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Comment by kabdib | Hacker News Reader

I really like the 3rd edition of The Art of Electronics. The text is a fun read, and the student manual is a great extension of the main text, with a bunch of practical insight and discussion that puts it beyond mere exercises.

Caveat: I'm a software guy. I burn myself when I solder. I make smoke come out of components. I might not be the right person to listen to :-)

With the exception of an oscilloscope, you can put together a simple bench for a few hundred dollars. I've had mixed luck stocking components (for instanced, either my circuits are clueless crap, or the 10Mhz crystals I bought off of eBay are just empty cans -- in any event, a circuit that should oscillate just sits there). I found a used Tektronix scope and couldn't be happier, it really makes a difference when you're debugging something.

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> I burn myself when I solder.

There are excellent stock images out there to make your soldering experience even more memorable:

https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2016/03/stockphotowoman...

https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/man-soldering-repairing-prin...

Ouch. You have to hope they weren't plugged in. If they were I don't want to play poker against either of those models.

Same motherboard.

I'm a ham and built all my radio gear, it's perfectly normal to burn yourself when you learn soldering. It's really all a part of the learning curve. Though I still prefer an iron with a gun you're less likely to burn yourself.

I was maybe fifteen and had my dad help me as a third hand and I burned him. My late dad had the patience of Job. He didn't get angry or raise his voice.

He just told me that he'd never let me forget doing it. Sure enough for the rest of his life he'd tease me about the 'scar' I gave him.

On the topic of cheap oscilloscopes, I was looking for a cheap logic analyzer when I found the Saleae Logic. Not an oscilloscope, but if you put an input into analog mode you can visualize the waveform nicely. They have a discount for non-commercial use and startups.

https://www.saleae.com/

Or you can buy a Chinese clone off aliexpress instead.

Your getting downvoted, but you can do this without advocating actual piracy.

The Saleae hardware doubles as a license for the software. Using a "knock off" with open source free software is perfectly fine.

https://sigrok.org/ Is a great tool that works with a great selection of hardware. Including most of the knockoffs.

Yes that’s what I was intending. Should have been clear there.

I actually own a genuine Saleae for ref. Although I blew it up :(

It's OK to burn yourself, just wear eye protection when you solder upside-down.

I worked on small prototype electric formula cars for a while and occasionally had to fix something that would take ~6 hours to remove from a very tightly packed battery pack.

I’ve done this at least once .. soldered a 0805 resistor upside down through a 1-inch hole. It doesn’t wick like you’d expect! Quite hard to do

Best advice here. Totally agree.

With respect to oscillators, the old saying of “amplifiers oscillate; oscillators don’t” comes to mind. Electronics is a cruel and unforgiving field.

Also burn myself and let the magic smoke out and I’m apparently qualified in this field. Go figure :)

A broken Tektronix scope will teach you more about electronics than a textbook too. I think I’ve had about 20 of the things over the years.

> "amplifiers oscillate; oscillators don’t”

Indeed. Also, the purpose of expensive integrated circuits is to protect the delicate fuses in your design.

I understand that both of these things are supposed to be ironic, but I don't quite get them. What are they referring to?

Oscillators are supposed to oscillate but when you want them to, they don’t resulting in debugging.

Amplifiers can have a big phase shift and gain which fulfills barkhausen criteria which is the fundamental requirement for something to oscillate. Oscillating amplifiers are usually a very bad problem because it trashes the signal you are amplifying and tends to suck up a lot of power.

Fuses take a glacial amount of time to blow compared to an integrated circuit. When something goes wrong the IC blows up way before the fuse goes.

I remember teaching my kids to solder, they both burnt themselves once before they realised the soldering iron is hot.

You'll only attempt to catch a falling soldering iron once...

The truth of that depends on how much you spent on the flooring.

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