Re: yes!

On Wed, 21 Aug 2024 05:27:25 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

On a sunny day (Tue, 20 Aug 2024 09:25:27 -0700) it happened john larkin
<jlarkin_highland_tech> wrote in <3kg9cj1fp2jifl9vre6ad7tkd0cj4fp1ac@4ax.com>:
>

On Tue, 20 Aug 2024 17:13:39 +0100, Martin Brown
<'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
>

On 20/08/2024 16:30, Phil Hobbs wrote:

Edward Rawde <invalid@invalid.invalid> wrote:

"john larkin" <jlarkin_highland_tech> wrote in message

I preferred Popular Electronics myself.

>
Just as elsewhere at the time you might only have had access to Rossiyskaya Elektronika.
The world was smaller then.

 
Back when I was 21 and trying to come up to speed in RF, I learned a lot
from RF Design and Wireless World.

>
WW was good on content but circuit diagrams in it were somewhat badly
typeset at times - just enough to make it tricky to get working.
>
Elektor was the other European mag back then and it is still going. They
had a summer special with loads of circuit ideas much like IU. Quirky
resistors as rectangular boxes was one of their trademarks.

>
Do kids these days have similar guides to designing real electronics?
>
When I interview an engineer, recent grad or not, I give them my
2-resistor voltage divider test. Most start mumbling and can't do it.
>

>
Apart from 'Elektor', that was called 'Electuur' here in the Netherlands,
we had 'Radio ELectronica' that last one was my faforite,
Way before that we had 'Radio Blan':
https://archive.org/details/radio-blan/Radio_Blan_01_juli_1960/
Used to read that and build those projects.. If I could get the parts...
Componets from 'Amroh'
https://became.nl/amroh/Geschiedenis%20AMROH/historie1.htm
their '402 coil' (medium wave coil) was seen in many projects.
 Amroh goes back to 1932...
>
As to 2 resistors that sounds bad...
I remember asking to draw a transistor relais driver to see if they forgot the flyback protection diode...

The really advanced question is to state the voltages in an emitter
follower.

I recently hired a kid who flubed the voltage divider question. 10
volt supply, 9K and 1K divider, what's the voltage across the 1K? He
mumbled and said 9.

He seems bright and enthusiastic and already knows a lot about
Raspberry Pi Pico (ie the RP2040 chip). So he can do software while I
teach him some electronics.

I don't use flyback diodes much any more. Most mosfets are controlled
avalanche, whether the data sheet says so or not. I tested an FDV301
for a billion shots just to be sure.