Has Turbo C 2.0, Turbo C++ 1.0, and Turbo Pascal 1, 3.01 and 5.5 up. The official Embacardawhateverthehellthey'recalled site is a pain in the ass to download them from, but many sites have them mirrored. while more robust versions like turbo pascal 7 remains one of the best compilers ever made for DOS - even compared to most C implementations INCLUDING Borland's own attempts. On a low memory systems Turbo Pascal 3 is one of the few that can operate in as little as 128k of RAM with a built in editor off a single 360k floppy with room to burn. I would suggest the Borland compilers to start with just because the early versions are officially free (turbo pascal 3.01 and 5.5, Turbo C 3.0), the later versions are easy enough to find. You may still be interested in learning how the BIOS interface works and how some of the devices in the PC works, like the CGA, MDA and EGA. If you just want to program, without nessecarely understanding how the PC works on a lower level, then you can read up on some 3rd-level languages like Pascal, C or Fortran. This book also contains a lot of references to books of futher and more detailed/technical literature.

It also has sections on communication, timing, and how to interface with analog devices. This book gives a full description of how CPUs and the x86 assembler language works (including the x87 FPU), some basics on TTL-logic, and then some chapters on the various devices that makes up the PC. A book I can suggest here is the revised edition of 'The IBM Personal Computer from the inside-out' by Murray III Sargent and Richard L. If you really want to understand how the PC work on the lowest level, I would suggest you get a book that covers the inner workings of the PC. It all depends on to what level you want to program it.

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