FS: Amiga Guru Book by Ralph Babel

[Pat the Cat]

AFAIK R Babels book, the 700 odd page one, was withdrawn from publication in English, but was published in German. Am I wrong about that?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

AFAIK R Babels book, the 700 odd page one, was withdrawn from publication in English, but was published in German. Am I wrong about that?

FWIW he mentions it briefly at the bottom of this page:

http://babel.de/amiga.html

[Trev]

Assuming the book wasn't stolen, Ralph already made his money. You've never bought anything used before?

[darkage]

Im actually really curious with whats in the book ?   just want to see what the fuss is all about.

[guest11527]

AFAIK R Babels book, the 700 odd page one, was withdrawn from publication in English, but was published in German. Am I wrong about that?

Yes. There are two editions of the book, the first edition was in German, and the second - extended and reworked edition - in English. If possible, get the English version, it covers more material and is a bit more up to date.

[guest11527]

Im actually really curious with whats in the book ?   just want to see what the fuss is all about.

It is a very good manual on the interfaces and data structures of - in particular - the dos.library. It covers many of the dark areas the Bantam Books "Amiga Dos Manual" should have covered, but did not. It is rather hard to write a robust file handler or dos handler without this book because the "Dos Manual" (aka "Tripos Manual") fails to cover so many important aspects.

In addition, it also includes some details about the processors, command line options of the Aztec and the (back then up to date) Lattice 5, and exec internals like the kick mem and resident tags.

If you want to do some serious programming on the Amiga, especially in the dos area, it's highly recommended.

It would require some updating here and there (the 68060 is not discussed because the book predated the processor, there is nothing on the MMU, there is nothing on the SAS/C 6 for the same reason, and there are - here and there - a couple of very minor mistakes that slipped through).

There was never a newer edition because some freak had nothing better to do than to pirate the book and provide a copy in PDF in the net, which resulted in Ralph quitting the project. Thanks, folks!

[Pat the Cat]

There was never a newer edition because some freak had nothing better to do than to pirate the book and provide a copy in PDF in the net, which resulted in Ralph quitting the project. Thanks, folks!

That bit I'm confused at. His website states that he stopped publication a few days before the due date and withdrew the English edition from sale to suppliers. The German edition went ahead...

... So it's not that the 2nd edition wasn't ever printed in English, just that the books didn't hit the open market. The German ones did, but are all sold out now anyway.

As for "The AmigaDOS manual", I think the Bantam books one was done by Mark Smiddy? I don't think the intention was for it to be a developer resource, but rather a public resource. There was a clear distinction at the time, so I doubt he could access material on the DOS Library, or a lot of other developer issues. He certainly was not happy at gaps in the content, but I doubt he ever really thought it would be used as a resource for development. Maybe he did and I just didn't notice.

I never pointed developers at Mark Smiddy's book, it was for end users trying to find a definitive reference for just using the Amiga. I pointed them at the RKM and CATS and said "They know. I don't, and they can't tell me." For software, anyway. For hardware I pointed people at the HRM.

I didn't know anyplace else to point them, and the web didn't exist. The internet did, but I didn't have any kind of access to it, and was dimly aware of things like Compuserve and email addresses as things other people could use, but I didn't have much access to, for obvious reasons. I had no connections TO anybody by email, having zero university background. I could chat on BBS, that was about it.

[guest11527]

That bit I'm confused at. His website states that he stopped publication a few days before the due date and withdrew the English edition from sale to suppliers. The German edition went ahead...

I do not remember that anything was withdrawn. You could get the English edition (2nd edition) for quite a while at "Schatztruhe", just that it is sold out by now. I have this at home, so there is nothing particularly secret about it. As said, the German edition is the first edition, and somewhat different in content, though I never owned it so I cannot tell you the differences.

As for "The AmigaDOS manual", I think the Bantam books one was done by Mark Smiddy?

I do not recall who the editor is, or was. Amazon lists CBM as author, though this is certainly not adequate.

https://www.amazon.com/AMIGA-MANUAL-Bantam-Amiga-library/dp/0553354035

I don't think the intention was for it to be a developer resource, but rather a public resource. There was a clear distinction at the time, so I doubt he could access material on the DOS Library, or a lot of other developer issues.

Actually, it is a developer resource as well. It does list all the entries in the dos.library, the packet types, the CLI and Dos structures, overlays and the FFS structures. Just not in the detail necessary you would need for high quality development.

That's mostly because the AmigaDos manual is more or less a copy-paste job of the "Tripos Manual". The books are really almost identical (in the earlier editions at least) except a sed -e "s/Tripos/AmigaDos/", and some details. Structures in Tripos were mostly identical (CLI, for example, is exactly the same thing, the filing system is exactly the same thing, packets were identical, most commands were identical).

Archive.org seems to have a copy:

https://archive.org/details/1986-metacomco-intro-to-tripos

so you can judge yourself.

[bloodline]

Actually, it is a developer resource as well. It does list all the entries in the dos.library, the packet types, the CLI and Dos structures, overlays and the FFS structures. Just not in the detail necessary you would need for high quality development.

That's mostly because the AmigaDos manual is more or less a copy-paste job of the "Tripos Manual". The books are really almost identical (in the earlier editions at least) except a sed -e "s/Tripos/AmigaDos/", and some details. Structures in Tripos were mostly identical (CLI, for example, is exactly the same thing, the filing system is exactly the same thing, packets were identical, most commands were identical).

Archive.org seems to have a copy:

https://archive.org/details/1986-metacomco-intro-to-tripos

so you can judge yourself.

It is scary how much of the "Amiga" we know is actually Tripos!

[nicholas]

AFAIK R Babels book, the 700 odd page one, was withdrawn from publication in English, but was published in German. Am I wrong about that?

The 1st edition was Das Guru Book, then the 2nd and slightly updated edition was in English as The Guru Book.

There was supposed to be a heavily updated 3rd edition around 10-ish(if memory serves me) years ago but a PDF of it was leaked to the internet so Ralph never published it sadly.

Mine is the second edition.

[Pat the Cat]

OK, that clears most things up. If nobody has paid cash to you in 1 week, I'll buy it. No postage, I'll be checking it with a loupe. You can have either cash or Paypal.

That gives me a chance to check into a few things - like I said, the guy treated me very well. Not just me, a helluva lot of people.

Oh yeah, the Mark Smiddy thing. He wrote something else, more of a users guide, handy for seeing when commands appeared and disappeared. "Mastering AmigaDOS", Bruce Smith books. My mistake.

https://openlibrary.org/books/OL12081193M/Mastering_AmigaDOS_3

[mark_k]

There was supposed to be a heavily updated 3rd edition around 10-ish(if memory serves me) years ago but a PDF of it was leaked to the internet so Ralph never published it sadly.

The PDF on the internet wasn't leaked, someone scanned the 2nd edition book and uploaded it.

[saimon69]

The 1st edition was Das Guru Book, then the 2nd and slightly updated edition was in English as The Guru Book.

There was supposed to be a heavily updated 3rd edition around 10-ish(if memory serves me) years ago but a PDF of it was leaked to the internet so Ralph never published it sadly.

I remember that; it was in 2008 and i did sign a petition to have it published anyway - to no avail as you can see now.

[Pat the Cat]

Yeah, I can see why that would upset him. Designers spend years getting  pages looking right, good thick use of true colour, arrange things  perfectly so there's depth in the visual presentation. Page layout is an  art. So is technical writing, although maybe it doesn't look that way.

So,  he spends years getting it looking just perfect, then some rotten so  and so uploads a 256 colour scan that looks OK on a screen, and terrible  when printed out in the real world. I'm fine with people doing similar  with stuff I wrote, but I don't own copyright on that, and it wasn't  that accurate to begin with. Ralph is way off the other end of the scale  on Amiga technology. No wonder he was upset. Still is, by the sound of  it.

I do use scanned works, but I scan them from originals I am  interested in. I do not distribute them. I don't even leave them around  on machines with internet access so they cannot be hacked. This is  legal, they really ARE for personal study. And they are never as easy to  use as a printed work.

I can guarantee you, it won't be in  pristine condition by the time I'm done with it. That might sound like  sacrilege of a holy relic, but books are tools, as well as beautiful  objects.

[Trev]

Humorously, it was Ralph that popularized the PDF. It wasn't common knowledge until he ranted about it. As I recall, it's a quality scan and fully searchable. The content is black and white, so it's not like it needed to be anything other than greyscale anyway. Still, I'm sad
Ralph never published the third edition. The only winner was Ralph's ego.

[LoadWB]

Humorously, it was Ralph that popularized the PDF. It wasn't common knowledge until he ranted about it. As I recall, it's a quality scan and fully searchable. The content is black and white, so it's not like it needed to be anything other than greyscale anyway. Still, I'm sad
Ralph never published the third edition. The only winner was Ralph's ego.

Actually, from that stand-point it was more Ralph's ego which was a casualty. Everyone lost, including whomever did all the work to scan and distribute something which is not up-to-date (I don't want to say out-dated because obviously it's still useful.)

In any case, I have an English Guru Book and it's great reading. Even though I'm not a developer I have found it incredibly informative and helpful in understanding the how and why of Amiga.