What is your favorite electronics or software book?

dougw over 4 years ago

In the age of the internet books seem to be much less travelled.

Do books still play a major role in your technical endeavors?

Or do you just keep some around for sentimental reasons?

What book has been the most useful to you in your career?

Does this coincide with your favorite tech book?

Feel free to mention your favorite technical magazine as well.

I read a lot of tech magazines every week but really liked "Electronics" magazine in it heyday.

I wonder if I still have some squirreled away somewhere.

I expect I still have some Amiga magazines.

I forgot to mark this as a question - is there a way to change it to a question?

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genebren over 4 years ago

Doug,

I find that I am buying fewer and fewer books these days. Prior to the explosion of internet tutorials and examples, a good book was the best way for me to learn new skills. Some of my favorite books (that I still reference) are:

The Art of Electronics by Paul Horowitz and Winfield Hill
Beginning Visual C++ 2008 by Ivor Horton
USB Complete by Jan Axelson

I was a follower of CIrcuit Cellar Magazine for many years. (I have several years worth of these on bye shelves)
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beacon_dave over 4 years ago in reply to genebren

"...USB Complete by Jan Axelson..."

I've got a copy of 'Serial Port Complete' by Jan Axelson. I guess I'm a bit behind...
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beacon_dave over 4 years ago in reply to genebren

"...USB Complete by Jan Axelson..."

I've got a copy of 'Serial Port Complete' by Jan Axelson. I guess I'm a bit behind...
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genebren over 4 years ago in reply to beacon_dave

I started with the 'Serial Port Complete' book and moved up to the USB book when I built a multi-channel data acquisition system to read/control up to 10 Spectrophotometers. After that I developed a line of USB based instruments (some of which I still get orders for). Both of these books were well written and highly informative.
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fmilburn over 4 years ago in reply to genebren

Gene,

I am curious about your products :-) Do you have a web page or online store?

Frank
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genebren over 4 years ago in reply to fmilburn

Frank,

I do not actively market these devices any longer. Due to their age (more than 15 years old), most of the parts are obsolete and unavailable. The last couple of units that I sent out were refurbished from prototypes or other returns, etc.

The units were very high speed for spectrometers, 20M samples per second (total) or 4M samples per second per unit (5 units per board). The spectrometers themselves were manufactured by another supplier and were based on some nice Hamamatsu CCD (2048 elements). The target market for these boards were for super low volume chromatography systems.

Gene
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genebren over 4 years ago in reply to genebren

Frank,

Here is a picture of the two channel detector board (I don't seem to have any of the 5 channel beasts left). This was actually on of my first boards to design/layout/build (as I working at a startup and we had to wear many hats). We were needing a lot more performance than the Ocean Optics Spectrometers could provide, so we built our own. I was a very fun project that required me to learn a lot (DSP, CPLD, USB, etc.).

Gene
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fmilburn over 4 years ago in reply to genebren

Really cool, much respect :-)
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javagoza over 4 years ago in reply to genebren

A son to be proud of!
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What is your favorite electronics or software book?

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A son to be proud of!