Customer Reviews

USB Explained

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

 

 

This book provides a good overview of USB but I was disappointed to find that the appendices began when I was half way through the book. The entire 2nd half of the book is tables of information which has no connection to USB. Tables like Sony's CD ROM header pinout and the NuBus 90. I think the authors ran out of time or material and the publisher made the book look bigger by including all this extra doo-dah. There is nothing in the book's description on-line or on its covers that would let you know that it is 50% USB and 50% filler. I felt a bit ripped off.

You buy a book on USB. Why pinouts on phone jacks,

RS-232, printer connectors, ect. BUT NONE ON

MALE OR FEMALE "A" or "B" CONNECTORS. GOOD PICTURES. BUT NO "USB" PINOUTS.

This book gives you 130 pages of USB overview (which you probably already know) and 200 pages of useless tables of for instance the Pinout for the VGA-cable. As the "Editorial Revies" notes this book is "written in laymans terms" which I interpret as containing-to-little-specific-info and is much to general to be used for anything but a brief overview.

I found this book very informative. The previous reviewer is correct in asserting that the appendixes are heavy with interconnection diagrams, but that's part of the value of the book. I have the author's previous work on RS-232 and it's the same thing. It's biggest shortcoming is that there isn't enough information about Windows support for USB. They cleary explain how the Universal Serial Bus works. This book will not tell you how to write programs for USB, or how to build devices, but it will take you under the covers. That's the value and that's why this book is on my shelf.

They cound have gotten a sixth-grader to review this for all the stupid mistakes in the copy (about one every 5 pages). They obviously let their draft of the manuscript get out the door without review.

This book was so bad that I sent it back. Over half of it was appendix on connector pin outs on buses (ISA, PCI, MCA, Apple), output ports (serial, parallel, USB-interestingly without pin locations) and keyboards (including the all important Commodore 64!). USB infomation was insufficient at best. Shop elsewhere.

Let me start of by saying that it all depends what your requirement is in order to find this book useful or not.
It does a good job of explaining the building blocks and fundamentals related to USB. I needed to do some low level embedded USB development, but found that most texts already assumed the reader to have fundamental USB knowledge I did not have. Most of my efforts scouring the internet for this knowledge ended up with very little. This was a frustrating process as I could only progress up to the introduction of most text until I started loosing the plot as I ran into the wall of my USB knowledge gap. I realized I needed more fundamental dummy-style knowledge on the subject and this is what the book provided. It walks through all the concepts and definitions involved in USB in a clear and almost rudimentary fashion. As a result after this book I could more easily segue into the more complex texts that I was struggling with previously.

This book is not the ultimate USB bible, and it does have some bloat with regards to other info as some other reviewers pointed out.
But if you require info on the fundamentals of USB and don't expect it to teach you all there is to know on the subject, then I believe the book will have real value.

This book did exactly what the title implied. I now have enough info on USB to continue more indepth study of it. I only hope I can find a more advanced book written in such a manner as this book was, making studing easy and fun.