[sdiy] Horowitz/Hill

[Thomas Holley]

I will have to agree with both of you. My degree(BSEE 1979) included making
diodes on a hot plate but mostly it was math. So little hands on experience
it is shameful. I learned most real engineering on my own by burning up lots
of old circuits before figuring out what not to to. I learned nothing of
tube circuits though. Only transistors in a rather primitive way. Now I much
prefer tubes and am working to design a modular system with mostly tube
circuits.

Thomas
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tom May" <tom at tommay.net>
To: <synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl>
Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2003 2:01 PM
Subject: Re: [sdiy] Horowitz/Hill


> "jhaible" <jhaible at debitel.net> writes:
>
> > Funny, even though my education was called study of electrical
> > engineering (Elektrotechnik), most books were not on electronics,
> > but on mathematics, system theory, circuit analysis (means: RLC
> > circuits), Electrodynamics (E and H fields ...) and digital signal
> > processing.
>
> Funny or sad, that is pretty much my experience exactly (BSEE 1987),
> except we had a small amount of digital.  But no tubes.  The analysis
> was heavy, design and practical considerations such as resistor power
> ratings and setup and hold times and power supply decoupling was
> sorely lacking.  Even the digital stuff was mostly analysis of how the
> gates worked.  I learned almost everything I know about digital making
> a 7400-series TTL ALU as a 9-year old, and interfacing things to
> computers in high school.  I have a friend with a philosophy degree
> who is much better at digital than I am based on what he picked up and
> was allowed to do hands-on in high school and continues to do to this
> day.
>
> > And when, after 2 years of maths, the first active circuits were subject
> > of the lectures, the prof came up with tubes instead of transistors.
> > I still have vivid memories of the shock when feedback theory
> > wasn't taught to us on transistors, but on tube circuits.
> > "It's a good exercise to learn it on tubes and then apply your
> > knowledge to transitors". Bastard!
>
> I think we learned feedback theory as exactly that: theory, with black
> boxes full of system functions.  My own shock, learning about tubes on
> my own years later, was finding that most or all of the stuff we
> learned on transistors had been worked out decades before on tubes!
> No one ever mentioned this.  It was like electronics started with the
> transistor.  The things those old timers could do with a handful of
> tubes, like making a TV, blows me away.
>
> Tom.
>