A better title for this book would be “An Introduction to PDP-11 Assembly Language.” The computer organization portion of the text only gives an overview of the PDP-11’s hardware structure. The “close look” at the instruction set is a limited set used in some simple examples. The examples assume the existence of Digital Equipment Corporation’s Macro assembler and the RSX:11 operating system. Additionally, 16 suggested programming exercises are grouped together in one chapter at the end of the text.

The treatment of subroutines covers three methods of passing parameters: adjacent to call instruction, on the stack, and in a specific area. The chapters on Input/Output Programming, and Interrupts and Traps assume a single user machine with no restricted operation codes with corresponding use access to the entire machine.

There is a chapter on the VAX-11 included. The author treats multiprogramming and virtual memory as special characteristics of the VAX, rather than generic operating system characteristics. The resulting chapter is a shallow introduction to the VAX.

The appendices include the ASCII character set, a copy of Digital Equipment Corporation’s assembly language expositions for the PDP-11, and a short overview of the RSX-11 operating system.

This text is an extremely limited introduction to the PDP-11 assembly language. It would not be suitable for teaching the full range of assembly language to a beginning programmer and is too simple for an experienced programmer.