[sdiy] Horowitz/Hill

[Scott Bernardi]

I guess the "olden days" were better. For my BSEE 1978 from UC Berkeley, we had
an analog lab where I built a VCO based on a old PAIA 2700 schematic for my term
project - built a PCB and everything (got an A). My digital class, we designed
built an LED Pong game with TTL.  I had both those classes one quarter - man,
that was a busy quarter.
For my analog IC class (taught by Meyer of Gray& Meyar) we did Spice simulations
(on mainframes).  I stayed away from the communications and power electronics.

Thomas Holley wrote:

> I will have to agree with both of you. My degree(BSEE 1979) included making
> diodes on a hot plate but mostly it was math. So little hands on experience
> it is shameful. I learned most real engineering on my own by burning up lots
> of old circuits before figuring out what not to to. I learned nothing of
> tube circuits though. Only transistors in a rather primitive way. Now I much
> prefer tubes and am working to design a modular system with mostly tube
> circuits.
>
> Thomas
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Tom May" <tom at tommay.net>
> To: <synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl>
> Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2003 2:01 PM
> Subject: Re: [sdiy] Horowitz/Hill
>
> > "jhaible" <jhaible at debitel.net> writes:
> >
> > > Funny, even though my education was called study of electrical
> > > engineering (Elektrotechnik), most books were not on electronics,
> > > but on mathematics, system theory, circuit analysis (means: RLC
> > > circuits), Electrodynamics (E and H fields ...) and digital signal
> > > processing.
> >
> > Funny or sad, that is pretty much my experience exactly (BSEE 1987),
> > except we had a small amount of digital.  But no tubes.  The analysis
> > was heavy, design and practical considerations such as resistor power
> > ratings and setup and hold times and power supply decoupling was
> > sorely lacking.  Even the digital stuff was mostly analysis of how the
> > gates worked.  I learned almost everything I know about digital making
> > a 7400-series TTL ALU as a 9-year old, and interfacing things to
> > computers in high school.  I have a friend with a philosophy degree
> > who is much better at digital than I am based on what he picked up and
> > was allowed to do hands-on in high school and continues to do to this
> > day.
> >
> > > And when, after 2 years of maths, the first active circuits were subject
> > > of the lectures, the prof came up with tubes instead of transistors.
> > > I still have vivid memories of the shock when feedback theory
> > > wasn't taught to us on transistors, but on tube circuits.
> > > "It's a good exercise to learn it on tubes and then apply your
> > > knowledge to transitors". Bastard!
> >
> > I think we learned feedback theory as exactly that: theory, with black
> > boxes full of system functions.  My own shock, learning about tubes on
> > my own years later, was finding that most or all of the stuff we
> > learned on transistors had been worked out decades before on tubes!
> > No one ever mentioned this.  It was like electronics started with the
> > transistor.  The things those old timers could do with a handful of
> > tubes, like making a TV, blows me away.
> >
> > Tom.
> >

--
Scott Bernardi
sbernardi at attbi.com

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