This isn't a book that walks you through tidy abstractions - it's the people who actually built the machines explaining why a bus protocol, register layout or packaging choice won out over the alternatives, cost and heat and manufacturing included. That's the part I like: real constraints shaping an architecture instead of textbook theory. It is dense, and it assumes you already know what a backplane is for, so a first-year would need a glossary open alongside it.
What I'd actually do with this in the lab is pull one of the systems-design tradeoff arguments, rebuild the decision tree with today's components, and see whether DEC's original call still holds up. That's an assignment with real teeth, not busywork.
Computer Engineering: A DEC View of Hardware Systems Design
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This is a book written by people who actually had to keep machines running, not sell them. What I liked is the refusal to romanticize the hardware: every chapter comes back to cost, reliability, and what happens when a board fails in the field, which is exactly how I was trained to think about a system. The bus and memory design chapters read like real engineering notes, not marketing copy.
What works against it is the format: it is a stitched-together collection of DEC papers, so the voice shifts chapter to chapter and it assumes you already speak the acronyms. Good as a reference shelf book, not a bedtime read.