Electronics > Beginners
When you follow the schematic but it doesn't work
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Kleinstein:
Even with a relatively simple circuit things can get wrong, by having a wrong part or wrong polarity or just broken parts. Also misprints in circuit diagrams are rather common. From memory the Elektror journal had about 2-3 corrections to older circuits per issue.

High frequency circuits are especially tricky. However also simple looking circuit not meant to oscillate can do that if murphy helps with the layout. Modern transistors are quite fast and thus one may not even see it oscillate with a slow 20 MHz scope.

Finding faults in circuits (you own or just build after a schematics) is part of the fun.

I remember an amplifier that worked quite well as a radio receiver for a Russian language station. I never found out the frequency, as the normal radio I had could not get that station (e.g. outside the normal bands).
GeorgeOfTheJungle:

--- Quote from: Kleinstein on July 25, 2018, 12:23:10 pm ---I remember an amplifier that worked quite well as a radio receiver for a Russian language station. I never found out the frequency, as the normal radio I had could not get that station (e.g. outside the normal bands).

--- End quote ---

I once managed to do exactly that with a mixer :-) it had a few audio inputs, a few buffer opamps and CMOS analog switches, every now and then I could hear the radio :-). Had to put some low pass filters.
rsjsouza:

--- Quote from: blueskull on July 25, 2018, 12:34:58 pm ---
--- Quote from: TK on July 25, 2018, 11:54:36 am ---You are quoting one extreme of the spectrum.  I am sure there are some amazing professors on the other extreme and a bunch of average in between.  Look for the world changing extreme, not the mediocre one.

--- End quote ---

I don't think so. Most of the time I see a person who knows all is an undergrad. The higher the education, the less the common ECE background knowledge one retains from BS education.

Most truly amazing Swiss knife engineers I've ever seen are either tinker/hobbyist on their own (learn by passion) or are just never received graduate education.

--- End quote ---
In my life I have seen examples in any direction. When I started in the university I had the same impression with some professors, but over the years I found out that the ones that lead or were part of research labs were quite close to the metal, as they suffered with lack of money and resources and needed to build and teach the students how to build most of the infrastructure to get further goals. Also, the lack of resources also meant we were using 50's and 60's equipment well into the 90's and they needed to explain to us how they actually worked so we could understand its limitations to do our job.

In these days I also learned something else: no formal education can trump passion. When I entered the university, there were three of us that had some experience with electronics and couldn't wait to reach the point where actual electricity/electronics lectures would start. The basic course seemed insurmountable (Calculus, Diff Eqns, Complex Math, Mechanics, etc.) but the big carrot after that phase certainly eased the pain, at least for us. Many others dropped out of the university before finishing the basic course. 

If someone is truly passionate about anything, the formal education will become what you make of it - all these weekends and evenings studying things that were apparently disconnected from my core passion (electronics) only helped me broaden my horizons.
b_force:
Passion is indeed the most important thing of all.
The biggest key factor you're looking for as a company.
GeorgeOfTheJungle:

--- Quote from: bd139 on July 25, 2018, 10:40:48 am ---They're teaching C# and nodejs at my local college and their staff have absolutely no fucking idea what they are doing. We have had a couple of their "graduates" in on trial and we're basically having to get them to unlearn a lot of stuff. I mean you don't write an OO program entirely in static methods ffs. But that's what they told us. Seriously, no.

--- End quote ---

Node.js was a very nice little project at the beginning, but it has grown many legs and arms, five or six eyes, and two noses and three ears => it's ugly now. It went nuts when Ryan Dahl, the BDFL, left.
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