? McCOMIC TYPO REPORT by Barry Traver, 835 Green Valley Drive, Philadelphia, PA 19128 (C) Copyright 1988 by Barry Traver - All Rights Reserved Permission is given, however, to place this in User Group newsletters, on local BBS's, or on major telecommunications networks (BIX, CompuServe, Delphi, GEnie, the Source, etc.) provided that proper credit is given and that the material is unchanged in form. Assembly language is difficult enough to learn without having to contend with a multitude of typographical errors. Except for its lack of any significant number of specific program examples, one good book for beginners learning assembly language for the TI-99/4A is Ira McComic, LEARNING TI 99/4A HOME COMPUTER ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE PROGRAMMING (Prentice-Hall, 1984). The book, however, is marred by numerous typo's, which make an otherwise clear presentation to be rather confusing at times. If you have the book, you may find the following list of typo corrections helpful. It's probably not complete (I think I really only worked my way carefully through the first eleven chapters of the book), but it may be of use anyway. Page 3: Change "C DATA 3" to "A DATA 3" " " " 0 " Page 15: Change 0 = 1 10 TO 10 = 1 " " " 0 " Change 0 = 1 53 TO 53 = 1 " " " 0 " Change 0 = 1 18927 TO 18927 = 1 " " " 4 " Page 16: Change 4 = 2 X 2 X 2 X 2 = 16 TO 2 = 2 X 2 X 2 X 2 = 16 " " " 3 " Page 18: Change 3 = 16 X 16 X 16 = 4096 16 TO 16 = 16 X 16 X 16 = 4096 Page 27: Change "Moving left-to-right" to "Moving right-to-left" Page 28: Change "Moving left-to-right" to "Moving right-to-left" Page 36: Change "that unique" to "that has unique" Page 53: Change "SWPI" to "STWP" (twice) Page 99: Change "FORM LOOP" to "FROM LOOP" Page 194: Change "programs segments" to "program segments" Page 195: Change "ranch (B)" to "Branch (B)" Page 224: Change "value it" to "value in it" Also note that pages 85, 86, 87, and 88 are in incorrect order. If you want chapter 8 to make sense, read these pages in the following order: 84, 87, 88, 85, 86, 89. If you find additional errors, let me know, so that I can update this list. If some of the errors listed above are not in your copy, then it may be that Prentice-Hall recognized how poor a job of proofreading was done (if anyone did proofread the book!) and made corrections in later editions. (For some reason, I doubt that, however.) Once these typographical corrections are made, this book is a helpful book for beginners who want to learn how to write assembly language programs for the TI-99/4A using the Editor/Assembler. (McComic, by the way, is also one of the authors of the Mini Memory manual as well as one of the contributors to the Editor/Assembler manual.) In my opinion, the best book for learning assembly language is Peter M.L. Lottrup, COMPUTE!'S BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE ON THE TI-99/4A (COMPUTE!, 1985), except for the fact that it's oriented toward the Mini Memory cartridge and the Line-by-Line Assembler. If you own Lottrup's book and are interested in supplementary notes of page-by-page comments (especially on what changes are necessary to apply the book to the Editor/Assembler or Extended BASIC), write me for further information. Assembly language is worth learning, and both books - McComic and Lottrup - can be of considerable help, once some unnecessary obstacles (like typo's) are removed. I hope that this list of "McComic Typo Corrections" is useful to you and will help you on your way to becoming an accomplished assembly language programmer, so that we can continue to have fine new software available for the TI-99/4A. Enjoy! Download complete. Turn off Capture File.