Analog DIY versus Digital DIY

[Magnus Danielson]

>>>>> "SC" == Steven Curtin <sdcurtin at lucent.com> writes:

 SC> At 03:06 AM 5/6/98 -0700, you wrote:
 >>> Now, what would you all consider more important at this time - learning
 >>> analog, or learning digital?  
 >> -well, one of my parents' EE friends once told me "any schmuck can do
 >> digital, learn analog", though i don't know if i agree with that one :) ..
 >> the importance of either field is dependent pretty much upon all of those
 >> different considerations you listed and how much weight each one has with
 SC> you.. 

 SC> Also remember that Digital is ultimately running on an Analog medium.  I'm
 SC> frequently reminded that many digital problems come down to bad contacts,
 SC> proximity, grounding and a host of other things that need to be correct for
 SC> any reliable circuit.

For those that truely beleive that "The future is digital!" I can only
say that as things speed up in the digital equipment, the more analog
electronics must you know. Things like impedance matching etc. is
certainly among the stuff that digital people doesn't know about. I
have seen how people tries to figure out problem with a simple level
converter by looking at the truth-table while I could point at the
problem and tell them that they just got themselfs an wideband analog
amplifier in that state... the same level converter I wanted to
replace with a simple transistors and a few resistors since they could
not get that chip on time... digitally oriented people think so
one-dimensional sometimes ;)

Digital is a special case of analog, for some classes of problems it
is an important special case, but it is NOT a isolated area...

Digital people doesn't understand how the power of a chip can effect
it's load to it's surroundings... they don't have a clue!!!

Cheers,
Magnus