Well, I've been doing a lot of reading lately because that's all I can do right now. I've been doing a lot of basic electronics refreshing. My trusty Radio Shack learning lab has been pretty fun. The little project books that come with it are well-written, and you can tell that the author, Forrest Mims, is genuinely enthusiastic about electronics. The exercises aren't brain-busters by any means. However, the act of physically laying out your components, double-checking your connections, then triple-checking your connections before flipping the power switch, is great practice. I can feel the character building inside... :)
I finally got all of the gEDA stuff running on my laptop. I had to go back to Centos 4.4 and I did a 'workstation' install. I still had to do the manual install because the installer program is broken badly. (It is a Python script that relies on a GTK library prereq that is missing/broken/messed up.) Anyway, it seems to be working, so at some point I can start playing around with circuits without actually blowing stuff up. For kicks, I downloaded TinyCad to get a different perspective. I'll report back my opinions at a later date.
Lastly, the books. I've moved away from USB Complete for a while so that I can focus more on the basics. I've been perusing Digital Electronics Demystified and I've been slurping down Designing Embedded Hardware. Here are my thoughts:
Digital Electronics Demystified - The author starts out with a good explanation of Boolean logic, but he quickly digresses into an overwhelmingly confusing discussion of what I can only describe as the logic version of spaghetti code. This was to set up the introduction of two related principles: the "sum of products" and the "product of sums." Good principles, poor introduction. Mercifully, the chapter ended and the next chapter got back to basics. I'm not keen on the author's style, although when I looked up a specific chip - the 555 timer - his entry and explanation were actually pretty good. I'm continuing this one with guarded optimism.
Designing Embedded Hardware - This is an instant classic! The author knows his stuff and presents it very well. You can tell that he is not merely an expert in his field of study, but that he is also an educator. I'm really enjoying his book so far. (I've just got to chapter 4.) The principles of embedded design translate nicely into the idea of building self-contained peripherals. I can highly recommend this book, which I personally got from an eBay auction.
Thanks for letting me ramble. If you have any reading suggestions I'd love to hear them. I'll be in touch soon, hopefully with something more substantive.
-MC
Summary:
- The Radio Shack learning lab I bought is not glamorous, but is fun and useful for getting back to basics and practicing circuit design and layout
- Finally got gEDA working with Centos 4.4
- Have been reading a few electronics books. Designing Embedded Hardware is an excellent read, a book I can highly recommend to anyone interested in learning more about the subject.
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