Rating: 
Summary: Not for Software Developers
Review: Basically, this book is very similar to the PCI SIG specification in many respects (without the hefty PCI SIG membership fee). I was surprised to find that Hot-Plug PCI is given some treatment, but as with most of the material it was generalized and skewed towards the hardware design audience. This book does do a good job of laying out the registers and explaining them. After I finished reading this book, I was able to do what I need to do, but didn't have a great idea of how the whole system worked. There are plenty of timing diagrams and lots of good information, but most of it useless for a software developer. For example, the entire chapter of Hot-Plug PCI was well written, but it described what needed to be done to the various control lines-- something that would be implemented by the Hotplug PCI chipset controller. As a result, it is nice to know, but ultimately, useless. Simply stated, if you are looking for a book to help write a device driver for a PCI-based device, this isn't it. On the other hand, if you are software developer looking for a primer on PCI, I would still look elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: Not for Software Developers
Review: Basically, this book is very similar to the PCI SIG specification in many respects (without the hefty PCI SIG membership fee). I was surprised to find that Hot-Plug PCI is given some treatment, but as with most of the material it was generalized and skewed towards the hardware design audience. This book does do a good job of laying out the registers and explaining them. After I finished reading this book, I was able to do what I need to do, but didn't have a great idea of how the whole system worked. There are plenty of timing diagrams and lots of good information, but most of it useless for a software developer. For example, the entire chapter of Hot-Plug PCI was well written, but it described what needed to be done to the various control lines-- something that would be implemented by the Hotplug PCI chipset controller. As a result, it is nice to know, but ultimately, useless. Simply stated, if you are looking for a book to help write a device driver for a PCI-based device, this isn't it. On the other hand, if you are software developer looking for a primer on PCI, I would still look elsewhere.
Rating: 
Summary: Just OK
Review: Being an Electrical Engineer, and one that has already designed a PCI product (PC Card), I purchased this book as a re-fresher based on another EE comments. The book is VERY good at: Describing the many PCI based registers. Providing useful timing diagram information. Providing useful driver information tips, and explaining the "fair" nature of the PCI bus. The book is poor at: Providing useful electronic interface information. Way too wordy, but worse yet overly repetitive. Did not cover PCB layout issues. Overly focused on PC interface - what about embedded system? The PCI bus architecture has grown to huge acceptance within the embedded world, yet this book focuses almost entirely on a PC interface. The book also fails to address the electrical characteristics of the bus. About four pages (total of 700+) are spent on the reflective wave nature of PCI. This is a lost because most EE are only familiar with an incident wave bus signal. If designing a complex embedded system with multiple loads, and PCI to PCI Bridges, you can forget about any help here when it comes to multiple transmission line reflections and PCB layout assistance. How could anyone write a "how to" book about a bus (any bus for that matter) and fail to cover the topic of bus transmission is beyond me (especially a bus that can clock up to 66MHz). WOW unbelievable! Lastly, this must have been a pay by the page deal. There are over 700+ pages (and I read most of them). Believe me, it could have been much shorter. Much of the information is repeated over, and over again (more than 2 or 3 times).
Rating:
Summary: Just OK
Review: Being an Electrical Engineer, and one that has already designed a PCI product (PC Card), I purchased this book as a re-fresher based on another EE comments. The book is VERY good at: Describing the many PCI based registers. Providing useful timing diagram information. Providing useful driver information tips, and explaining the "fair" nature of the PCI bus. The book is poor at: Providing useful electronic interface information. Way too wordy, but worse yet overly repetitive. Did not cover PCB layout issues. Overly focused on PC interface - what about embedded system? The PCI bus architecture has grown to huge acceptance within the embedded world, yet this book focuses almost entirely on a PC interface. The book also fails to address the electrical characteristics of the bus. About four pages (total of 700+) are spent on the reflective wave nature of PCI. This is a lost because most EE are only familiar with an incident wave bus signal. If designing a complex embedded system with multiple loads, and PCI to PCI Bridges, you can forget about any help here when it comes to multiple transmission line reflections and PCB layout assistance. How could anyone write a "how to" book about a bus (any bus for that matter) and fail to cover the topic of bus transmission is beyond me (especially a bus that can clock up to 66MHz). WOW unbelievable! Lastly, this must have been a pay by the page deal. There are over 700+ pages (and I read most of them). Believe me, it could have been much shorter. Much of the information is repeated over, and over again (more than 2 or 3 times).
Rating: 
Summary: It has good index, content page, and description.
Review: First let's review the drawbacks. It has scant coverage of electrical aspects of PCI. It does not cover any of Intel's
PCI bridge chips. Now on the bright side, for whatever it does cover, it has easy to read text with good content page.
Rating:
Summary: Big PCI Book
Review: Geez it's all in here. What more could you want? I needed to write a device driver in Mac OS X for a custom PCI card. It was my first driver and I was clueless about PCI. It's a simple decision: If you're doing PCI, get this book.
Rating:
Summary: Big PCI Book
Review: Geez it's all in here. What more could you want? I needed to write a device driver in Mac OS X for a custom PCI card. It was my first driver and I was clueless about PCI. It's a simple decision: If you're doing PCI, get this book.
Rating:
Summary: Not too different from the PCI Spec from PCI-SIG
Review: Hi,
Bought this book under the assumption that the coverage would be better than the PCI Specification from PCI-SIG, but the book is pretty much an exact copy of the specification document. If you can get your hands on the original PCI spec., you will be better off. The only saving grace for this book was that it covered all the stuff from the spec., so if you don't have access to the spec., the book does an ok job covering the whole PCI area.
Rating:
Summary: Not too different from the PCI Spec from PCI-SIG
Review: Hi,
Bought this book under the assumption that the coverage would be better than the PCI Specification from PCI-SIG, but the book is pretty much an exact copy of the specification document. If you can get your hands on the original PCI spec., you will be better off. The only saving grace for this book was that it covered all the stuff from the spec., so if you don't have access to the spec., the book does an ok job covering the whole PCI area.
Rating: 
Summary: Software engineer
Review: I agree with other reviewers that said the book is not very helpful if you are writing a PCI device driver. It's full of register definitions and timing diagrams but I never got a feel for how to put it all together. This book may be useful for hardware designers but it is largely worthless for software engineers. If you're writing a driver and you want more info, don't waste your money here.
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