Book Review: Digital Circuits and Microcomputers

Abstract

1979, 289 pp., £11.65) This book is very good for beginners because the subject matter is explained very clearly and there are plenty of exercises (with answers) to reinforce the text. The authors put their stress on the fundamental digital circuits employed in computers. Only in the last two chapters which deal with microcomputers and programming are the fundamentals brought together.The first chapter is introductory and the second is concerned with simple binary arithmetic. Basic Boolean algebra concepts are described in chapter three. Chapters four, five and six deal with logic gates, combinational logic networks using Karnaugh map thesis and application to simple encoders, multiplexors, adders and Read Only Memory. The authors make no reference to the electronic circuits which comprise the logic gates. Chapter seven is concerned with the different types of flip-flops and the application to simple counters and registers is described in chapter nine.A short treatment of BCD and ASCII codes and a chapter on signed arithmetic complete the main part of the book. Using the INTEL 8080 architecture and instruction set as the example, the microcomputer is brought together in chapter eleven (28 pages on assembler programming). Bearing in mind the short length of this section of the book, the authors accomplish their task well. An appendix contains the full INTEL 8080 instruction set.Basically, this book is a good introductory text although many will regard the approach from simple logic at the beginning through to programming at the end, as rather old-fashioned. The fairly slow pace of the first ten chapters indicates the target readership: first-year undergraduates, technicians and mature engineers who have not had the benefit of formal educations in digital technology.