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The art of electronics

I

Ian Macmillan

Jan 1, 1970
0
Having been involved in industrial electronics for going on 60 years, I was
recently delighted to obtain a copy of Horowitz and Hill's marvelous "The
Art of Electronics" (2nd edition).

I thought about getting the somewhat mythical 3rd edition, but decided I
might not live so long...

But anyway, after a browse, some things struck me. The first was how
relevant it all is, even after 20 years (1989)

The second was things that must be new since then, like buck boost and Nimh
cells. Surprising.

The third thing was the disclaimer that said, in effect:

"...dont try any of this at home without consulting an expert, and if you
blow yourself up we disclaim all liability..." And etc.

What is it coming to when textbooks have to have this kind of crap in them?

All the best
Ian Macmillan
 
S

Son of a Sea Cook

Jan 1, 1970
0
Having been involved in industrial electronics for going on 60 years, I was
recently delighted to obtain a copy of Horowitz and Hill's marvelous "The
Art of Electronics" (2nd edition).

I thought about getting the somewhat mythical 3rd edition, but decided I
might not live so long...

But anyway, after a browse, some things struck me. The first was how
relevant it all is, even after 20 years (1989)

The second was things that must be new since then, like buck boost and Nimh
cells. Surprising.

The third thing was the disclaimer that said, in effect:

"...dont try any of this at home without consulting an expert, and if you
blow yourself up we disclaim all liability..." And etc.

What is it coming to when textbooks have to have this kind of crap in them?

All the best
Ian Macmillan


The same types of pussies force TV show makers to munge out T-shirt art
and license plate numbers, etc.

Myth busters does the same thing, despite ZERO actual tangible
liability in my opinion.
 
J

Jon Slaughter

Jan 1, 1970
0
Ian said:
Having been involved in industrial electronics for going on 60 years,
I was recently delighted to obtain a copy of Horowitz and Hill's
marvelous "The Art of Electronics" (2nd edition).

I thought about getting the somewhat mythical 3rd edition, but
decided I might not live so long...

But anyway, after a browse, some things struck me. The first was how
relevant it all is, even after 20 years (1989)

The second was things that must be new since then, like buck boost
and Nimh cells. Surprising.

The third thing was the disclaimer that said, in effect:

"...dont try any of this at home without consulting an expert, and if
you blow yourself up we disclaim all liability..." And etc.

What is it coming to when textbooks have to have this kind of crap in
them?

Your really asking that when we have Obama, Pelosi, and Reed?
 
T

Tim Williams

Jan 1, 1970
0
Ian Macmillan said:
But anyway, after a browse, some things struck me. The first was how
relevant it all is, even after 20 years (1989)

The electronics is, but who writes 68k's in assembly anymore? (Highland
doesn't count. ;-) Some ARM code would be more appropriate, but it's not
so much the architecture anymore because everyone uses C anyway.
The second was things that must be new since then, like buck boost and
Nimh
cells. Surprising.

Or Li ion. NiMH isn't that new, is it? NiCds have been around for ages
anyway, and work about the same.

I would definitely like to see more on switching supplies: it's not like
they didn't exist until the WWW was invented. Switching supplies have been
around for centuries*, and they're more important than ever. And I find
them quite fascinating.

That, and power systems in general (which are usually switching systems). I
suppose that's getting closer to its own subject, with its own textbooks,
but still.

Some actual RF design wouldn't hurt. It's just skimmed over. The process
of designing some sort of radio system, it could be VHF or UHF range,
manually or electronically tuned, maybe not PLL'd, with whatever detection
scheme, would be neat. A radio wouldn't run into the potential problems
that designing a radiotransmitter could have (i.e. FCC licensed output).
VHF-UHF is an interesting band, two sided PCB handles it just fine but it
still requires careful layout and better-than-2N3904 transistors to amplify.

*A Whimhurt generator is just a flying-capacitor charge pump, so there. :p

Tim
 
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