If ever there was a misleading book title, this is it. After reading this boring text, I'm still trying to work out what it has to do with the Commodore 64.

The blurb explains that sooner or later you'll feel restricted by Basic, and that for really fast operation and control, machine code is the answer. It even goes on to suggest that keybeeps might be possible. Wow!

It's written by well-known author Ian Sinclair and it's the same old formula.

Hexadecimal and binary arithmetic and suchlike are essentialy but boring subjects to learn. But, if you can package them together with plenty of programming examples and things to do, you could be on to a winner.

But Ian Sinclair introduces the subjects in a drawn out manner, and the result for me was loss of interest.

No real projects are tackled and, worse, none of the outstanding features of the Commodore 64 are used!

It all adds up to an elementary book which gives the novice a long read with nothing much accomplished and little new knowledge about how the C64 works.

David Janda