equipment

[Andrew Schrock]

This is "the short version". Paul's site (www.synthtech.com) also has some
of the same info on it, under "tutorials", I think. 

100% necessary: 

1) A DMM. (multimeter) Around $60-80 at radio shack/swap meet. 

2) A good soldering iron with a stand. (most people on this list prefer
Weller brand) If you buy a rat shack brand, you'll be shooting yourself in
the foot. I got mine for $20 at a swap meet and it has lasted a year so
far, and I haven't even needed a single new tip! Some people I know have
had theirs for 15+ years. 

3) A stand thing with aligator clip arms to hold the PCB while you're
soldering components.. since you need one hand for the iron and one for
the solder, this is basically essential. They're commonly called "helping
hands" or something similar, you can find them all the time for $5-10 at
swap meets. 

4) An anti-static wrist strap. Trust me, you'll want to have this on
whenever you're handling electrostatic sensitive parts. Unless you like
having a 100% correctly breadboarded circuit not work at all, or work in
strange ways. 

5) SPACE. I can't tell you how many projects I screwed up before I got
enough space to lay all my parts out. A box with dividers to store small
parts in is also very handy. 

And not necessary, but makes your life easier: 

5) An oscilloscope. For analog work you don't need anything amazing.. Many
people here use an old Tektronix, typically only a few Mhz. I use a 10Mhz
Tektronix I found in the Physics dept. trash at my University, it does the
job just fine. I'm sure you can find a similar model for cheap if you look
around. 

later
Andrew

-| Andrew Schrock | aschrock at cs.brandeis.edu |-

On Mon, 6 Sep 1999, Roel Das wrote:

> I'm still new at this. Help me out; which test and measurement
> equipement should i buy? What options on these are important; which
> aren't? How can i make sure not to spend too much?
> I gotta know this as soon as possible.
> Help me from being an idiot.
> please 
> roel
> 
> 
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