My goal: to understand circuits/chips/Assembly/etc.

[ofmedicine]

Hello.

I am 26. I have forgotten everything I know about physics. um what's Ohm's law again.

My goal: to understand circuits/chips/Assembly/etc.

My actual goal: to split hairs on this topic till I know it as innately as I know gravity.

I have Ben Eater's YouTube channel on making a breadboard computer as the inspiration for pursuing this goal.

My guess is to learn E&M, circuits basics, and then go forward.

Because I'm a little girl I don't want to mess around with hackers haha seriously I'm crazy. So this is the place I'll nurture my curiosity about the computers that turn our modern world.

I like pretty things btw and I will learn whatever amount of math, spatial awareness, abstract thinking I need in order to learn from beautiful books.

I'm unemployed, so I have plenty of time. I need to know how this computer I'm typing on ticks.

I don't mind taking the scenic long road. So if you've read this...please drop a textbook or two below.

Thank you...let light and love fill your days :3

 

[Jody]

The book we used for my very first class was Introduction to Electric Circuits by Dorf. I would recommend starting on that one.

Another very classic book I think almost everyone should have this one on their shelf is Microelectronic Circuits by Seda and Smith. This book is thick and the topics are more advanced... should be very comfortable with Kirchoff's laws and passives first (resistors, capacitors, and inductors).

 

[ofmedicine]

The book we used for my very first class was Introduction to Electric Circuits by Dorf. I would recommend starting on that one.

Another very classic book I think almost everyone should have this one on their shelf is Microelectronic Circuits by Seda and Smith. This book is thick and the topics are more advanced... should be very comfortable with Kirchoff's laws and passives first (resistors, capacitors, and inductors).

Thank you. Silly question I asked. There’s always amazon previews and reviews. I will check out your books but maybe after some more basic physics.

 

[Kyouran]

Well, there's theory and experience. You can spend a lot of time getting into details on the theory, but at the same time not know what an LM317 is. There are basic industry standard components that many textbooks will not tell you about, and knowing them helps you a lot in analyzing/designing circuits.

As for the purely theoretical part, I suppose it all depends on how detailed you want to go. If you want to go to the point of basically doing a full undergraduate program, here's a list of math topics you can start with in the more low level courses :

- basic calculus: differentiation and integration
- vector calculus: line and surface integrals, vector fields, gradient, divergence and curl (For maxwell's equations)
- complex numbers (for e.g. complex impedance, phasors)
- 1st and 2nd order ODE's (RC, LC, LR and LRC circuits - basic analog filters)
- Fourier and laplace transforms, convolution (e.g. for signal analysis)
- linear systems theory: impulse response, transfer function, ... (good for linear circuits)
- boolean logic (for logic gates)