Old Farts and the Old Days

John do you remember the name of the book(s) that had hundreds of circuits in them in the 70's.

Gus said:

John do you remember the name of the book(s) that had hundreds of circuits in them in the 70's.

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There was the whole series of "Cookbook"s.  I've got a couple volumes of 70's-era "400 Ideas for Electronic Design."  I used a lot of stuff from those to build synth modules that are sadly long gone.  Too bad I got quickly bored of things I built and salvaged the parts for other projects.

Speaking of "old fart" and "old days" things...  Who remembers "gimmick capacitors?"  Pretty common in old RF boatanchors.  ;D

JohnRoberts said:

I also took pride in being able to fix anything (almost).  Not as easy as the very old days when you just take the tubes down to the drug store and check them, but understanding how devices fail and how to measure them to determine good/bad is useful. 

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Been a while since I read it but, as I remember:
In The Art and Science of Analog Circuit Design, Jim Williams talks about getting a job at a University and submitting a budget for test equipment and the upkeep of it.  The money for the test gear was approved but not for the maintenance and fixing.  His boss said "you fix everything".
Jim thinks his boss is just being tight with money but soon realizes, after he found himself deep inside a complex unit trying to troubleshoot it, that his boss was forcing him to build upon his existing knowledge.  He fixes the unit but finds several interesting topologies that he hasn't seen before.  He's soon delving into old Tektronix scopes and such, just for the fun of it.

Gus said:

John do you remember the name of the book(s) that had hundreds of circuits in them in the 70's.

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Sorry I don't have any book recommendations.  I do have some old soft cover compilations of the ideas for design that the magazines would periodically assemble and publish.

For audio, some of the old national semi applications notes were quite good...

JR

stickjam said:

Gus said:

John do you remember the name of the book(s) that had hundreds of circuits in them in the 70's.

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There was the whole series of "Cookbook"s.   I've got a couple volumes of 70's-era "400 Ideas for Electronic Design."  I used a lot of stuff from those to build synth modules that are sadly long gone.  Too bad I got quickly bored of things I built and salvaged the parts for other projects.

Speaking of "old fart" and "old days" things...  Who remembers "gimmick capacitors?"  Pretty common in old RF boatanchors.  ;D

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IIRC Steve Dove talked about using hand tuned (gimmick?) capacitors in his Studio Sound series about console design. Mainly to tweak out HF crosstalk specs in combination with differential circuits.

JR

In one of the microphone threads there was a picture of a 10pf I made from winding wire wrap wire, like a gimmick cap.

I was not asking for a book recommendation I was just remembering looking at all the circuits some that did not look to drawn correctly

I have a few NS books lots of good stuff in them.

> I read some books, and, then, re-read them umpty-nine times as my understanding increased and I was able to get more out of them. 

> Mostly, I just built things.  Had no test gear, to speak of, so did a lot of....  Learned a lot that way. 

> Not discounting simulations entirely.  ...lazy and don't feel like doing the maths.  But I think more can be learned by building...

> sort through all the {{internet}} chaff to find the wheat

> I used to devour every schematic I could get my hands on,.. especially fun since they so often contained MISTAKES... better design training than if the schematic was correct.

> I also took pride in being able to fix anything (almost).  ... understanding how devices fail and how to measure them to determine good/bad

+1, *6

Gus said:

John do you remember the name of the book(s) that had hundreds of circuits in them in the 70's.

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Tab Books (part of McGraw-Hill) were and still are wonderful. I had few by Delton T Horn. The writing technique is excellent. They still appear at e-bay but now there is so much stuff on the internet they only go for a couple of Dollars. Most of the time they did not even sell.

Couple of years ago I bought two small  Burr-Brown booklets titled Handbook of Operational Amplifiers and Handbook of Operational Amplifier RC Networks for 99 pence. These are 1963 prints with only 80 pages but were clearly killer books on the subject at that time, and still are. Yet they go completely unnoticed on e-bay.

I got into Elektor Electronics in 70s and started collecting their 300 Circuit series which is now up to 309. I still have my early original single copies of the magazine.

As Winston said I also used to read the same sentence over and over again until I got it completely understood. And I still do to an extent as I am not particularly very good at maths. I think this is very important. The key is to read something, shut your eyes and visualise what it is.

Winston O'Boogie said:

In The Art and Science of Analog Circuit Design, Jim Williams talks about getting a job at a University and submitting a budget for test equipment and the upkeep of it.  The money for the test gear was approved but not for the maintenance and fixing.  His boss said "you fix everything".

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Try fixing it yourself, can be found online at http://www.edn.com/archives/1995/020295/03df4.htm . Good story, well worth a read.

JDB.

On the Old Days tack, what happened to the establishments formerly known as Night Clubs since the establishments formerly known as Discos became known as "Night Clubs"?? :

jdbakker said:

Try fixing it yourself, can be found online at http://www.edn.com/archives/1995/020295/03df4.htm . Good story, well worth a read.

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Thanks JDB    I think The Art and Science of Analog Circuit Design, as a whole, is worth a read.

Cheers,

John

> Tab Books (part of McGraw-Hill) were and still are wonderful

IMHO, about 90% of TAB's output was trash. "Wonderful" like Jim's broken oscilloscopes, puzzle-books for the semi-advanced student.

I saw one opamp book with at least one won't-work mistake per page, so hopeless/useless to a student that I "lost" it and gave the student a better book.

One stand-out TAB: Hemingway, T. K.'s circuit books.

Hi PRR,

For advanced level probably they were but considering that we did not have the opportunity of exposure to on-line circuit ideas that we have now, they offered valuable information. Are you able to comment on the following two books?

How to Design and Build Audio Amplifiers by Horowitz
Master Opamp Applications Handbook by Fox

The "Operational Amplifier Handbook" by Analog Devices was one of my first important books. While looking around to see if it is still available, I came across this book, edited by Walt Jung. If you look near the bottom of the page, you can see a link to download a ZIP file of what appears to be the entire book content.

http://www.analog.com/library/analogDialogue/archives/39-05/op_amp_applications_handbook.html

Be sure to download the Errata too.

Thanks for the AD link.

tommypiper said:

The forum has been moving away from pure DIY to more PCB ready group projects for years.  In general I think this is a good thing. 

Analag, hope you stick around, bro.

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Late to the thread but figured I'd post even though I'm never around anymore.  I know only a few members now unlike 2 years ago I  knew almost every one.  Life-changes have made me frequent this place less often but also the areas of overall focus within the forum are not my interest.  I'm not a designer, just an audio nerd who has time to build it if i can.

I love tubes and anything inefficient that runs above 200Vdc.  What happened to a good old P2P tube design around here?  All this PCB stuff has made it too easy and I'm speaking specifically about PCBs for tube stuff.... com'on people that aint no good.  you need to wrestle with wire going everywhere, component placement, a little 60hz hum, the chance that you can really shock the hell out of yourself.... (nothing like a 300v jolt   )

just to be clear - I'm not slamming anyone here to each there own... There are still great people here with a lot of knowledge.  But if Ethan created a P2P Tube Discussion only forum, I'd might be hanging out more often.

just my 2 cents that aint worth a penny

Be careful what you ask for...I have a (30) tube  P2P project coming up. The only caveat is I supply the xformers since these are specific to the design which is super symmetrical all the way down to the layout on the chassis.

ain't i clean, bad machine
super cool, super mean
feelin' good, for the man
Superfly, here i stand
secret stash, glass and sand
baddest torroids, in my hand

i'm your pusherman
i'm your pusherman
i'm your pusherman
:wink:

analag said:

Be careful what you ask for...I have a (30) tube  P2P project coming up. The only caveat is I supply the xformers since these are specific to the design which is super symmetrical all the way down to the layout on the chassis.

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now thats some good Sh*t,  I'm gonna be looking for that thread