[sdiy] Books versus BOOKS

[Paul Schreiber]

First, there is no such thing as a "good general purpose electronics book". That's like asking
for a "good general purpose medical book" or a "legal book". Any attempt to write such a book
(H&H) is doomed from the start, because no matter how hard you try, you have to leave stuff out.
Hells bells, I have probably over 80 EE books.

Now, most people don't really want (or need) college-level textbooks. They want 'easy to read'
(translate: no calculus) books that hope to shed insight to synth circuits.

I don't have H&H (and never will) but me and several other EEs looked it over and all had the
same conclusion: if you had no previous EE training, the book SEEMS like a great thing. However,
the book is really just a hodge-podge of cut-and-paste articles, 15 year old app notes, and such.
The main thing that I remember is that the op amp circuits were based on *ideal* behavour,
ignoring things like gain-bandwith and CMRR. The battery example given previously is another
example: things in the books are 'tossed out' like AH/TGS postings that APPEAR "valid" to non-EEs
(it's like reading in a medial book "The amino acids interfered with the protein chain in the RNA
causing a loss of pH in the blood." Which is something I made up but sounds good to me :)

The best, overall synth-related book that is free of such is Walt Jung's OP Amp Cookbook (please
don't get me started on Don Lancaster, the King of Using Caps to make Glitches to Reset
Counters).

Also: look for the 'Schaums Outline Series'. There are GREAT, cheap "workbooks" that saved my
butt in EE class 100s of times.

Paul S.