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The Guru of National Semiconductor

PostPosted: Fri Mar 04, 2011 9:53 pm
by William A Washburn
I have had this book for several years and have found it most useful. When the folks a Natioal had a real
problem they took the device to Bob Pease and magically it would run. This book, "Troubleshooting Analog Circuits",
is written in a little different way. It will tell you why the resistor you chose was the wrong one and which one you should have used.

This book starts by defining the passive devices and their properties. It then moves on to interconnected devices and what can go wrong there.

All-in-all I'd say purchase a used book (the new ones are a bit much these days).


Re: The Guru of National Semiconductor

PostPosted: Sat Mar 05, 2011 5:03 am
by chrismb
That incredible mass of wires off of his proto-board looks cool.. just like my proto-boards!!! I guess I must be doing it right then!? But I don't have a beard, like the one Bob appears to have used to plug himself directly into the board!

(sorry, Mr. Pease.. a light-hearted comment with no disrespect intended!)

The 'click to look inside' option on amazon for this book looks like it allows you to see the whole book!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Troubleshooting ... 0750694998

Re: The Guru of National Semiconductor

PostPosted: Sat Mar 05, 2011 4:22 pm
by Doug Coulter
Bob taught me a lot of electronics too, and he hangs out with another poster here, Joe Sousa, who currently designs chips for Linear Technology -- they've got a bunch of that crowd working there now.

Bob wrote a bunch of the application notes in the old National Semi book, if you can find one of those, it's highly recommended -- about 1978 or 1980 they were handing them out to engineers.
Maybe we should ask him to join (along with the rest of my heros from that era -- Joe's crowd, more or less these days). I do have his email, and a few others from that group, all still working/playing with electronics. The fun thing to do with the app book is find the bugs in the schematics -- there are about 10 in the book, kind of a test to see if you understand it (most are pretty obvious and that never caused me any trouble).

They're all pretty much electronics-heads, dunno if any of them get into physics or not, I'll have to ask. Hopefully people will be politely respectful if any of them show up here.