apologies if i caused any damage
none whatsoever.

This books being cheap does not mean its old.
not at all, to a large extent my response was related to someone suggesting the use of an 8155, the idea of which. must come from reading about it in a 1980s book.

technology is changing so fast that things are getting obselete very fast but the underlaying basics remain the same.So no book will be up to date for latest technology.
the problem here is that a novice do not have the ability to realize that an 8155/8255 based design is archaic, so although "the underlaying basics remain the same" and old book WILL lead the beginner astray.

Anyway Mazidi and jan axelson are fairly recent and have most of the latest technolgy explained like i2c,spi etc .
they may be "fairly recent" and IIC and SPI are, indeed, current technologies, but by no means "latest technolgy", I tend to recall that IIC is more than 20 years old. Thus you can find a book discussing "the latest technolgy like i2c" falsely stating that the max speed is 100kHz, which was the fact till about 1992?

Erik