Concise electronics for geeks (2010) | Hacker News Reader

Concise electronics for geeks (2010)

lcamtuf.coredump.cx

167 pointsluu22 comments

Not a bad text. Didn't find anything obviously wrong in a quick scan.

Two comments:

1. As usual, and as per all electronics resources, its pretty much devoid of the practicalities of BJT/FET amps. Sort of, here are some facts, now go away. How do I go about designing a non-inverting amp with a small signal gain of 6dB? How do I calculate the input and output impedance to determine stage loading? Not even TAOE (2nd ed) nails that down well. This is really really important if you want to do anything analogue. 2. Tails off towards the end.

I spent a number of years in a past life doing EE and I've found only disappointment in books. All the useful knowledge I had was from sitting down with guys who are older than transistors and like their Teks with vacuum tubes in them. Frustrating because they're a dying breed of engineer.

Edit: if you want a really decent book on electronics but don't want to pay for TAOE, the "ARRL handbook" which is a yearly publication is a good bet. Anything from about 1995 onwards has a number of decent electronics chapters in it covering basics, linear, digital, transmission lines etc right up to RF plus all the maths you need. Turns up for not much money on Amazon, ebay etc. About 20% of the book is self-love about amateur radio so just ignore those bits. Also, maths are a bit wonky as they are practically inclined and mostly using ratios in imperial units but you can substitute SI units in and out fine if you look at the equation definitions rather than their application. Earlier ones have decent self-build projects for power supplies, test equipment and the like. I built an AF oscillator and various crystal-based RF oscillators and filters literally directly from the book.

Indeed. Learning from one of the oldheads is the only way to become competent. Schooling from professors on that stuff is useless. Engineering is doing, not test taking.

For those looking for a less-concise, but more comprehensive reference, The Art of Electronics was just released in its 3rd edition!

http://artofelectronics.net/

With a lot of relevant new content (references to Arduinos, etc), which is great since the last edition was from 1989.

And while the basics of transistors, etc, haven't changed since then, it's arguable that the kinds of circuits that are of most relevance may have changed. (A/D conversion, general interfacing with digital logic, things that didn't have simple IC solutions in 89, etc).

Lady ada did an interview with Paul Horowitz (One of the authors) a couple of days ago [0] where he goes into detail of how the book came about and what's new in the 3rd edition,..etc.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCI3B5eT9NA

Speaking of, after getting the third edition, I have the second version sitting unused. If anyone wants it for the cost of shipping, let me know.

I highly recommend someone take this generous offer. The book is very dense, but only because it is so beautifully concise. And you'll go quite far into the 2nd ed. before running into any anachronisms.

I'll take you up on that. kliment@0xfb.com or Kliment on freenode IRC

Yes, finally! I've been waiting for that for two decades.

Covers things which are now basic, such as switching power supplies and DC-DC converters.

I learned from the 1st edition in ca. 1983, and I think it is one of the best textbooks ever written in any subject. It didn't hurt that the person teaching from the book was one of my best teachers too.

In my opinion "the art of electronics" is more of a hands-on book, that explains things qualitatively, and in an unstructured way; and thus it is quite different from any scientific textbook.

Still no ePub version. What a pity.

God, I hate the hydraulic analogy. It almost made me flunk a 101 electronics class because I couldn't connect the dots between the analogy and the physics of what's actually going on. Plus the fact that our teacher was hell bent on explaining and modeling circuits almost exclusively with equations from the start of the first course.

Which particular part of the hydraulic analogy didn't work for you? I've always found it really helpful.

The part where it explains inductance!

That is excellent, especially the first parts on how conduction and semiconduction work. I've never seen an electronics text explain that so well.

I think I ask this every time the topic comes up but I'm on a quest to answer my electronics questions without learning maxwells equations!

What happens when you pull the plates of a charged capacitor apart? Does it gain energy or lose energy, how much?

Why isn't a van degraff generator violating conservation of energy? It seems like it adds charge linearly until the breakdown voltage?

>pull the plates of a charged capacitor apart? Does it gain energy or lose energy, how much?

It gains energy equal to the work required to separate the plates assuming one plate has a +ve charge and one -ve. If they've both got the same charge then it loses energy.

>Why isn't a van degraff generator violating conservation of energy? It seems like it adds charge linearly until the breakdown voltage?

The charge gets there but a motor pushing it there on a belt. So energy from the motor increases the static energy of the sparky bit.

See that's the problem, I don't even have enough knowledge to explain my questions properly :-(

I guess what is the formula for pulling the plates apart? Does it depend on voltage? And at some point say they're miles away wouldn't you be losing energy by moving them further apart?

(I Don't even know where to start clarifying the van degraff question)

Why would you want to avoid learning Maxwell's equations? They're one of mankind's greatest advances.

I guess if I knew they would help I would. It seems like it would be a multi year undertaking with acquiring all of the background knowledge.

It seems strange to reject deep dives into mathematics, but then start by talking about nuclei and valence electrons. I personally like the hydraulic analogy, but only for one paragraph to explain the corresponding concepts of voltage, current, and resistance.

Fantastic, very much reminds me of the style in The Art of Electronics(another great reference).

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