William T. Barden

This book contains 30 programs that Barden and his wife, Janet, wrote for the IBM PC and compatibles. He personally guaranteed the programs were thoroughly checked and would run as listed.

The programs are self-contained and can be entered into your PC in any order. Programs that create disk files can be accessed by other programs.

The presentation of each program follows this pattern: (1) Program Description, (2) Using the Program, (3) Background of the Program, (4) How the Program Works, (5) Special Notes, and (6) Program Listing.

There are a variety of applications in the book from home finance and small business programs to educational programs.

My Favorite Program. When I purchased this book, I was especially intrigued by the final program in the book, "A Simple Word Processor." It had its limits, such as, 80 characters per line, but it had great practical and motivational value for programmers in training. (I was teaching a course in BASIC programming at the time.)

Trivia. By comparing the title page with the facts-of-publication page in this book, the careful reader will observe that William Barden, Jr. and William T. Barden are one and the same person.… (mer)

This 1986 publication was my earliest introduction to Local Area Networks (LAN) -- their hardware and software, their pros and cons. At the time, we were looking for an inexpensive way at my institution to network a half-dozen or so DOS-based PC compatible computers in our college library.

Barden wrote about ARCNet, ViaNet and Xenix. He explained how the various LAN systems worked -- the Star Network, the Ring Network, the Bus Network, and Token Passing Networks.

I gave up my quest when I encountered the following statement in the last chapter of the book: "A reasonable amount of time to install a two-station configuration starting from packing boxes is a week. A reasonable amount of time to install a six-station LAN that is fully operational (and starting with computer-knowledgeable users) is three weeks."

We would have to wait a few years until Windows 3.1 hit the scene. This was in the early 1990s after we heard about LANtastic from Artisoft, Inc. LANtastic became our network of choice before Windows 95 arrived with its built-in TCP/IP networking capabilities.… (mer)

At the time this book was written, there were so many printers available from Radio Shack that a book like this had to be created. Printers that carried the Radio Shack brand included the following: CGP 115, 220; DMP 100, 110, 120, 200,400,420,500,2100,2100P; DW I, II, IIB; DWP 210, 410; LP I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII; QP I, II; TP 10; Plotter/Printer.

By this time, printers were no longer simple line printers of plain text. The newer printers were capable of printing graphics, boldface, and proportionally spaced text. This book was written to help its readers take full advantage of these new features.

Barden split his book into three sections. Section One covered printer basics. Section Two dealt with printing text. Section Three explained graphics printing.

As an aid to understanding printer "codes," Barden included a table in the appendix for making decimal, binary, and hexadecimal conversions from 0 through 255.… (mer)