Notwithstanding the author’s intention to write a text for an undergraduate program in computer engineering technology or electrical engineering technology, I find the treatment of the material wholly underwhelming. After even a partial reading, I am left with the feeling that I have stepped 30 years back in time to the days of accumulators, A and B registers, integer-only arithmetic, and a host of other early minicomputer constructs.

This work is composed of seven chapters, five appendices, and a weak index. To be fair, the author has made liberal use of figures, tables, and diagrams throughout. The trouble is, the artificial processor they are based on is similar to the Motorola 6800 or Rockwell 6502 (this is the author’s comparison). More advanced processors studied later in the text can, according to the author, be programmed in languages similar to those used by the Intel 80X86, MC 68000, DEC PDP, and IBM 360. Accurately stated, these would be very early, not recent, versions of these architectures.

In addition, an IBM-PC-compatible simulator is provided on a 3.5-inch floppy that will run under DOS 3.0 or higher, with 512 kB RAM, and a 1 MB hard drive. Ordinarily, I would have tried it out, but given the extremely dated technology described in the text, I abandoned the idea that any simulator, no matter how good, could make up for the deficiencies.

I could go on at length about the absence of architectural constructs of the 1970s, like virtual memory management and general register designs, much less multiple execution units and modern instruction decode and issue, but enough has been said. Twenty years ago, this might have been a worthy work. Today, it is an affront, even in a technical curriculum that should be training people to address the principles of modern architecture and the systems they will actually encounter when they enter the workforce.