Customer Reviews

Microcontroller Technology: The 68HC11

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

 

 

This book is a well written and a well organized intorduction to microcontrollers and contains a very extensive coverage of the Motorola 68HC11 in particular. As an engineer who has worked with microprocessors since the first one (the Intel 4004), I find this book to be a good mix of basic material and more detailed info for someone wanting to use the 68HC11. Anyone of average intelligence and a basic background in computers and math should have no problem understanding it. There are a few typos (as in most complex books of this type) but they are rather easy to resolve from the context in most cases. For example in one of the early chapters, he is talking about a code example that does a 16-bit addition and refers to the LDD instruction instead of the ADD instruction as the one doing the addition. These are minor compared to the extensive and detailed coverage given of this popular microcontroller. Many useful charts are also included that make the book a great reference source when writing programs. The only omission that bothered me was no mention of the Microchip PIC family of microcontrollers in the chapter describing other popular families. The PIC is a big competitor of the 68HC11. They are both very capable and widely used. Overall, I think you would be hard pressed to find a better book with such extensive coverage of the 68HC11 as well as a lot of hardware interfacing details and application examples. This 2nd edition has made a lot of improvements of the previous edition and is well worth the investment.

This is by far one of the best books ever written for the 68hc11. I don't know what the others are talking about. Have you ever tryed to read Motorola's (Pink Book ) data book and reference book? They are pretty confusioning, not enough detail. In my option the author does an excellent job of presenting the 6811 with enough examples. The 6811 is the best 8 bit processor invented. This book is a must buy for quick reference.

I find the book very helpful because:
1. It introduces the topics in a lucid way through examples.
2. It has lots of practice problems with solutions.
3. It teaches one how to delve into the Motorola data book. Some important pages of the data book have been reproduced in the appendix of this book, and there are practice problems that tell you how to use those pages to find relevant info.

There are unfortunately a few not-too-good points:
1. Typos. Yes, there are quite a few of them. BUT, the author's webpage has an errata list for both the 2nd as well as the 3rd edition.
2. Some of the listings are incomplete, eg one listing uses the line

STAA TCTL2,X

yet nowhere in or around the listing it is mentioned what value TCTL2 really stands for, and what is currently stored in X. The lines

TCTL2 EQU $21
REGBAS EQU $1000
LDX #REGBAS

are omited from the listing without any mention! All these left out things are summed up in an appendix, but you will notice that only when you get familiar with the book. The symbols like
REGBAS or TCTL2 that are defined in one chapter and used in more than one chapters , are not clearly cross-referenced. They do not even appear in the index! But once you get used to the book, it is only a minor flaw.

Finally, if you are a beginner then you should better make sure that you have an assembler that understands the assembly language used in the book. It would have been wonderful if the book provided its own assembler and debugger, but it doesn't. Getting the first assembly program to run is not always easy. I personally used the software that came with another book:
Embedded microcomputer systems by Valvano. Spasov's book and Valvano's software make a wonderful team to assist a beginning student.

I found this book to be very long and drawn out. It is very hard to follow and easily confuses the reader. I have found the Motorola 68HC11 Data and Technical books to be a much better resource for information. They are much easier to follow and understand. Save your money for another book, this one is overpriced.

Did someone actually read this book before it was published? This book goes to show that anyone can write a book. Even if you can get past the fact that every page is filled with errors, you'll probably end up slitting your wrists trying to understand what the author is talking about. Does "Microcontroller" refer to a device or to the authors cranium?

I am disturbed that my university forces this on students when even the staff discusses its many and varied faults. This book is much better as a door stop.