[sdiy] beginner schematic book

[Michael Buchstaller]

>..well, AoE lives on my desk, but it isn't a *beginners* book.
>It was actually deliberately written for science students 
>who were starting to do research & having to build their own test
>gear.

The Horowitz/Hill book is good as a reference, but not something
a beginner would like to read cover-to-cover.

>A lot of people on this list were NEVER 'beginners', or can't 
>remember when they were!
>And it is very different being a 'beginner' with a musical 
>background & no science at all, compared to someone with at
>least some science.

I do remember the days when i was a beginner in electronics...
(but not synth related) it was in 1983; me and some friends wanted
to build a robot arm to play with. It was to handle about 20 kg (a 
beer crate), and we wanted to control it via a C64.
So, we faced the problem to build an interface to make the C64
switch those motors (48V/50 Amps). I bugged everybody whom i suspected
to have at least a clue of electronics. Later, a guy from school made me
a plan how to connect a 8255 to the C64 expansion port. Man, how did i
ask the most silly questions (Where is the pin 1 on that IC? Why does the
wire carrying those 1 MHz signals have to be short?...)
Later when it came to the power amps to drive the motors, i was often
laughed at... "50 Amps... hahahaaaaa, you mean 50 milliams for sure....". It was
hard to find someone who could actually explain why the power transistors
worked fine with a large resistor as load, and immediately died when we
actually hooked up a real motor to them. Most people told us to watch for the high
voltage spikes when the motor is turned off that can damage the transistors. Only
one person (the senior engineer of a power supply building company) did find the
problem (the motors having about Zero ohms resistance at startup, so drawing excessive
current) and gave us the solution in the form of a current limiting resistor.

memories......

Many years have gone since them, and somehow i was addicted to electronic sound
generation. So, my background was technical (mostly learning by trial-and-error), and i had
to find out much on my own.
Today, with the Net, a quick google search for the most questions turns up dozens of
results, which at least will give food for thought, or can lead in the right direction.


-Michael Buchstaller