Collaborate Disseminate
When thinking of the first PCs, most of us might imagine something like the Apple I or the TRS-80. But even before that, there were a set of computers that …read more Continue reading Rebuilding The First Digital Personal Computer
We all know, at least intellectually, that our computers are all built with lots of tiny transistors. But beyond that it’s a little hard to describe. They’re printed on a …read more Continue reading CPU Built From Discrete Transistors
Perhaps the second most famous law in electronics after Ohm’s law is Moore’s law: the number of transistors that can be made on an integrated circuit doubles every two years …read more Continue reading Smaller is Sometimes Better: Why Electronic Components are So Tiny
Op amps. Often the first thing that many learn about when beginning the journey into analog electronics, they’re used in countless ways in an overwhelmingly large array of circuits. When we think about op amps, images of DIPs and SOICs spring to mind, with an incredibly tiny price tag to boot. We take their abundance and convenience for granted nowadays, but they weren’t always so easy to come by.
[Mr Carlson] serves up another vintage offering, this time in the form of a tube op amp. The K2-W model he acquired enjoyed popularity when it was released as one of …read more
Continue reading Op Amps Before Transistors: A 600V Vacuum Tube Monster
We’ve previously remarked upon a generation lucky enough to be well-versed in microcontrollers and computersised electronics through being brought up on the Arduino or the Raspberry Pi but unlucky enough to have missed out on basic electronics such as how to bias a transistor, and to address that gap we’ve taken a look at the basics of transistor biasing.
All the circuits we worked with in the previous article had the transistor’s emitter taken to ground, took their input from the base, and their output from the collector. This configuration, called a Common Emitter amplifier is probably the most common, …read more
Continue reading Biasing That Transistor: The Common Base Amplifier
At what age did you begin learning about electronics? What was the state of the art available to you at the time and what kinds of things were you building? For each reader these answers can be wildly different. Our technology advances so quickly that each successive generation has a profoundly different learning experience. This makes it really hard to figure out what basic knowledge today will be most useful tomorrow.
Do you know the forward voltage drop of a diode? Of course you do. Somewhere just below 0.7 volts, give or take a few millivolts, of course given that …read more
Continue reading Won’t Somebody, Please, Think Of The Transistors!
Harvard researchers made the world’s smallest radio receiver by using atomic imperfections in a pink diamond. Continue reading The Smallest Radio Receiver Ever Is Made from Imperfections in Diamonds
Processors will keep shrinking, but keeping them from burning up will become even more of a challenge. Continue reading Moore’s Law Is About To Be Reborn
Graphene takes on Moore’s Law. Continue reading New Chemical Assembly Process Opens Door to Atomically Thin Electronics
As it turns out, the answer is not 42, it’s 42.3 — thousand. That’s how many discrete transistors spread across the 30 m2 room housing this massive computation machine. [James Newman’s] Megaprocessor, a seriously enlarged version of a microprocessor, is a project we’ve been following with awe as it took shape over the last couple of years.
[James] documented his work in great detail, and by doing so, took us on a journey through the inner workings of microprocessors. His monumental machine is now finished, and it’s the ultimate answer to how a processor – and pretty much everything …read more
Continue reading 42,300 Transistor Megaprocessor Is Complete