BK20CNCM.RVW 940928 "20th Century Computers and How They Worked", Flynn, 1993, 1-56761-257-1, U$18.00/C$23.00 %A Jennifer Flynn %C 201 W. 103rd Street, Indianapolis, IN 46290 %D 1993 %G 1-56761-257-1 %I Alpha Books/MacMillan Publishing %O U$18.00/C$23.00 75141.2102@compuserve.com 75141.2104@compuserve.com %P 161 %S Star Trek: The Next Generation series %T "20th Century Computers and How They Worked" Popular "introduction to computers" books tend to be limited in depth, breadth and understanding, if not downright inaccurate. To make up for it, at least they can be entertaining. This one is. The conceit of presentation as Starfleet supplementary course material is fairly easy to maintain: just write everything in the past tense. Most of the Star Trek illustrations and quotes are more amusing than informative, but I did find some to be actually supportive of the concepts under discussion. (Ironically, the chapter on operating systems seems to have no grasp of the idea, apart from the user interface: the whole chapter misses the point-- except for one "quote" by "Noonian Soong".) The technical material is, of course, terse and unsophisticated. It concentrates primarily on MS-DOS PCs. There are a number of errors, though generally more in the inferences than the actual text. UNIVAC is implied to be a mass market computer. The Mac is granted credit as the first computer to use a GUI (graphical user interface). (The book later corrects this--twice, in fact.) The discussion of the system bus disregards the difference between internal and external data paths. Some of the errors are simply bewildering, such as the assertion that the decimal number 46 can be represented in six bits (true) "as opposed to 20" or that a 32 bit address bus "enabl[es] them to access 232 addresses". While some interesting use is made of Star Trek examples, more could have been done. The computer "cores" could have been likened to mainframes, and PADDs to terminals. Indeed, a good explanation could have been made of client/server computing. (And I was rather looking forward to a Ferengi analysis of Microsoft.) The book does have some good coverage of "emerging technologies". A likely Christmas gift for an ardent Trekkie--but preferably not one who's *too* computer literate. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1994 BK20CNCM.RVW 940928 ====================== DECUS Canada Communications, Desktop, Education and Security group newsletters Editor and/or reviewer ROBERTS@decus.ca, RSlade@sfu.ca, Rob Slade at 1:153/733 Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" 0-387-94311-0/3-540-94311-0