How to Diagnose and Fix Everything Electronic [Repost]

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How to Diagnose and Fix Everything Electronic [Repost]

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Set up a workbench and equip it with tools and test instruments
Ensure personal safety and avoid electrical and physical damage to devices
Understand electrical units, circuits, and signals
Use test equipment, including a digital multimeter, signal generator, frequency counter, and an oscilloscope
Repair circuit boards and replace parts
Work with components, from capacitors and ICs to transistors and zeners
Learn to read block, schematic, and pictorial diagrams
Disassemble devices and identify sections and stages
Troubleshoot and diagnose to the component level
Perform reverse-order reassembly

This is, hands down, the best book I have ever read on understanding electronics. I've had college and post-graduate courses that taught me how to analyze circuits and figure out what voltages, currents, resistances, etc. were at certain points. That was all well and good, but totally useless for anything that I wanted to do on my work bench.

In reality, what I needed was a holistic approach that narrated the circuit and the signals that are manipulated. I NEVER thought of circuits this way and the author was able to explain that the active elements are the players in the story and everything else is a supporting cast.

I could read a schematic, but I couldn't understand why the components were there. I know that a capacitor doesn't pass DC, but now I see that when placed in the circuit, it acts as a DC filter to remove noise before passing a signal to the next stage.

On top of all that, I realized that every circuit has a voltage that is used as a signal. Signal analysis, analog and digital, seemed like a very advanced topic that I only understood through major concepts (linearity, aliasing, etc). Now I realize that a battery and a light bulb has a signal just as a digital video camera does. One is just more complex.

Bottom line, this is the book that I couldn't put down…and it is about some of the driest material you can find. It is written in a fun and enjoyable fashion. Every page had an "AH HA!" moment and I am much more confident in my electronics hobby and profession.

I cannot recommend this book enough and I would pay triple just for the section where the author walks through a couple sample circuits, describes each component's function, and what would happen if that component failed.