Customer Reviews

Digital Design (3rd Edition)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book gives a good coverage of digital design. It includes:

The basics (binary, octal and hexadecimal numbers, two's complement); boolean algebra and its relationship to logic gates; symplification of Boolean functions and NAND/NOR implementation; adders (half, full, carry lookahead, parity generation) and encoders/decoders; PLD's; synchronous design: state machines, counters, shift registers; asynchronous design (race conditions, hazards), characteristics of digital integrated circuits (TTL, ECL, CMOS) and a bunch of proposed lab experiments.

I found the book to be plenty of information relative to its size. The issues are presented clearly, and I didn't find any bugs in the book. Some of the data presented (like asynchronous design) are difficult to find in other reference books.

However, I was not sure if it deserved the 5 stars. The book doesn't cover today's hot issues like low voltage families (3.3V and below), and it also does not have any reference to HDL (Verilog, VHDL). The presented PLD's and logic families are today almost obsolete.

But all in all, it is an excelente reference on digital design.

In first year engineering at Simon Fraser University, many of my classmates and I absolutely hated Mano's other text, "Logic and Computer Design Fundamentals (2nd ed. updated)". However since I have picked this text up I have found Mano to be much easier to read, but that could be because I have adjusted to the material and his writing style.

Unfortunately there are no solutions to any of the exercises in this text, only selected answers. His other text has some solutions posted on the companion site (http://www.prenhall.com/mano/), you may be able to use them to learn from with this text as well.

And there are little mistakes in the text that may make things difficult to understand at first, but I did find a decent errata on the web (http://www.ece.uvic.ca/~amirali/courses/CENG290/textmistakes.html).

I don't know how good the text is for self-teaching, but it isn't bad for brushing up on the basics after being away from digital design for a couple years.

This book is an excellent companion to computer science/computer engineering classes. It tends to be fairly short and concise for almost every topic, which is why I would only recommend this book to those who really need it (required). Without guidance the concepts of digital design, especially as presented here, will no doubt escape people quickly. There is a couple errors in the book, which can be expected when they have to include data from external sources such as block diagrams for integrated circuits. If you need this book for a college CS/CE/EE intro course no doubt the book, you, and your professor will have alot of fun with some basic computer engineering and labs, BUT, as a self-study or reference, I do not recommend, at all. I have used this book for a computer science course at MN State, and while everything has gone very smoothly, it's only because collaboration with a professor has smoothed out the bumps and even filled in minor gaps or shown alternate methods.

This book was used by me and still being used by me in designing complex Logic Circuits. The questions given to every end of a chapter are very challenging and helpful in application of recently earned lessons and previuos lessons. The explanation of Karnaugh Mapping and Complex Devices can be easily understood.

A book like this is a treasure for me.

This book has been on the market for many years (which in itself seems like a good sign), and when it comes to learning the fundamentals of digital design, it is hard to find a better reference. The books strong points include a number of good examples in each chapter, and plenty of problems that seem quite reasonable for a beginning student to solve. My only criticism may be the absence of a chapter on VHDL, which would probably have more use than some of the other topics (such as the various types of logic families) discussed towards the end of the book.

This book is not recommended for someone who has no background in digital circuits. There are no exercises and no solutions except the end-of-chapter questions (No solutions are available for the end-of-the-chapter exercises either). Some logic circuits in this book are inaccurate. This book is not user-friendly. For example, a table or a diagram is located often several pages apart from its explanation. The author's inadequate writing makes we students'job of learning unnecessarily tough. If you are a novice in this area, try others books which contain a lot of exercises and solutions.

This was the text book used in one of my computer science courses.
Trying to learn from this book was very difficult because there are many errors in the diagrams. Considering that diagrams are a vital part of a book on computer circuitry I would have expected the diagrams to be accurate and replete with detailed explanations. This book is in its third edition yet it somehow manages to still have errors, this is inexcusable; were it the first edition I may have been more lenient. If you look closely you will find errors in many of the diagrams, sometimes two or more errors on the same page. Definitely not worth the $100+.

Digital Design by Mano is not a reference book. This book is only good if you have a good professor. If you miss a class and try to read the book, it is impossible to understand. I did very bad on my first exam so i decided to buy another book to go along with this one. I am very happy with the new book which has clear examples on every concepts with timing diagrams, truth tables, and all the steps which is lack of in the book by Mano. One chapter in the book by Mano asked me to go back to ch3 for a picture diagram when i am reading ch 5. It is kinda stressful to read the book because i have to keep switching back and forth between chapters. Because of switching back and forth, sometime i find myself looking for a timing diagram, or truth table more than reading. Not good a good book unless you have a lot of experience in digital design.

It's a good book for beginners in Digital Design

It gives a clear guidelines to understand the Combinational and Sequential Logics.

The book is bad in the respect that it confuses more a person whenever one tries to read it. Chapter on flip flops has diagrams those dont go ok with all possible cases, and the book misses on explanation about many basic concepts. About design, Mano just skips important steps here and there. Have had complaints about it from people year after year in college. Simple concepts are explained in such a twisted way that it can never teach digital logic without the help of a GOOD teacher.

HDL part is ok though.