What is on the shelf now.

Published and updated chapters

• Introduction to computers: data and computation

  Build the foundations: programmable systems, input and output, data representation, encoding, and numerical correctness.

  MCA · Fundamentals of Computers13 Oct 2026
• Characteristics of computers: accuracy, performance, and limits

  Understand strengths and limitations; calculate CPU time and speedup, identify bottlenecks, and benchmark meaningful workloads.

  MCA · Fundamentals of Computers13 Oct 2026
• Evolution of computers: from calculation to connected systems

  Follow mechanical, electronic, stored-program, personal, and distributed computing through the capabilities and trade-offs they introduced.

  MCA · Fundamentals of Computers13 Oct 2026
• Generations of computers: technology and its consequences

  Compare valves, transistors, integrated circuits, microprocessors, and AI-oriented developments without misleading historical boundaries.

  MCA · Fundamentals of Computers13 Oct 2026
• Classification of computers: representation, purpose, and scale

  Compare analog, digital, embedded, real-time, mainframe, high-performance, and distributed systems through requirements.

  MCA · Fundamentals of Computers13 Oct 2026
• The computer system: components, software, and execution

  Explore CPU and memory organisation, operating-system boundaries, program execution, processes, threads, interrupts, and DMA.

  MCA · Fundamentals of Computers13 Oct 2026
• Applications of computers: requirements and complete worked cases

  Connect application domains to correctness, security, reliability, and a complete marks-report design with practice and investigations.

  MCA · Fundamentals of Computers13 Oct 2026
• Computer networks: foundations and end-to-end communication

  Understand network scope, service roles, layers, addresses, packet journeys, performance, and independent failure stages.

  MCA · Fundamentals of Computers13 Oct 2026
• Data communication: signals, timing, capacity, and errors

  Learn transmission modes, encoding and modulation, delay calculations, capacity bounds, and error, flow, and congestion control.

  MCA · Fundamentals of Computers13 Oct 2026
• Transmission media: copper, fibre, radio, and link budgets

  Compare guided and wireless media; reason about interference, distance, optical power, satellite delay, and practical selection.

  MCA · Fundamentals of Computers13 Oct 2026
• Multiplexing: sharing frequency, time, wavelength, and codes

  Compare FDM, TDM, statistical sharing, WDM, code division, and OFDM with resource and overhead calculations.

  MCA · Fundamentals of Computers13 Oct 2026
• Switching: circuits, messages, packets, and forwarding

  Compare resource reservation, datagrams, virtual circuits, route selection, queueing, and store-and-forward pipelining.

  MCA · Fundamentals of Computers13 Oct 2026
• Network topologies: structure, capacity, and failure

  Draw and compare bus, star, ring, mesh, tree, and hybrid networks; calculate links and oversubscription and reason about recovery.

  MCA · Fundamentals of Computers13 Oct 2026
• Communication protocols: layers, addressing, transport, and security

  Trace communication through IP, TCP, UDP, ARP, DHCP, DNS, TLS, and applications; distinguish each responsibility and diagnose failures.

  MCA · Fundamentals of Computers13 Oct 2026
• Network devices: interfaces, switches, routers, and policy

  Trace switch learning, router forwarding, VLANs, wireless access, NAT, gateways, and firewall roles with practical diagnostics.

  MCA · Fundamentals of Computers13 Oct 2026