Ugh this brings back memories. After spending 1988-92 on ARM stuff (Acorn) I ended up doing something on DOS with assembly, well MASM. x86 was horrible in the 16-bit segmented mode. I finished the job off in Turbo Pascal in the end. To this day it scares me and I hadn't delved lower than C since.<p>Edit: I've still got a copy of MS DOS encyclopaedia sitting on my bookshelf actually. Signed by Gates. Ebay time!
The Intel manuals have become ever increasing in size<p>I remember around 2000 it was 3 manuals, last time I checked it was 5 or 6<p>New instructions, new functionality (virtualization) etc<p>But the old manuals still have a lot of relevant stuff, especially if you want to work at the low-level (like switching to protected mode, page tables, etc)
I used to know that manual inside and out. Very nostalgic. I still have the original 8086 manual. Entire instruction set, plus pin layout, thermal specs, ... everything in one small manual.