Re: Ever find errors in TAB books?

From: Activ8 (reply2group_at_ndbbm.net)
Date: 08/03/04 

Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2004 03:02:02 -0400

On Tue, 03 Aug 2004 00:43:35 GMT, Matt J. McCullar wrote:

> TAB has published books for the aviation market and electronics hobby market
> for many years. The electronics books are geared toward beginners and
> intermediate users, for the most part. They've offered dozens of titles
> over the years, offering a great variety of hobby projects. Some are rock
> simple, others a bit more complicated.

I've got one on motor controls and a really good one called
__Electronic Databook__. The former... I'd just take the theory and
design my own circuits or analyze what's given. The latter... it's
chock foll of tables (?) and nomograms plus other stuff. I vaguely
remember some questionable stuff but never took the time (or had the
need) to double check. But you've got me on alert here.
>
> One thing I've noticed about TAB books: while the text is almost always
> quite good, I've never liked the extremely crude drawings they use in the
> accompanying artwork.

Many diagrams in the latter book have cheesy looking artwork.

> In artwork as complicated as an electronic schematic
> diagram, it is very easy for an artist not knowledgeable about electronics
> to inadvertently leave out a connection dot or two, or connect components
> together that shouldn't be.
>
> I'm now in my middle 30s and have tinkered with electronics since my early
> teens. Looking back through my notes and copies of various books I've used
> over the years, I can now see where I made some mistakes -- or was led down
> the wrong path by incorrect information! I have enough experience today to
> see a great many incorrect schematic diagrams in a lot of TAB's electronics
> hobby books. I'm wondering if anyone else has noticed this.

Not yet, but as good as Don Lancaster's __The Active Filter
Cookbook__ is, I found one set of design equations that didn't work
in real life. I got po'd (p'd o ?) and left work to go home and run
a simulation on the circuit and damned if that BP design wasn't a LP
or HP (forget which). I was back at work in and hour with a design
that worked right the first time. In the mean time the project
manager called to see if I was coming back - I'd stormed out all
pissed off after telling the CEO I had to go home where I could
accomplish some real work with real tools. Before I'd tried Don's
circuit, I'd tried some snake oil the tech mgr gave me from a
Signetics engr. The project manager has yet to graduate from this
group (not that he even knows it exists) and is too ignorant to know
how ignorant he really is and learn the art in the first place. A
more proper title for him would be "concept man."
>
> My guess is, TAB scrimped on the schematics to hold costs down.

Probably outsourced it to some 3rd world shithole.

> But I
> wonder how many people got burnt out on a potentially rewarding hobby
> because they could not get a particular circuit to work, no matter how hard
> they tried... not knowing that the schematic they were following was
> sabotaged from the get-go!

Well... as sad as that possibility sounds, maybe they later took up
woodworking and started a successful biz doing that and gained many
happy customers :)

> And this is not a magazine where you can read
> the "Oops!" column next month, this is a book. You seldom see these updated
> and corrected.

Don't let that subscription expire.
>
> In particular, I remember how aggravated I was trying to get a program to
> run on a Z-80 microprocessor circuit I built. I eventually was able to
> figure how that the software program they listed (op-codes and hex
> equivalents) was not only incorrect, but horribly wrong! In a program with
> only a dozen lines, I counted three errors! I eventually managed to rewrite
> the whole thing myself and get it to work. But I could easily have given
> up. I wonder how many other hobbiests actually did.

Yeah. I have two books on programing for winders and never once
found code that worked. 'course, I only used code for stuff I didn't
already know, but I had to combine code from both books *and* sort
though the MSDN library to fully understand the API functions that I
needed to use. Disgusting. Linux example code *always* worked for
me.
>
> Matt J. McCullar, KJ5BA
> Arlington, TX
  ^^^^^^^
I spliced a fair amount of your CATV system when TCI upgraded maybe
8 yrs ago. Lived in Azle and then FTW. Azle sucks except for the gal
at the store where I got breakfast. She only charged for coffee when
I drank cappuccino :) 

-- 
Best Regards,
Mike
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