Donald E. Lancaster

While originally flipping through this book, I thought it was pretty hilarious. I still find it funny (because of how outdated it is), but ironically that's also why it's so useful. I started reading about circuits that nobody builds anymore and actually bought a copy of this book to keep for my own reference.

These days, everything is built using microcontrollers because they're cheap and easy to use. (And I don't mean that in a bad way, it's awesome how much better access to technology has gotten since I was a student 20 years ago.) Unfortunately, it can be very hard to find information on older technologies, because it existed before the WWW, and nobody uses it anymore. (And the corollary of the only people posting about old technologies online are crusty old dudes who learned about this stuff 50 years ago and don't know how to describe it in easy-to-understand, non-condescending ways.)

However, what I want to be able to do is use all of the old technologies and build all of the circuits using TTL so that I can understand it really well to be able to (1) teach it better to my students and (2) appreciate the pros and cons of every type of circuit implementation. Also I really enjoy "old" and "useless" circuit technology because it's just plain awesome.

Anyway, I'd say the least useful part of this book is the pinout diagrams, for which I'd recommend either the Internet or TTL Logic Data Book. Also, probably the totally outdated comments such as that TTL is way more popular than CMOS and that most ROM can't be erased or reprogrammed. If you can read through the outdated stuff, though, you may find some hidden gems inside of this book.… (mais)