud you for taking on such a challenge!

    BTW, I was a subscriber to your magazines back in the day, and read the END before the rest of the mags. lol Have a great day.

  24. Alex Dillard says:

    Quick question about the “The Game of Assembly Language ” on page 10 in your second edition of Assembly Language Step-by-Step (I have the latest / third edition as well — looking forward to the fourth edition): Looks to me like the data in memory is two strings, a three character string and a four character string, is that accurate? If so, based on the registers and the program counter, my guess is that the first string should read “Ibm” (starting with an upper case i), or possibly “Lbm”. Have I got that right? It appears what was printed in the book is “lbm” (starting with a lower case L).

  25. Stephen Rufle says:

    Having an issue downloading asmsbs4e.zip
    http://www.junkbox.com/pub gives a 404
    http://www.copperwood.com/pub gives Forbidden

    Using this URL
    http://www.contrapositivediary.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/x64ASMSBS.zip

    Says its going to take 99 days 🙂 I will leave it overnight

    1. I just tried downloading it here using the link on contrapositivediary.com that you quoted and it took less than a minute. Try again; the Internet is nothing if not fluky. The file is only 1.5 MB; if you still have trouble shoot me an email (jeff at duntemann dot com) and I’ll email it to you.

  26. Greg Blakemore says:

    Howdy Jeff,

    Having the same issue with asmsbs4e.zip being hard to locate.

    http://www.junkbox.com/pub is a 404
    http://www.copperwood.com/pub is forbidden
    http://www.contrapositediary.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/x64ASMSBS.zip is not loading anything to my browser.

    Love your writing style! and the history lessons. I’m not a programmer, but back in the 1990’s, with a lot of help I wrote a small sub-routine, in assembler, on a IBM mainframe.

    Greg

  27. Greg Blakemore says:

    I got it!

    Clicking on the link for “Downloading the Listing Archive” did not work for me, but a left click and “Save Link as” did download the file.

    Thanks!

    1. Sorry for the messup. I’m a little surprised that WordPress wouldn’t start a download simply by clicking on the link.

      Now, you do mean “right click” here, right?

      WHich browser are you using? A lot of my older Web stuff is misbehaving because it predates https. Or something. I’m going to be talking to the hosting service about that soon.

      1. Greg Blakemore says:

        The right click would not have any effect. With the left click I have a menu of tasks I can choose from.

        The “save link as….” option allowed me to download and save the file.

        As for browser, I am using Chrome, on a Ubuntu system.

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