Bebop to the Boolean Boogie: An Unconventional Guide to Electronics (with CD-ROM), Second Edition [Paperback]

Clive Maxfield (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 9, 2003 | ISBN-10: 0750675438 | ISBN-13: 978-0750675437 | Edition: 2

From reviews of the first edition:

"If you want to be reminded of the joy of electronics, take a look at Clive (Max) Maxfield's book Bebop to the Boolean Boogie." --Computer Design

"Lives up to its title as a useful and entertaining technical guide....well-suited for students, technical writers, technicians, and sales and marketing people." --Electronic Design

"Writing a book like this one takes audacity! ... Maxfield writes lucidly on a variety of complex topics without 'writing down' to his audience." --EDN

"A highly readable, well-illustrated guided tour through basic electronics." -Science Books & Films

"Extremely readable and easy to understand, you'll wonder how people learned about this stuff before this book came along." --New Book Bulletin, Computer Literacy Bookshops

* The difference between the analog and digital worlds.

* What logic gates are and how to make them from transistors.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Extremely readable and easy to understand, you'll wonder how people learned about this stuff before this book came along."
- New Book Bulletin, Computer Literacy Bookshops

"A highly readable, well-illustrated guided tour through basic electronics."
- Science Books & Films

"There's something for anyone involved in anyway in electronics, whether as a mild interest or as a serious technician. . . . The book is an excellent and invaluable resource for anyone who's ever held a soldering iron and wants to know what makes current electronics technology tick, and where it's going in the future."
- Everyday with Practical Electronics (U.K.)

"This book is better than most college courses for learning electronics basics."
- The Daily Spectrum

"Maxfield shows the best of his style, mixing deep knowledge of technical history with a great sense of humor and a strong passion for finding some (almost) unbelievable nuggets of trivia. On the whole, this is a book that deserves the acclaim it received since the very first edition and it should be on the desk of everybody who is interested in digital electronics design."
- Electronics World, January 2006

Book Description

The highly-successful most readable and comprehensive introduction to contemporary electronics available!

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 500 pages
• Publisher: Newnes; 2 edition (January 9, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0750675438
• ISBN-13: 978-0750675437
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,335,064 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Hi there, my name is Clive Maxfield, but everyone calls me "Max" (the name of every dog and every robot in every science fiction film ever made). This is sort of a family nickname; my dad, aunt, little 'bro, and so forth are all called "Max" (this can lead to somewhat convoluted after-dinner conversations).

When I was younger, I was interested in both Art and Engineering; at one stage I was seriously contemplating going to art school, but my mom told me that very few artists made much money, so I became an engineer specializing in electronics and computers. And then, while I wasn't looking, I accidentally became a writer. Don't ask me how; it started with a single magazine article, and ended up with seven books and writing as a full-time job (in the day) and as a hobby (in the evenings).

My current passion (apart from my wife, of course) is my recently published book "How Computers Do Math" (which I co-authored with my friend, Alvin Brown). This little scamp is accompanied by a CD-ROM containing a virtual computer/calculator called the DIY Calculator. The book walks the reader through a series of step-by-step interactive laboratories, that end up with the creation of a simple four-function (add, subtract, multiply, and divide) calculator program (written in our simple assembly language) that makes the DIY Calculator ... well, calculate (you can read more on our website at www.DIYCalculator.com).

Last but not least, my idea of a good time is having a BBQ and hanging out with family and friends.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Irreverent writing, good topics December 26, 2005

By wiredweird HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Maxfield's book is unique, both in format and in content. And I'm not just talking about the gumbo recipe at the end.

The first section, almost 150 pages, is "logic lite." It starts with transistors, both MOS and bipolar. From there it works its way up to simple latches and such, and scratches the surface of state machines, with side trips to boolean arithmetic and such. The breezy, informal style will work for people put off by more academic treatments, but the logic design content stops way short of what any other basic logic text would present.

The second, longer section covers material sorely missing from all other logic texts I know. It starts with the simpler parts of silicon fab process, then goes through all kinds of printed circuits and hybrid packages giving a fair tour of the basic printed curcuit (PC) processes that were current when the book was written (1995). It even goes into gutsy stuff like the copper patterns in PC processes that have to do with heat flow during soldering. All those real-world facts earned this book an extra star. The "far out technology" chapter at the end is an interesting read, too, with its discussions of nano, optical, and molecular computing.

The book's weaknesses are significant, though. It would work well with any of several companion texts that would cover what this misses. That includes more advanced logic techniques, like alternatives to gate-level implementation and all the fussy bits of state machines. A standard logic text (e.g. Katz) would fill in those blanks. Going in a different direction, it does only a little towards talking about how PC layout interacts with logic design. More about ground planes, guard rings, power decoupling, RF emissions, etc. would fit well with the detail presented here, espcially when you see how much time and effort it already spends on "vias" vs. "holes." The little bit of analog discussion from the front would help here - why inductive effects matter at high frequencies, why distributed capacitance is different from lumped, why you'd have a high-value and low-value capacitor in parallel, and why that ceramic cap near the power input has a saw cut in the edge. A third possible direction would be the way Wirth's book on circuit design for CS students went: into the higher levels of design, letting tools attend to the lower levels. The biggest flaw is in treating FPGAs as exotic, out-there technology - by 1995, they were well into the main stream, and have very nearly killed off discrete logic and ASICs in many areas.

If you just want a light-weight intro to logic design and to the physical circuits that carry it, this is OK. It could have been better in all directions and, at this 2005 writing, you should check it's sell-by date. I gave it the fourth star for addressing PCs and mounting at all, not for addressing them well.

//wiredweird

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Bebop delivers a thorough grounding and it is fun!! May 16, 1997

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Maxfield audaciously attempts to cover the fundamentals ofelectronic theory and components from atoms to large scale integrationand beyond. He manages to pull it off brilliantly.

This is a book that anyone interested in the subject can read for pleasure, it is no stuffy textbook, and yet you find that you have received a comprehensive grounding in the subject, almost without realising it.

The authors off-beat style and liberal sprinkling of quirky facts keeps your interest while difficult concepts are presented in a way that makes them easy to understand yet manages to cover them in more than sufficient detail

There is also a pretty good Seafood Gumbo recipe.

The author has a website at http://ro.com/~bebopbb

See also Maxfields new book - Bebop Bytes Back (an unconventional guide to computers) at http://ro.com/~bebopbb/bbytesb.htm

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding! April 23, 2003

By Ching-An Cheng

Format:Paperback

I have a MSEE, but I found this book to be far more enlightening and useful than any textbook I ever read in college. It teaches you the real basics of electronics without going into complex mathematical equations and theories. It teaches you in a way that is fun with emphasis on the key points that really matter. If you work in the electronic industry, but are non technical or even if you are technical this is a great book that is easy reading. They should write more books like this.