6 Feb
2015
6 Feb
'15
10:58 p.m.
On Fri, 6 Feb 2015, tony duell wrote:
The two introductory books I tend to recommend are 'Getting Started in
Electronics' and 'The Forrest Mims Engineer's Notebook', both by Forrest
M. Mims III.
http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Started-Electronics-Forrest-Mims/dp/0945053282
http://www.amazon.com/Forrest-Mims-Engineers-Notebook/dp/1878707035
Back in the day, earlier versions of these books were sold in Radio Shack
stores. 'Getting Started in Electronics' was a bright green book. The
first 'Engineers Notebook' was blue, followed by a yellow 'Engineers
Notebook II'. The two Engineers Notebook books were discontinued much
earlier than 'Getting Started in Electronics', which I remember seeing in
their stores even into the late 1990s.
OK, please
forgive my ignorance, here. To give you some idea of my
electronics expertise level, I'd like you to know that I just googled
crowbar :D
I do not want this to be taken the wrong way. I am not trying to insult
you, nor do I want to put you off restoring the 11/45 (which is a very
nice machine).
FWIW, the 11/45 was the first PDP11 I ever restored and the first I ever
used. All I had was the printset (schematics and fortunately microcode
flowcharts). No technical or maintenance manual. No instruction set
listing. No web pages to look at. No bitsavers. No list like this one. I
managed it, and you can too.
But the 11/45 is complicated, both in terms of the number of components
and way it was designed. There are quite a few non-obvious (at least to
me) bits of logic circuitry in there.
I think you need to read some more general books on electronics too. I
am not sure what to recomend here (and of course suggestions are
welcome). I do like 'The Art of Electronics' by Horrowitz and Hill, it
does start from a basic level, but it may be rather heavy going at the
start. It's still a book to consider (and probably buy), since you won't
grow out of it. But there may be other inttoductory books to look at.