The Amiga Guru Book is both an indispensable reference manual and a text book. Containing many concise examples, ready-to-use listings, and comprehensive tables, it presents fundamental knowledge of the system that all Amiga programmers - regardless of the programming language used - must have at their disposal and be able to apply if they wish to create reliable and compatible software. This includes: information about the data types supported by the processor, the operating system, and the compiler; guidelines for proper multitasking programming; the meaning of Guru messages; and an introduction to the peculiarities of C and assembly-language programming on the Amiga.
Experienced C programmers will find information about ANSI C, memory models, compiler specifics, and how to employ the special features supported exclusively by Amiga C compilers so as to create more efficient programs, as well as an overview of all compiler and linker options, libraries, and much more for both Aztec C and SAS/C.
Included for advanced programmers are explanations of
amiga.lib
, debugging techniques, and ROM-Wack,
along with overviews of the hard- and software memory map,
the real-time clock, and start-up diagnostics, as well as an
in-depth look at the programming of boot blocks and
reset-protected programs.
For AmigaDOS pros, this book reveals everything about the
dos.library
, its error codes, the CLI and user
shells, handlers and packets, BCPL, the Global Vector,
processes and their creation, and the data structures
employed by AmigaDOS. Special features of this book include:
the documentation of the structure of executable files as
well as the extended object module format, and a thorough
and easily understandable explanation of the on-disk block
layout of the Fast Filesystem (FFS).
The book takes the recent developments in the Amiga's system software into account and also pays attention to the peculiarities of the MC68020/030/040 processors and of the MC68881/882 floating-point units. It is concluded by a glossary, a list of recommended readings, and an extensive index.