Customer Reviews

Digital Electronics Guidebook: With Projects!

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have a couple of myke's books (PIC, 8051) and this one is quite a departure from the normal run of the mill "microcontroller" books that he does. The book is devoted to explaining digital logic and he does a really good job and approaches it from a direction that I've never seen before.

For example, I've never seen anybody actually <i>build</i> a TTL gate out of discrete transistors and resistors before. This was really helpful for me - I've never really understood how the built in pull ups in a TTL gate worked before I read this book.

Myke has really latched onto the idea of including PCBs in his books and the power supply/TTL interface is really helpful to get the reader started in working with TTL. What I have always liked about Mykes books is that he really tries to provide circuits that the reader can build easily. With the power supply/interface PCBs included in the book, creating the experiments just takes a few moments. This is really nice.

JD

I think the idea behind this book is fantastic and if there wern't so many typos and mistakes in the diagrams and project schematics it would be a 5 star book.

The ground and power bus is mislabeld in almost every project. Some of the projects won't run without fixing the bugs in the diagrams.

If there is a second edition, hopefully these issues will be resolved.

The content of the book is good, and the included PCBs will be useful, but you MUST know enough about electronics to detect and correct the numerous errors in the wiring diagrams, etc.

The text is a little disorganized and key points and concepts are not as clear as they could be, but the information is good. This is NOT a book for complete beginners. If you're new to electronics, try a NerdKit instead.

This is an excellent book for neophytes like me. Unfortunately, it is marred by a surprisingly large number of typos, like many of Mr. Predko's books.

Part of this is because he reuses large blocks of text in his many publications w/o really matching up figures with text, etc. He doesn't always match numbers on his printed circuit boards with the text. Perhaps these errors sneak in between editions. Most of these are so obvious there is no problem making out what he meant. Still, I worry that there are typos which I don't recognize.

The printed circuit boards are excellent with plated through holes. Even an inexperienced solderer like me can do a neat job easily and quickly.

O.K., the idea behind this book is very good, but it is unrealised idea. I agree with a reader below who said this book is an error galore (I am not reffering to grammar errors but more importantly technical errors). Imageine if we tried to build space shuttle with the same number of errors as in this book (or any other Predko's book). Would it lift off? Yeah right! I was unable to make anything work from his books and I own 2 books. It is so confusing and not worth the money. If you are able to make sence of drunk man talking then go ahead and buy his books, otherwise stay away.

I just put in a review for "Programming and Customizing PICMicro MCUs" and I realized that I should also put in a few words about this book - Mr. Predko has really come up with an outstanding book for working with basic digital electronics (TTL).

I graduated from university over ten years ago and while I understood the theory behind TTL, I feel like my understanding of how it works by this book. It really ties together theory with practice adn even shows you hot to create a TTL inverter from transistors!

This book is fantastic. The two included PCBs were a joy to build and are very helpful when doing lab experiments. This book would appeal to an absolute electronics beginner as well as an expert. The projects are fun and very educational. Two thumbs up!