Bought this book the second I found it. It's incredibly well-put together, and I can't wait for the print edition. I have already read through the PDF, and there are so many beautiful illustrations that help show what is actually happening inside a component.
I'm getting into electronics again. I really wish that younger me had access to this book. I remember taking apart a VCR and seeing the knobs inside (potentiometers) and wondering why there were knobs INSIDE where the user couldn't do anything? Was there some secret function that I could unlock by changing the position? Alas, the secret function was "eat the VCR cassette tape".
If there's ever a new edition to this book (it's so thorough, not sure if that's possible), I would sit and watch any video footage of the process for hours :)
we had a good number of subjects that didn't make it into the book. some we were not able to section in a way that looked as good as the rest, and others were redundant or didn't quite fit with the theme.
Big fan of Windell Oskay and his stuff. I wandered into Evil Mad Scientists Laboratories many years ago (in Sunnyvale, as I recall) and I believe I met him but it was a decade ago....
Over the years I picked up a clock that used LED shadows cast onto a gnomon to create the clock's "hands".
Picked up a Peggy — giant LED display board.
And then some weird plywood thing with marbles and chutes that was a kind of mechanical adder..... I think that was when I went in and chatted.
Apart from their more popular ones like Eloquent Javascript and Automate The Boring Stuff, i have discovered several nice gems in their catalogue which they keep small and of really high quality.
I haven't been disappointed by any of the books i have purchased from them... 14 to be exact.
I’ve really enjoyed The Secret Life of Programs by Jonathan E. Steinhart. From analog signals, to gates, to cpus and memory, and so on all the way up. Very cool concept, well executed.
Circuits involving capacitors and inductors lead you to differential and integral equations, if you want to know the time dependence of the voltages and currents in the circuits.
This is really neat. It brought back some childhood memories of attempting to cut open components, only to find that I'd turned their insides to dust in the process. Sending thanks to the authors for fulfilling a want that I didn't know I still had.
43 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 98.3 ms ] threadhttps://nostarch.com/open-circuits - also contains a link to this same PDF.
They give an DRM-free PDF eBook right away and will ship a paper version later.
[1] http://www.righto.com/
https://nostarch.com/open-circuits
And patience. Lots of patience.
many of the samples had to be mounted using clamps or dop wax.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJlrbMHLBd4&list=PLtaR0lZhSy...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JAgXz6xO0s&list=PLtaR0lZhSy...
Over the years I picked up a clock that used LED shadows cast onto a gnomon to create the clock's "hands".
Picked up a Peggy — giant LED display board.
And then some weird plywood thing with marbles and chutes that was a kind of mechanical adder..... I think that was when I went in and chatted.
Apart from their more popular ones like Eloquent Javascript and Automate The Boring Stuff, i have discovered several nice gems in their catalogue which they keep small and of really high quality.
I haven't been disappointed by any of the books i have purchased from them... 14 to be exact.