Rating: 
Summary: A little disappointing
Review: After many frustrating hours trying to get a x86 floppy version of eCos to work I decided to try and find a book. The strength of this book is its detailed description of the operating system. This book's weakness is that it doesn't have a "quick start" section to get you up and running. I was simply looking to get the OS to boot so I could start playing with it. The book doesn't explain how to do this until chapter 12 and then to make matters worse the book references material that is missing on the CD. The book references a directory "D:\ecos\packages". There is an "ecos" directory in the root but there is no "packages" directory inside of "ecos".
Rating:
Summary: A little disappointing
Review: After many frustrating hours trying to get a x86 floppy version of eCos to work I decided to try and find a book. The strength of this book is its detailed description of the operating system. This book's weakness is that it doesn't have a "quick start" section to get you up and running. I was simply looking to get the OS to boot so I could start playing with it. The book doesn't explain how to do this until chapter 12 and then to make matters worse the book references material that is missing on the CD. The book references a directory "D:\ecos\packages". There is an "ecos" directory in the root but there is no "packages" directory inside of "ecos".
Rating:
Summary: Organization is not its strong point
Review: Currently (as of ECOS 2.0) you need this book in order to get up to speed and programming ECOS. Unfortunately it isn't very well organized and it is very well written.Like many "open source" books, there is a lot of zeal that isn't necessary to communicate the point :-) Lots of discussion about how the source directory is layed out, and then how not everything follows the layout (this is classic open source, here is the standard, but many people don't follow it.) For me I read this book out of order, how to install first, then the examples, then started reading the chapters on internals. The book re-hashes reference documentation on the redhat site, but organizes it a bit better. The book comes with a CD that has cygwin and basically the Gnu Pro kit on it for Windows users. That's great, but I'm a FreeBSD user. There is very little information about using ecos from a shell using ecosconfig & and gdb. That is the books worst failing, there should be a couple of chapters devoted to non-Windows users. (or maybe split the book into an ECOS reference and then a platform users guide). Once you're finally up an running and have gotten your first target "application" to boot, the book is a handy printed reference and it does explain the internals better than the web pages do. All in all, I wanted "ECOS in a Nutshell" and got "Learn ECOS in 21 days"
Rating:
Summary: Organization is not its strong point
Review: Currently (as of ECOS 2.0) you need this book in order to get up to speed and programming ECOS. Unfortunately it isn't very well organized and it is very well written. Like many "open source" books, there is a lot of zeal that isn't necessary to communicate the point :-) Lots of discussion about how the source directory is layed out, and then how not everything follows the layout (this is classic open source, here is the standard, but many people don't follow it.) For me I read this book out of order, how to install first, then the examples, then started reading the chapters on internals. The book re-hashes reference documentation on the redhat site, but organizes it a bit better. The book comes with a CD that has cygwin and basically the Gnu Pro kit on it for Windows users. That's great, but I'm a FreeBSD user. There is very little information about using ecos from a shell using ecosconfig & and gdb. That is the books worst failing, there should be a couple of chapters devoted to non-Windows users. (or maybe split the book into an ECOS reference and then a platform users guide). Once you're finally up an running and have gotten your first target "application" to boot, the book is a handy printed reference and it does explain the internals better than the web pages do. All in all, I wanted "ECOS in a Nutshell" and got "Learn ECOS in 21 days"
Rating: 
Summary: An excellent book for ameatures on both eCos and RTOS
Review: I recommend this book not only to those who are just beginning to use eCos but also ameatures in the world of RTOS. The audience is treated like a 'child' as Anthony goes on to explain step by step. The accompanying software is complete and gets perfectly installed as described.
There are good illustrations accompanying the text that help in understanding the text. It is written more like a story rather than a manual, so it is difficult to put it down once you start reading it.
Rating:
Summary: Embedded Software Development with eCos
Review: If you are embedded software developer and would like to use an open source, this is the book you want to keep. It have everthing you need from setting up the software enviroment and a guide to build code from the Ecos repository using PC environment. ECOS is tough to follow but the Author shows and explains how it worked.
I wish the author could expand the porting section to other processor.
Rating: 
Summary: eCos Explained - All in One Place
Review: Just got the book yesterday and have been reading through it ever since. This book will be an immense help for both first time eCos users as well as those of us who don't have it quite figured out yet. While much of the information presented in the book might be found by wandering about the eCos web site, reading documents, FAQs, and previous postings to the mailing lists, Anthony has presented it all in one place in a consise, logical order. It will be a great help.
Rating:
Summary: eCos Explained - All in One Place
Review: Just got the book yesterday and have been reading through it ever since. This book will be an immense help for both first time eCos users as well as those of us who don't have it quite figured out yet. While much of the information presented in the book might be found by wandering about the eCos web site, reading documents, FAQs, and previous postings to the mailing lists, Anthony has presented it all in one place in a consise, logical order. It will be a great help.
Rating:
Summary: I wish all Free software were so well documented
Review: Kudos to Anthony for documenting eCos in such thorough detail. The text is readable and immediately useful for anyone considering or using eCos for embedded work. I think that the porting and RedBoot sections alone are worth the price of the book. The documentation on the configuration tool is also extremely useful, since it isn't so well documented anywhere else. And the fact that Anthony uses real embedded systems in the examples (instead of a PC) makes this text infinitely more credible.
Rating:
Summary: I wish all Free software were so well documented
Review: Kudos to Anthony for documenting eCos in such thorough detail. The text is readable and immediately useful for anyone considering or using eCos for embedded work. I think that the porting and RedBoot sections alone are worth the price of the book. The documentation on the configuration tool is also extremely useful, since it isn't so well documented anywhere else. And the fact that Anthony uses real embedded systems in the examples (instead of a PC) makes this text infinitely more credible.
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