Definitive Guide To Electronics?

[phaeton]

This is what sucks about moving: Losing things and having to start
over.

I seem to have lost my best electronics book (an old Radio Shack book
from back in the days when Radio Shack was cool).

Anyways...

I know that just one book can't cover everything, but does electronics
have "THE BOOK" that must be owned? You know, like "K&R" for C
Programming, "The Camel Book" for Perl, "The Design and Implementation"
for FreeBSD.. that sort of thing.

Any other pointers to information (on the web or on the bookshelf)
would be appreciated. I don't know if this matters or not, but i'll
mention that a lot of my interest might stem from guitar and keyboard
amplification and effects.

Though I'm probably still what most would consider "at the basics
level" of understanding. (I apparently have attention span problems
and fall in and out of infatuation with all of my various hobbies, and
by now i'm too old for college).

Thanks for any help or input.

 

[Richard]

If you remember the title, check on the internet.

What makes you think you are too old for college?

"phaeton" <blahbleh666@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1107543198.527398.277260@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

This is what sucks about moving: Losing things and having to start
over.

I seem to have lost my best electronics book (an old Radio Shack book
from back in the days when Radio Shack was cool).

Anyways...

I know that just one book can't cover everything, but does electronics
have "THE BOOK" that must be owned? You know, like "K&R" for C
Programming, "The Camel Book" for Perl, "The Design and Implementation"
for FreeBSD.. that sort of thing.

Any other pointers to information (on the web or on the bookshelf)
would be appreciated. I don't know if this matters or not, but i'll
mention that a lot of my interest might stem from guitar and keyboard
amplification and effects.

Though I'm probably still what most would consider "at the basics
level" of understanding. (I apparently have attention span problems
and fall in and out of infatuation with all of my various hobbies, and
by now i'm too old for college).

Thanks for any help or input.

 

[Robert Monsen]

phaeton wrote:

This is what sucks about moving: Losing things and having to start
over.

I seem to have lost my best electronics book (an old Radio Shack book
from back in the days when Radio Shack was cool).

Anyways...

I know that just one book can't cover everything, but does electronics
have "THE BOOK" that must be owned? You know, like "K&R" for C
Programming, "The Camel Book" for Perl, "The Design and Implementation"
for FreeBSD.. that sort of thing.

Any other pointers to information (on the web or on the bookshelf)
would be appreciated. I don't know if this matters or not, but i'll
mention that a lot of my interest might stem from guitar and keyboard
amplification and effects.

Though I'm probably still what most would consider "at the basics
level" of understanding. (I apparently have attention span problems
and fall in and out of infatuation with all of my various hobbies, and
by now i'm too old for college).

Thanks for any help or input.

It depends on how much work you want to put in. For building really
simple circuits, those forrest mims books may work for you.

For more interesting stuff, a copy of "The Art of Electronics" may be
what you want. Check it out from the library first, read the first three
chapters. You'll know by then if you want to buy it. (Note there may be
another edition coming soon)

A simpler, but more up to date, and slightly more accessible version is
"Practical Electronics for Inventors" by Scherz. It has alot less detail
than AoE, but is cheaper. It's also probably at your library.

"Basic Electronics" by Grob is a textbook that can give you even more
gruesome detail about these things, but it's geared for a course in
electronics. It has exercises you can do to make sure you learn the stuff.

Old AARL handbooks are quite readable and useful, but often hard to find.

--
Regards,
Robert Monsen

"Your Highness, I have no need of this hypothesis."
- Pierre Laplace (1749-1827), to Napoleon,
on why his works on celestial mechanics make no mention of God.

 

[phaeton]

Richard,

I don't remember the exact title. It was something generic, like
"Basic Electronics" or "Solid-State Electronics" or "Basic Electronics
Theory" or "Electronics Fundamentals". I've done some searching on
these titles in amazon, b&n, ebay, google, etc and sifted through as
many as i could stand. To me, the book seemed rather comprehensive (it
went from atomic structure up to programming microcontrollers) but I
may not be the best judge of that. It may be total crap for all i
know.

So if i were to buy a book, i might as well make sure to buy the right
one

What makes me too old? I don't know. I'll be 31 this year. I relent
to admit that my math skills are pretty weak. If i were to go back to
school to major in CS and minor in EE, a placement test might dictate
that I need to do high school all over again. I might be looking at
6-8 years of school, assuming i can afford to go to school full-time
(and that i've still got any brains left). By graduation I'll be
approaching 40, which isn't the most desireable age for employers.

Robert,
I actually have a fair number of Mimms books, which is where my
rudimentary understanding of electronics comes from. I have Getting
Started and a smattering of the Engineer's Mini-Notebooks. FWIW i've
enjoyed each of them. Forrest must be an interesting individual, but i
don't know anything else about him.

Thankyou for the other suggestions. The Art Of Electronics is one that
I was looking at, but there are so many to choose from on Amazon and I
don't know what I'm looking at. Is there any official word of a new
edition of this book, or is that all speculation?

I'll have to take a look at the library (haven't made it that far yet)
for these, just to see. I had once borrowed from the Library a book
called "Basic Electronics" (this is going back maybe 10 years ago in a
different state) but that's such a generic title it could be different
than Grob. I don't remember the author, and the book was circa 1983
iirc. Might have been an older version of it.

Thanks!

 

[David L. Jones]

phaeton wrote:

This is what sucks about moving: Losing things and having to start
over.

I seem to have lost my best electronics book (an old Radio Shack book
from back in the days when Radio Shack was cool).

Anyways...

I know that just one book can't cover everything, but does
electronics
have "THE BOOK" that must be owned? You know, like "K&R" for C
Programming, "The Camel Book" for Perl, "The Design and
Implementation"
for FreeBSD.. that sort of thing.

Any other pointers to information (on the web or on the bookshelf)
would be appreciated. I don't know if this matters or not, but i'll
mention that a lot of my interest might stem from guitar and keyboard
amplification and effects.

Though I'm probably still what most would consider "at the basics
level" of understanding. (I apparently have attention span problems
and fall in and out of infatuation with all of my various hobbies,
and
by now i'm too old for college).

Thanks for any help or input.

"The Art of Electronics" is probably the only book you'll get almost
universal agreement on as being "the" electronics book to have.
The ARRL handbook is probably the other one of you are into radio
stuff.

The rest come down to what people are bought up on I guess.

For me, I like for the following:
For Digital - "Digital Systems, Principles and Applications by Ronald J
Tocci"
For basic AC Circuit Theory - "Circuit Theory and Techniques by Hans
Goodman" (Volumes 1 and 2) (This is Australian, so it may not be
popular or well known in the US)

Dave

 

[David L. Jones]

Robert Monsen wrote:

phaeton wrote:
I'll have to take a look at the library (haven't made it that far
yet)
for these, just to see. I had once borrowed from the Library a
book
called "Basic Electronics" (this is going back maybe 10 years ago
in a
different state) but that's such a generic title it could be
different
than Grob. I don't remember the author, and the book was circa
1983
iirc. Might have been an older version of it.

Thanks!


There have been a few versions of "Basic Electronics" by Grob. The
one I
have is the 8th version. The copyrights go back to 1959...

One of the authors of AoE frequents the sci.electronics.design group,

and has made some mention that he is working on a 3rd edition. No
word
on when it'll be out, but the last one was 1989, so they are clearly
taking their time. If you are going to buy, you can get technical
books
much cheaper at www.bookpool.com.

I think I read somewhere from one of the authors that the new edition
will be so different that it would be wise to keep the 2nd edition
anyway. So I wouldn't wait for the mythical 3rd edition, buy and learn
now!

Dave