ISBN0534378048

i have been using both roth and mano for my digital design course at college and my experience is that roth is 'the' book for digital design.it is clear ,concise and to the point.mano seems to be a little too descriptive and sometimes drives you early to bed.however it is always good to refer to mano as for PLDs are concerned..

I reviewed the Fourth edition before, but have now revised that review to reflect major improvements in the new edition.

This is a learn-by-example style of text. Not only are examples given in the body text, but the first end-of-chapter problems are worked out in detail, and solutions are given for many more. I consider this a fine book for enriching the material I'm presenting in class.

The old edition was dated and promoted design styles that are not advised. The new edition fixes those problems and this is now a great text. Three chapters introducing VHDL have been added after the chapter sequences on combinatorial logic, sequential logic, and digital systems. Thus VHDL doesn't intefere with the teaching of the fundamentals, but serves to enhance by providing the modern practices. The chapters are not thorough enough for practicing design in VHDL but are a good introduction. Relatively modern components are now used in the practical examples. I don't think anyone will mind that the chapters on asynchronous state machine design are gone.

The new text comes with a CD containing a simple VHDL simulator (which I have not tested), SimuAid (also untested) and Professor Roth's venerable LogicAid -- a combinatorial logic synthesis tool which if nothing else provides a means that students can check their hand-made designs. People using this text in self-study would probably find the CD paricularly useful, although it has little value in school settings where professional software tools are available.

A few comments concerning the material and Dr. Roth. I had the pleasure of using the book while it was still being 'student tested' prior to publication back in the 1970s, and found the course so interesting that I proctored it the following semester. My background prior to taking what was at the time a senior level EE course included no EE whatsoever. The material was well-organized and presented in a consistent pedagogical manner that I find rare in technical textbooks.

I had the pleasure of taking courses with Dr. Roth, and wish to emphasize that he has a very strong interest in effective teaching, and in learning how to make learning more efficient. I found that, as a result, I was both challenged and inspired by one of the best university level instructors I have ever had.

I will also state that I have self-studied topics on numerous occasions, and I have found that 'programmed learning' is one of the most effective teaching methods yet devised.

I have not seen the current edition of 'Fundamentals', but based on my experience with the book since its infancy and my personal knowledge of Dr. Roth's abilities and interest in teaching this material, I would expect the book to be an excellent learning tool.

I grade the first 20 chapters an A ... the remainder: a C+

This book is a great intro to logic design. Read it with John W Carters : Digital Design with Programmable Logic Devices ... to clear up state machine/synchronous binary
counter issues. And to get experience with real world design issues.

I bought this book for my college class. I don't have it until this summer. It comes with a disk with two programs for programming digital logic.
Now that I have used the book it is good for logic but lacked in use at design. We supplemented with the Wiley book that was good. But Schaums outline was better then both texts. I would buy Digital Pricipals and rent the book if posible.