Bazic electronicz primer

[Tea]

Back before I waz born, Tannin uzed to play with zoldering ironz and have a reazonable underztanding of the fundamentalz of electronicz. He could have explained the difference between reziztive and capacitive impedence, or how a PNP tranziztor junction workz. Or zo he claimz - if you recall his previouz zig, the older he getz, the better he uzed to be.

Anyway, zeeing Tannin iz pazt it now, I'd like to do a little learning on my own account. I have no profezzional need for thiz, nor even the zlightezt wizh to put any of it into practice, but I'd like to be able to underztand more of JTR'z poztz than I can at prezent. In particular, I'd like to know a little about old-time radio frequency ztuff. I know, for example, what a cavity magnetron lookz like, but not the faintezt idea how it workz.

Doez anyone have a favourite webzite or two that they would like to recommend? (Bear in mind that I am an ape of conziderable brain and very little zticktoitivenezz.)

 

[Tannin]

She means "sticktoitiveness" or "stick-to-it-iveness, a quality in which Tea is lamentably lacking. (Unlike me, of course.) I gather that she picked the word up from watching old re-runz of MASH.

I mean re-runs, damnit.

 

[Cliptin]

She means "sticktoitiveness" or "stick-to-it-iveness, a quality in which Tea is lamentably lacking. (Unlike me, of course.) I gather that she picked the word up from watching old re-runz of MASH.

I mean re-runs, damnit.

You can start here. How Stuff Works: Radio

 

[jtr1962]

Here's one I found that might interest you:

http://www.iguanalabs.com/maintut.htm

It has beginning, intermediate, and advanced tutorials. Learning in detail about electronics is far from trivial, and I only really started understanding how things worked once I started making my own projects, the culmination of which is my thermoelectric freezer. I designed everything electronic on that-the power supply, temperature control, temperature readouts, and it took the better part of my free time during two years to get it right. I even made the heat sinks and chamber myself. Most of the time I make something myself if it's either unavailable commercially, or the cost is too exorbitant. In this case, I needed a temperature chamber to test some of my projects that would go in extreme climates. and one was not available commercially for under $15,000 that would do what I needed to. Also, the power requirements for all of the commercial chambers were on the order of a few kW and above, while mine draws about 600W maximum. I didn't feel like running a three phase AC line into my work area just for a temperature chamber.

I got started with computers about 4 years ago, and I'm still learning. I can write simple C programs, and right now I'm teaching myself assembly. Sometimes a really difficult C program is simpler with a few lines of assembly that access the hardware directly, but I'm still on a steep learning curve.