book review:
BIOS das Praxisbuch (praxis book) , 5. ed.
Studienausgabe with CDROM (unabridged) by Alle Metzlar (c) 2005, ISBN 9783772 370342, €20, 405 pages, Franzis publishers "professional series"
There are only a handful books out there (in German language) which carry "BIOS" in its title, a recent one is Metzlar's book.
it had a sticker on it "know how für lau" (know how cost free), which for me in case was true since it was on bargain sale free of charge with only €4 shipping cost by terrashop. (folks, I have no affiliation with any commercial firms involved).
Now, the book is not too bad and compiles many useful information (master passwords for legacy bios, ISR, post code,CMOS table values asf.). However, it is mainly suited for intermediate and beginner level I would assume. It deals with legacy BIOS only. LinuxBIOS developers will probably not find too much new info in it - but then it does not claim to do so. Probably Darmawan's book is more of a source here.
There is some writing about a couple of freeware / shareware windows tools for hardware tweaking and such. Some BIOS functions are detailed with some source code (DMI, pnp functions).
The author has done a good job in bringing entry level people to a certain level of understanding what the legacy BIOS is about and how to start tinkering with it. Yet a true professional developer will probably not so much leaf through it if he/she encounters tricky challenges during BIOS development.
Book publishers seem to like the term "The standard work on " (anything) which they label this book with. Readers who know true standard works (e.g. on human evolution, a chess opening) might find this a bit too "salespeople-ish" in this case. Maybe Darmawan at some point will be the real guy who wrote the book on "BIOS" ? There is space for that in the german book market, observers could presume. --Q
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Quux