The Art of Electronics

I bought both editions and both lab manuals, and never regretted any of them. The lab manuals have a fair amount of practical advice in them, and cover some stuff not in the main book (the second edtion has you making a simple 680008-based computer at the end :-)). I was lucky, I was in Cambridge (England) at the time, and one of the bookshops sold damaged Cambridge Universtiy Press books at a considerably discount. 'Damaged' meant crumpled corners, not missing or illegible pages. On the grounds I wanted to read said books (whereupon the corners would get dog-eared anyway), I bought a lot of stuff there, FWIW, I have the Radiotron Designers Handbook too, and like it a lot. In fact I bought the reprinted one that was available about 10 years ago, and then later found an earlier edition in second-hand bookshop for very little money (I don't think they knew what it was). But I don't think the Radiotron Designers Handbook is that useful for repairing classic computers (although it _is_ a book I think every electronics hacker should have and should have read). Well, as you said, it was really for scientists desinging instrumentation. There are some areas it doesn't really cover -- valves, cathode ray tubes, radio, etc. If you are particularly interested in one of those areas, you are going to need to get some other books. But you still should get TAoE, it's a book that you will want to refer to. -tony