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Years ago I got my 2 year degree in electronics. Afterwards I ran across this book and it filled in ALOT of blanks with more layman explanations.
https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Design-Computer-Architecture-Harris/dp/0123944244
This book teaches you how to implement a 32-bits MIPS processor with single or multi-cycle design using verilog.
It's a fantastic book. No need to get all of them though, this is a pic of the third edition (2015), the second edition (1989), and the first edition (1980). You can skip the first and second.
If you want to learn electronics, this is the book to get:
Make: Electronics: Learning Through Discovery https://amazon.com/dp/1680450263
It literally goes through everything you need to know about basic electronics to be able to teach you how to make your own stuff. I only read through part of the first edition and loved it, so I’m planning on getting the second and actually doing the stuff by hand. I believe one of the last experiments is to 3D print a racecar yourself and create all the electronics from scratch to make it work.
You’ll obviously have to buy all the electronics parts (there’s guides in the book on how and what to buy) but if you don’t want to spend the time buying individual stuff online they sell kits tailored to this book. Each kit covers a certain number of experiments and the total will probably set you back about $200.
I saw Reddit threads recently (not specific to the book) about where to get discount electronics, so you could get the book and then look for the parts you need if you have time.
https://www.amazon.com/Electrical-Engineering-101-Everything-Probably/dp/0123860016
Here is a book I recommend, starts from day 1 stuff, you can flip around where you need. There is free PDF online as well I think. Besides that, if you have the funds, I recommend asking your parents for an Arduino set and some come with project idea books and how to approach them. Other than that you can use codeacademy or other programming websites to teach you step by step.
Good luck!
Fair point.
I should also have posted a reference to the Black Magic book, which covers this in great detail.
Amazon link: High Speed Digital Design: A Handbook of Black Magic
It might be good to know that as a lifetime EE, you’re ALWAYS learning and trying to understand more. Get the book titled The Art of Electronics, 3rd Edition. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0521809266/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_R-8eFb73Z7TV8
Electrical Engineering 101: Everything You Should Have Learned in School...but Probably Didn't By Darren Ashby. Excellent resource to brush up and tune-up your skills
One of the better online resources for getting from zero to basic understanding is the Navy Electricity and Electronics Training Series.
http://www.fcctests.com/neets/Neets.htm
For something with more rigor and much more depth. one could do worse than "The Art of Electronics" by Paul Horowitz, Winfield Hill. But that might not be basic enough for some.
https://www.amazon.com/Art-Electronics-Paul-Horowitz/dp/0521809266/
I agree, particularly with the first paragraph.
Ben's CPU videos coupled with Harris and Harris https://www.amazon.co.uk/Digital-Design-Computer-Architecture-Harris/dp/0123944244 is a great way to get junior EEs started with FPGAs.
I would start from there (CPU), but you won't be missing or struggling with anything if you start from somewhere else, or jump around a bit.
While not exactly synth based, I found the Make: Electronics book a very nice hands-on intro to basic electronics concepts.
https://www.amazon.com/Make-Electronics-Discovery-Charles-Platt/dp/0596153740
And it's already been pointed out but Moritz Klein's YouTube series on VCO's is great. Follow along on a breadboard and you'll be good.
To be fair, Ben Eater's 8-bit computer uses microcoded ROM for control of the processor, which is just one of many control schemes for a processor. Though, that's outside the scope of this comment.
OP, check out Digital Design and Computer Architecture for a good intro after you watch through some of Ben Eater's stuff. I'd HIGHLY recommend doing the questions at the end of each chapter to make sure you actually understand the stuff.
The book mostly covers question 3 (and I guess 4) above. 1 and 2 are, as others have stated, more VLSI questions.
On that front (again, briefly): the chip designers use hardware description languages (like Verilog and VHDL) to describe the functionality of the chip. They then use programs to convert it to an intermediary language called RTL (register transfer logic). They then "lay out" the chip - describe how they want things positioned with respect to one another) and the chip fabricator then uses libraries that they have to transfer the RTL to a series of photolithography masks… you know what. This process is too damned complex to go through right now. Sam Zeloof has a great series of videos on this. He built a chip fabrication set up in his folks' garage when he was in high school. He's insane.
If you've got a chunk of money (~90 USD) to drop on it:
https://www.amazon.com/Art-Electronics-Paul-Horowitz/dp/0521809266
Valuable resource for anyone at any stage of electronics learning. Covers many different types of components (ranging from simple passives on up to complex integrated circuits) and their characteristics, common circuits/ applications, etc.
This is a good reference book and can be found in PDF format for free on archive.org
I also wouldn't hesitate to recommend Pong Chu's Verilog/VHDL books, which are very practical.
Digital Design and Computer Architecture, Second Edition is another book I recommend because it takes primitives and then successively builds components that are finally integrated to produce a RISC processor (bottom-up).
https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Design-Computer-Architecture-Second/dp/0123944244/
Other links you may want to check out:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ECE/comments/50tlkl/fpga_bookresource_reccomendations/d7c08i8/
If you plan on doing more of this, here is one of the better textbooks on the subject. It takes a very practical approach rather than pure theory. It is geared towards higher speeds than what you are working with, but the design techniques still apply.
http://www.amazon.com/High-Speed-Digital-Design-Handbook/dp/0133957241
The Art of Electronics will take you from Ohm's Law to modern computer circuits in one volume. It has a wealth of information, and almost anyone worth their salt as a circuit designer will have a copy of this on hand for reference.
Well, depending on how you look at it, it's either Boolean algebra or black magic.
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TL;DR: You can click through to play with it and see what happens ;)
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The idea is that you set one of the A/B/C inputs and one of the X/Y/Z inputs.
There are 9 outputs corresponding to 9 different score values for a specific game.
Once you set the inputs, one of those outputs will be set to 1, denoting the score.
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The circuit uses fairly basic logic gates - AND and OR, plus one NOT.
I’d suggest a Make book for more elaborate setups but just find a piezo buzzer and run wires to a battery pack for a first test. Now put a switch or push button in between one of the wires.
Sounds like cool stuff.
For Zynq specifics and great examples on using Vivado for Zynq SoC development, have you seen the Zynq Book? There is a lot of great information in there.
For bottom up courses on FPGAs I'm not super familiar with any. A great text book which simply covers introductory details on hardware design, FPGAs, and hardware description languages is Digital Design and Computer Architecture by Harris and Harris. Not all chapters of the book are relevant to what you're interested in, but some contain the introductory information I think you're looking for. If you're uninterested in paying for the book, it shouldn't be too difficult to find it online 😉.
I've got a book suggestion for you. There's probably some better ones out there but it's the one I happened to read recently.
I think it's exactly what you're talking about doing and does a decent job of holding your hand to get you started while still showing you exactly what's going on.
The way things are explained in the book easily translates to using other AVR chips.
If you like Maths and Circuits, look into embedded systems. Depending on how deep you want to go, you can work with circuits, maths (especially embedded is getting popular in AI, Digital Signal Processing etc etc). A lot of what you do here is low level and you dont always have the luxury of nice IDEs for e.g
I switched from a software engineer to embedded systems. I am currently doing my masters in it, I didn't enjoy software engineering. I always enjoyed tinkering with electronics as a kid, so this is something I really enjoy.
I do find it a bit more challenging, because my adhd makes it hard for me to read, a lot of embedded is going through pages and pages of datasheet, so that is kind of a bummer.
I would suggest you get a starter arduino kit or what I did was get this book: AVR Programming: Learning to Write Software for Hardware and an AVR programming kit, there are plenty of them, get a beginner one and then have a go at it, see if you enjoy it.
I recommend watching some YouTube videos on basic electronics.
There are also the Make Electronics books that have a lot of projects that walk you through how components work. You can buy the pre-made parts kits for the books, but its usually cheaper to purchase just the parts you want, or to try de-soldering components from old/broken electronics.
Entire books have been written about this topic, and they sell quite briskly.
High Speed Digital Design: A Handbook of Black Magic
And of course the Electronic Design Automation industry sells CAD software which helps you to simulate these phenomena, so you can debug and optimize your design before building boards and performing tests. Prepare to write a check for $100K, or else to use flakeazoid free software from ~~ditzy grad students~~ universities.
My son enjoyed doing Electronics technology. We used this book. You can buy kits for the materials needed (or get the parts separately.
>...don’t call current “amperage”; that’s strictly bush league.^(5) The same caution will apply to the term “ohmage”.
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>^(5) unless you’re a power engineer working with giant 13 kV transformers and the like – those guys are allowed to say amperage.
You can look into Make.
I like the Make: Electronics books that not only walk you through building basic circuits but also show you how they work. You can either buy the Component Packs that have all the parts to do all the projects in the book, Or you can just buy parts individually for what projects you want to make.
If you don't want to pay for the books, I know that you can find them for free to download as a PDF on some websites.
Your picture shows a wide parallel bus of some length. As you should know, there is coupling between the traces. This effect is where you change one signal and you see a glitch or blip on the adjacent trace.
Whether it matters depends on the design. For instance, if it's a wide processor bus where all signals change simultaneously and if you give yourself time for the bus to settle, then the coupling doesn't really matter. On the other hand, if the signals are all unrelated and changing at random times, those glitches could definitely matter. This is especially true if one of the victim traces is a clock and it glitches enough to misclock something.
You should read the Johnson and Graham book, "High Speed Digital Design" for a lot more about this subject. Yes, the book is pricey but it's worth every nickel. If it saves you a board spin, it paid for itself.
Suffice it to say that if you're designing a PCB such that aesthetics are more important than the electrical design, you're doing it wrong.