Looking for a certain electronics book

Thread Starter

alan01346

Joined Aug 13, 2020
30
I had one last in the 1980's then I got more into computers, then I couldn't see to build electronics, then I rigged up binocular magnifiers with LEDs across the front. Anyway it was orange, a paperback maybe 6 inches high and half an inch thick. Mostly each chapter was a project, like a grounded emitter amplifier or an emitter follower. There was a good discussion of the circuit, but all of the circuits had a section with ways you could optimize different things about it. Like higher gain or lower impedance output, each of those was a scant paragraph, there were half a dozen or so, it varied. It was mostly all discrete transistor stuff, maybe there was an op amp circuit. There were maybe 20 chapters.

I probably lifted the book off the bookshelf at a Radio Shack I worked at in the 1970s, maybe I mail ordered it, I don't remember. I don't remember the title or publisher. I find myself building some circuit but then wanting to change something about it. I have SPICE but haven't figured out how to use it.
 

AnalogKid

Joined Aug 1, 2013
10,986
TAB and Sams were the biggies. Orange or orange-ish - Could the one you are looking for be

Having FUN with Transistors, by Len Buckwalter (Sams)

Transistor Projects (TAB / Gernsback)

Practical Solid-State Circuit Design by Jerome E. Oleksy (Sams)

Transistor circuits by Rufus P. Turner (TAB)

?

ak
 

Thread Starter

alan01346

Joined Aug 13, 2020
30
Ah, nope, don't see it yet. Wish I could remember the title but I haven't seen it since about 1991. Not a Sams book I'm pretty sure. Not a Don Lancaster. The Radio Shack I worked at was an affiliate store, not a Radio Shack owned one, so my boss was free to buy whatever he wanted, which doesn't help. I looked through those lists and 400 on eBay. I haven't really tried looking from the bookstore angle like Amazon or Library of Congress. The title wasn't that many words so there could be several books with the same title. It probably has an ISBN number.

I remembered it talked about long-tailing an amplifier stage, but I looked that up and it's not unique to that book. It was all linear, almost all transistors. It might have had one op amp, 741 or something similar. There were I think amplifiers with NPN and PNP transistors, a differential pair, not sure about Darlington. There was a CA3018 I think as a video amp. I'm probably remembering it as better than it was.
 

Thread Starter

alan01346

Joined Aug 13, 2020
30
Was it Transistor Etched Circuit Projects by James Kyle?
I don't think so, I don't remember PCB layouts in it. I've made a few but mostly I use pad per hole Vectorboard type stuff. I do have an LM723 power supply I made on a PCB about 42 years ago, still works OK.
 

SamR

Joined Mar 19, 2019
5,031
Try this: https://www.worldcat.org/
Not only lists books but also finds them in libraries and for sale. Once you locate the particular book then use this: https://www.gettextbooks.com/
Searches thousands of used book vendors to see who has it available along with condition and price and links you to the vendor to purchase or inquire further.
Good Luck!

EDIT: I look for books in Very Good condition, complete and unmarked, often like new or excellent condition retired library copies sometimes with enhanced/reinforced library bindings.
 
Last edited:

Thread Starter

alan01346

Joined Aug 13, 2020
30
Try this: https://www.worldcat.org/
Not only lists books but also finds them in libraries and for sale. Once you locate the particular book then use this: https://www.gettextbooks.com/
Searches thousands of used book vendors to see who has it available along with condition and price and links you to the vendor to purchase or inquire further.
Good Luck!

EDIT: I look for books in Very Good condition, complete and unmarked, often like new or excellent condition retired library copies sometimes with enhanced/reinforced library bindings.
Good one: https://www.gettextbooks.com/isbn/9780810455856/ Worldcat shows a copy at Smith College Library about 1/2 hour away. ISBN 0810455854 LOC: https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/search?searchCode=LCCN&searchArg=74016174&searchType=1&permalink=y

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-lis...mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=all&tag=gettextbooks-20

I'm not positive this is it but it looks right. $13 shipped from Amazon, ordered.
book_9780810455856-us.jpg


 

Thread Starter

alan01346

Joined Aug 13, 2020
30
Hmm, the wayback machine, they don't seem to have it. Famous last words but I'd be willing to scan it and make a PDF I think over the winter. It was published in 1974 so before somebody could just make a PDF out of the original Word or whatever file. A djvu file will probably be smaller. Not sure where to put it if I do, I don't have a static IP or run a server. There are online collections of PDFs i think.

I thought the wayback machine was an archive of stuff they downloaded off the internet, I wouldn't expect to find a pre-computer printed book there. I use Linux so this is giving back a little. In 2012 I scanned about 20 pages of medical records I made into a PDF by feeding TIFF files into Image Magick's Convert program I think it was. This is 143 pages but they're small, it would make a big file.
 

SamR

Joined Mar 19, 2019
5,031
They don't explicitly say anything about donating books or asking for a particular book to be scanned in, but...

Anyone with a free account can upload media to the Internet Archive.
Because we are a library, we pay special attention to books. Not everyone has access to a public or academic library with a good collection, so to provide universal access we need to provide digital versions of books. We began a program to digitize books in 2005 and today we scan 1,000 books per day in 28 locations around the world. Books published prior to 1923 are available for download, and hundreds of thousands of modern books can be borrowed through our Open Library site. Some of our digitized books are only available to the print disabled.
 

Thread Starter

alan01346

Joined Aug 13, 2020
30
Oh, OK, that's a little like Project Gutenberg or the University of Adelaide then, except I'm not sure you can upload to those. With Linux it only takes a few clicks to install Tesseract, a pretty good OCR program, so maybe I'll try to do that and proofread. It usually has trouble where there are pictures (like schematics) in the text. I see what they're doing, anything out of copyright they digitize, I've read a few of those. I was thinking more like Sourceforge, Github, Pastebin.
 

SamR

Joined Mar 19, 2019
5,031
Things have come a long way since Project Gutenberg got started and it's still there. I'm currently working with a book on archive.org that was published in 1942 so I can't download it but can borrow it for an hour at a time. I also purchased it used but the print is so small that I can magnify the one on my monitor to where I can see it easier. Here is another one to check out: https://www.pdfdrive.com/
The books there are downloadable.
 
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