Giving students a fun, “hands-on” learning experience, this thorough and visually appealing text uses a step-by-step approach to teach the basics of PC architecture—covering all x86 microprocessors from the 8088 to the Pentium Pro. Hailed by experts for its topical breadth, it offers intimate details of 80x86 assembly language programming, DOS memory map, BIOS, microprocessor architecture, interfacing techniques, system programming, hard disk characteristics, and much more. Clarifying concepts with numerous examples and review questions, it uses the Debug utility to explore the internal working of the PC and microprocessor interfacing, and shows students how to combine assembly and C programming from the start.