Looking for a good starting point.. [Newbie]

C

Chris M

Guest
Hi,

I've got a pretty strong desire to learn basic (digital) electronics,
and I'm wondering if anyone here can give me some input on good ways
to learn.

The way I feel about things now, I think I need to be hand-held
through some basic projects with long-winded explanations of why
things are done (verbose circuit analysis comments.)

I can understand the basics of digital electronics from the point of
looking at an IC datasheet and understanding most of it. I did some
basic projects in college about 12 years ago (a "Microprocessors"
class, in an otherwise mainly software engineering curiculum.)

A good friend lent me his Radio Shack "300 in One Electronic Project
Lab" kit. It looks good from the point of having lots of little
projects to build, but little explanation of WHY certain components
were chosen. Initially, I think I need more detail on WHY a 10k
resistor is used instead of a 2k, etc. I know Ohms law, but I need to
understand how and why to apply it, along with basic circuit analysis.

Any help or pointers on a good way to get started would be greatly
appreciated. I've been scouring Amazon.com for books and, after
reading reviews, have narrowed my to-buy list to these:

Digital Electronics Guidebook: With Projects!
by Myke Predko, Michael Predko
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0071377816/103-7713828-6919852?%5Fencoding=UTF8&coliid=I1ITTY1QTL6R4L&colid=183AWDOKU3D6A

Tab Electronics Guide to Understanding Electricity and Electronics
by G. Randy Slone (Author)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0071360573/103-7713828-6919852?%5Fencoding=UTF8&coliid=IQ1YXR3YEXTMF&colid=183AWDOKU3D6A

Let me add that my motivation is to learn electronics, but also to use
that in cojunction with an old 8-bit Apple //e computer. There are
some schematics on the web for bus-interface cards (one is an ethernet
card, the other is an IDE/Compact Flash card that lets you use IDE
hard drives or a compact flash card for mass storage.) So eventually,
my interests will probably be in interfacing with the apple system.

Thanks in advance for any help or input!

// CHRIS
 
"Chris M" <chris@sorry.no.spam.com> wrote in message
news:e96o609eo9k126ppbklblib68odofah40r@4ax.com...
Hi,

I've got a pretty strong desire to learn basic (digital) electronics,
and I'm wondering if anyone here can give me some input on good ways
to learn.

The way I feel about things now, I think I need to be hand-held
through some basic projects with long-winded explanations of why
things are done (verbose circuit analysis comments.)

I can understand the basics of digital electronics from the point of
looking at an IC datasheet and understanding most of it. I did some
basic projects in college about 12 years ago (a "Microprocessors"
class, in an otherwise mainly software engineering curiculum.)

A good friend lent me his Radio Shack "300 in One Electronic Project
Lab" kit. It looks good from the point of having lots of little
projects to build, but little explanation of WHY certain components
were chosen. Initially, I think I need more detail on WHY a 10k
resistor is used instead of a 2k, etc. I know Ohms law, but I need to
understand how and why to apply it, along with basic circuit analysis.

Any help or pointers on a good way to get started would be greatly
appreciated. I've been scouring Amazon.com for books and, after
reading reviews, have narrowed my to-buy list to these:

Digital Electronics Guidebook: With Projects!
by Myke Predko, Michael Predko

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0071377816/103-7713828-6919852?%5Fencoding=UTF8&coliid=I1ITTY1QTL6R4L&colid=183AWDOKU3D6A

Tab Electronics Guide to Understanding Electricity and Electronics
by G. Randy Slone (Author)

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0071360573/103-7713828-6919852?%5Fencoding=UTF8&coliid=IQ1YXR3YEXTMF&colid=183AWDOKU3D6A

Let me add that my motivation is to learn electronics, but also to use
that in cojunction with an old 8-bit Apple //e computer. There are
some schematics on the web for bus-interface cards (one is an ethernet
card, the other is an IDE/Compact Flash card that lets you use IDE
hard drives or a compact flash card for mass storage.) So eventually,
my interests will probably be in interfacing with the apple system.

Thanks in advance for any help or input!

// CHRIS
Click to expand...
There's a good book called "Understanding Solid State Electronics; 5th ed"
by Texas Instruments and revised by Don L. Cannon. I think it's a great
beginners book. It goes into how electricity does its work, then goes into
analog components and how to make electricity do the work for you. Gives an
overview of some of the basic components and their applications. Then goes
into ICs and digital circuits. I think this book is great as a starting
point. I borrowed it from the library and I found it so good that I bought
it. Try amazon, you can get it for about $5 or so almost brand new. Another
good book would be "Basic Electronics Theory." It's got a lot of stuff in
ther efor beginners. Another good book is "Electronics; self-teaching guide;
2nd edition."

The Tab Electronics Guide book is not exactly a beginners book. There are
projects but no step by step. It just lists the components needed and their
values and shows the schematic along with a summary of how most components
fit together for most experiments. It gets into the heavy stuff real
quickly. It's not for digital electronics either (it's analog). I suggest
you have a look at it in a library and then make a decision wether you want
to buy it or not. It's a great book once you get a feel for the basics of
electronics (I'm at this point right now). There are some great books in the
local libraries so that'd be worth checking out as a starting point; too bad
you can't keep the books for more than 20 days or so :/

--Viktor
 
"Chris M" <chris@sorry.no.spam.com> wrote in message
news:e96o609eo9k126ppbklblib68odofah40r@4ax.com...
Hi,

Let me add that my motivation is to learn electronics, but also to use
that in cojunction with an old 8-bit Apple //e computer. There are
some schematics on the web for bus-interface cards (one is an ethernet
card, the other is an IDE/Compact Flash card that lets you use IDE
hard drives or a compact flash card for mass storage.) So eventually,
my interests will probably be in interfacing with the apple system.
Click to expand...
Yikes! You're gonna write a TCP/IP stack for an Apple? //e?? Cool!
Will you be using Pascal? ;-)
Thanks in advance for any help or input!

// CHRIS
Click to expand...
 
On Tue, 06 Apr 2004 23:21:15 GMT, "Rich Grise" <null@example.net>
wrote:

"Chris M" <chris@sorry.no.spam.com> wrote in message
news:e96o609eo9k126ppbklblib68odofah40r@4ax.com...

Hi,

Let me add that my motivation is to learn electronics, but also to use
that in cojunction with an old 8-bit Apple //e computer. There are
some schematics on the web for bus-interface cards (one is an ethernet
card, the other is an IDE/Compact Flash card that lets you use IDE
hard drives or a compact flash card for mass storage.) So eventually,
my interests will probably be in interfacing with the apple system.

Yikes! You're gonna write a TCP/IP stack for an Apple? //e?? Cool!
Will you be using Pascal? ;-)

Thanks in advance for any help or input!

// CHRIS
Click to expand...
Heh, not Pascal. uIP has already been written in C and is running on
a Commodore 64 among others. Someone I know has designed an ethernet
board for the //e (prototype only right now) that uses a korean
"WizNet" chip - the chip lets you access ethernet directly but also
contains its own small TCP/IP stack.

I've gotten renewed interest in my apple II days, but after 22 years
of programming (i started at 12) I'd like to get back into the apple
II from a hardware angle as well. Much easier than trying to design a
PCI-bus board. I have a couple examples to work from, too..

But I'm such a newbie to hardware, that I'm trying to learn the
basics. For the most part, it seems that the components I am mostly
going to be using are IC chips (obviously), resistors, capacitors, and
maybe diodes and transistors...

This week I am going to do a bit less reading and a little more
expirimenting with this 300-in-1 electronics kit.

// CHRIS
 
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