Suggested App Notes

[caffeinatedbard]

I am new to the forum.  Love the Amp Hour and EEVblog(videos, forum, Dave Jones, Dave Jones' rants).

Anyways, the purpose of this topic thread comes from the concept of passing knowledge on to younger engineers. I am fairly new to hardware design with only a couple of years of design experience.  From reading the forums, there is a wealth of knowledge that I wish I could tap;  granted a lot of it would probably be only useful based on specific design questions.  I have also noticed a lot of wisdom can be attained from app notes as described in many of threads I have read. 

My request is pretty simple.  Would you be willing to share those app notes you thought were influential or extremely helpful in your career?  There must be some very popular appnotes that the younger engineers have never come across that might be applicable across the board regardless of your niche application.

I appreciate everyone's input in advance.

[DaveW]

AN47 from Linear - not only great for high speed circuits (and widely known due to the avalanche pulser that can be used for testing oscilloscope bandwidth), but page 130-131 are unfortunately uncannily accurate...
Op amp applications, from Analog, http://www.analog.com/library/analogDialogue/archives/39-05/op_amp_applications_handbook.html
AN31 for op amps again, more basic but a useful reference http://www.national.com/an/AN/AN-31.pdf
Onsemi for power supplies,
http://www.onsemi.com/pub_link/Collateral/HB206-D.PDF

[caffeinatedbard]

Thanks DaveW.  Very useful links.   I took the liberty of including the link for AN47.

http://cds.linear.com/docs/Application%20Note/an47fa.pdf


 P.S. I am a recovering survivor of inanimate object behavior stress disorder.

[Simon]

actualy it would be good id there was a database of app notes / articles organized by subject (hint hint  )

[caffeinatedbard]

I have been looking on some of the big name player's websites like Maxim-ic.com,microchip,analog devices/ti, and most of them have some decent compilations of their design literature.  What I found  is the SNR of the appnotes' quality is awful. There are just SO many appnotes that I felt discouraged and pressed for time looking for ones that are actually useful in spite of the subtle or sometimes blatant marketing tactics. 

I thought that there would be many more like DaveW that really know where the good appnotes are "hiding" and would offer their non-biased assessment of a great appnote/design literature.  I am willing to bet some of them have these appnotes sitting on a pile right next to their worn out copy of AoE.

@Simon-I think your idea is great.  I would have to say though it would be beyond my expertise to setup a website of sorts to do that.

[sub]

HP/Agilent's app notes are sometimes quite interesting.

 I rather enjoyed AN200 "Fundamentals of the Electronic Counters", http://cp.literature.agilent.com/litweb/pdf/5965-7660E.pdf.

[Conrad Hoffman]

I also vote for Linear Tech's app notes, especially the Jim Williams ones. Here's a nice overview of them- http://readingjimwilliams.blogspot.com/

Though not app notes, JW also wrote some excellent columns for EDN magazine. The collection to have is "The Jim Williams Papers".

From other companies, I still find the entry level stuff from National Semiconductor (now TI) covering FETs very useful. Obscure, but with great tutorials on fundementals, the General Radio "Experimenter" issues are good. You can download any of them from IET Labs at http://www.ietlabs.com/genrad/experimenters/ . Though they mostly highlight the introduction of various pieces of GR equipment, I consider them essential to a well rounded historical electronic education. GR probably has the clearest instruction on impedance of anybody. I don't know if it's in the collection, but GR also published an excellent piece on technical writing (for manuals) that's one of the best. It was probably the format for the best manuals Tek and HP put out back in the day.

CH