Intended for use in a two-year engineering technology program, this book is an introductory text, not a hardware or software design text. The assumed support for the student is a PC with an MC68000 assembler and either a Motorola 68000 Educational Computer Board, a MicroBoard Design MAX68000, or software from PseudoCorp to simulate the hardware. The exposition technique is informal in that the instruction set is introduced by examples.

Chapters 1 through 4 are introductory and describe the software view of the 68000 hardware, flowcharting techniques and algorithms, number systems, and character codes. If additional depth is required in any of these areas, the text must be supplemented.

Chapter 5 is a listing of all the instructions and addressing modes for the 68000 in sets of tables grouped by function. Instructions used further on in the text have chapter and section references so that their operation can be examined. Not all instructions are used, but sample instructions from each table are used.

Chapters 6 and 7 use the informal exposition technique to introduce instructions and addressing modes. As each instruction (usually one or two from each class of instructions) is introduced, it is incorporated in a short example of its use, ranging from a single instruction to a half-page program using the previous instructions with the new one. Some of the longer examples include flowcharts. The examples in chapter 7 are more involved, since they are simple industrial control applications. The longer examples were done by “ambitious (but very busy) students” and are ports from a Z-80 system. The author indicates that the examples do operate as indicated but may lack refinement.

Chapter 8 expands the 68000 to include the parallel (6821 and 68230) and serial (6850) interface chips. The author supplies only the data necessary to use these chips in simple examples, rather than an entire data sheet. Chapter 9 treats exception and interrupt handling in four pages. Chapter 10 has detailed directions for executing the previous examples on the systems mentioned above.

The first two appendices are reprints from Motorola of instruction timing information and an alphabetical listing of the instructions. Appendices C through F are a reprint of a Radio-Electronics article and the supporting data sheets for the IC used.

As a text for an engineering technology program, this book is suitable and has a strong hands-on component. For in-depth coverage of any of the topics, additional material should be obtained.