<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Prentice Hall should be Ashamed
Review: As you can tell from the other reviews, this book is terrible. This book is required for a college course, and I am furious that I've paid so much money for such a worthless piece of junk! It is the kind of book that you read a page, and then question if any of it really sank in. So you re-read it, and realize that the guy that wrote the book really didn't give a rip as to whether it was comprehendable or not. He just wanted his check from Prentice Hall publishing (who should be ashamed of themselves for actually marketing such junk).
For those of you who need this for a class, find as cheap of a copy as you can, and pray that your prof can translate, and actually teach the subject.
Rating:
Summary: I would rate lower if a lower rating existed
Review: I have this book because it is requred for the course in computer architecture I am taking. In addition to the stuff the other guys above wrote which is all true, it has the infuriating habit of placing figures overleaf the explanation for the figures.
Rating:
Summary: Because it's used in my school...
Review: The only reason I would purchase this because is because it was a required book in my school. And boy, this is some really rough reading. Let me generalize, being a techinical book and a "logic" one the authors' attempt to convey a message so garbled and mismanaged it is extermely mind numbing to read. For example, here's an excerpt from the book, "We also, however, choose to treat it first so that we can clearly justify, in terms of hardware cost, that which otherwise appears bizarre and often is accepted on faith, namely, the use of complement representations in arithmetic."
Ok that wasn't so bad right? Well think about reading a few pages. Bored yet? I feel like I'm in a middle of a sunday church service and the priest is repetiously rephrasing a sentence over, and over, and over with no meaning intended.
I belive these authors should stick to what they do best. Design circuits. They fail to explain things throughly without an emphasis WHY. Also there is too much technical garble mixed up with sentences which really should be split into paragraphs. Another thing is a hefty price tag that comes with this book.
I also forgot to mention the software. The software is designed by xilinx. I've not been able to get it to run on either my laptop, or my home pc. During lab hours at my school the schematic editor has been nothing but buggy. The software would at times erase my circuits, files wont save, etc. I find myself rewriting circuits 5 to 6 times just to rid of bugs that just seem to appear. If this book wasn't used in my classroom I'd recommend avioding it. NOt only is this book well over 100 dollars new and/or used the authors do a terrible job conveying technical data into a well formed, understandable structure we REAL humans can understand.
Rating:
Summary: Because it's used in my school...
Review: The only reason I would purchase this because is because it was a required book in my school. And boy, this is some really rough reading. Let me generalize, being a techinical book and a "logic" one the authors' attempt to convey a message so garbled and mismanaged it is extermely mind numbing to read. For example, here's an excerpt from the book, "We also, however, choose to treat it first so that we can clearly justify, in terms of hardware cost, that which otherwise appears bizarre and often is accepted on faith, namely, the use of complement representations in arithmetic."
Ok that wasn't so bad right? Well think about reading a few pages. Bored yet? I feel like I'm in a middle of a sunday church service and the priest is repetiously rephrasing a sentence over, and over, and over with no meaning intended.
I belive these authors should stick to what they do best. Design circuits. They fail to explain things throughly without an emphasis WHY. Also there is too much technical garble mixed up with sentences which really should be split into paragraphs. Another thing is a hefty price tag that comes with this book.
I also forgot to mention the software. The software is designed by xilinx. I've not been able to get it to run on either my laptop, or my home pc. During lab hours at my school the schematic editor has been nothing but buggy. The software would at times erase my circuits, files wont save, etc. I find myself rewriting circuits 5 to 6 times just to rid of bugs that just seem to appear. If this book wasn't used in my classroom I'd recommend avioding it. NOt only is this book well over 100 dollars new and/or used the authors do a terrible job conveying technical data into a well formed, understandable structure we REAL humans can understand.
Rating:
Summary: Because it's used in my school...
Review: The only reason I would purchase this because is because it was a required book in my school. And boy, this is some really rough reading. Let me generalize, being a techinical book and a "logic" one the authors' attempt to convey a message so garbled and mismanaged it is extermely mind numbing to read. For example, here's an excerpt from the book, "We also, however, choose to treat it first so that we can clearly justify, in terms of hardware cost, that which otherwise appears bizarre and often is accepted on faith, namely, the use of complement representations in arithmetic."
Ok that wasn't so bad right? Well think about reading a few pages. Bored yet? I feel like I'm in a middle of a sunday church service and the priest is repetiously rephrasing a sentence over, and over, and over with no meaning intended.
I belive these authors should stick to what they do best. Design circuits. They fail to explain things throughly without an emphasis WHY. Also there is too much technical garble mixed up with sentences which really should be split into paragraphs. Another thing is a hefty price tag that comes with this book.
I also forgot to mention the software. The software is designed by xilinx. I've not been able to get it to run on either my laptop, or my home pc. During lab hours at my school the schematic editor has been nothing but buggy. The software would at times erase my circuits, files wont save, etc. I find myself rewriting circuits 5 to 6 times just to rid of bugs that just seem to appear. If this book wasn't used in my classroom I'd recommend avioding it. NOt only is this book well over 100 dollars new and/or used the authors do a terrible job conveying technical data into a well formed, understandable structure we REAL humans can understand.
Rating:
Summary: Mediocre at Best -- Not for Self Study
Review: This book is used for first and second year computing science and engineering courses at Simon Fraser University (BC). Logic and Computer design fundamentals can be used as a decent supplement to a course, however, it would be nigh on impossible to learn the material without a decent teacher helping you along. I have had the privelage of an excellent prof in the courses using this book and that is necessary. Logic and computer design fundamentals is best used as either a supplementary reference for some diagrams or better, not at all.Material Covered:
Digital Computers and Information --> Introducton to number systems, codes, etc... basic and unclear for a beginning student Combinational Logic Circuits --> This is where an intro to logic book has to shine however for many of the persons that I know, they were unable to decipher how to sketch a Karnaugh map from this book. Were it not for the prof, the classes would be worthless. Following Material: Combinational Logic Design
Sequential Circuits
Registers and Counters
Memory and Programmable Logic Devices
Register Transfers and Datapaths
Sequencing and Control
Instruction Set Architecture
Central Processing Unit Designs
Input-Output and Communication
Memory Systems I would strongly discourage anybody from purchasing this book with the intentions of gaining a good understanding of Logic and Computer Design. The effort required to understand the material is unneeded as there are far superior books available
Rating:
Summary: Mediocre at Best -- Not for Self Study
Review: This book is used for first and second year computing science and engineering courses at Simon Fraser University (BC). Logic and Computer design fundamentals can be used as a decent supplement to a course, however, it would be nigh on impossible to learn the material without a decent teacher helping you along. I have had the privelage of an excellent prof in the courses using this book and that is necessary. Logic and computer design fundamentals is best used as either a supplementary reference for some diagrams or better, not at all. Material Covered:
Digital Computers and Information --> Introducton to number systems, codes, etc... basic and unclear for a beginning student Combinational Logic Circuits --> This is where an intro to logic book has to shine however for many of the persons that I know, they were unable to decipher how to sketch a Karnaugh map from this book. Were it not for the prof, the classes would be worthless. Following Material: Combinational Logic Design
Sequential Circuits
Registers and Counters
Memory and Programmable Logic Devices
Register Transfers and Datapaths
Sequencing and Control
Instruction Set Architecture
Central Processing Unit Designs
Input-Output and Communication
Memory Systems I would strongly discourage anybody from purchasing this book with the intentions of gaining a good understanding of Logic and Computer Design. The effort required to understand the material is unneeded as there are far superior books available
Rating:
Summary: Piss poor at explanations
Review: This book sucks, plain and simple. DO NOT TRY TO LEARN FROM IT. They don't actually explain how to do anything and give confusing, if any, explanation of the examples. Then the back of the chapter exercises have retarded questions asking you to do stuff that they never explained how to do even. For example : "Add, subtract, and multiply the following numbers without converting to decimal." The most this was explained in the chapter is that it was possible, but never said how the freakin' hell to do it. Everything, all the fundamental concepts, are left to you, the reader, to figure out what the hell it is on your own. The most this book tells you is the names of the fundamentals.
Rating:
Summary: Piss poor at explanations
Review: This book sucks, plain and simple. DO NOT TRY TO LEARN FROM IT. They don't actually explain how to do anything and give confusing, if any, explanation of the examples. Then the back of the chapter exercises have retarded questions asking you to do stuff that they never explained how to do even. For example : "Add, subtract, and multiply the following numbers without converting to decimal." The most this was explained in the chapter is that it was possible, but never said how the freakin' hell to do it. Everything, all the fundamental concepts, are left to you, the reader, to figure out what the hell it is on your own. The most this book tells you is the names of the fundamentals.
<< 1 >>
|
