Page 11 - Troubleshooting Analog Circuits

Acknowledgments

I would like to dedicate this book to my old friend Bruce Seddon. Starting 30 years
ago, he helped me appreciate some of the niceties of worst-case design. They never
did teach that at school, so you have to have a wise old-timer to learn it from. Bruce
was never too busy to lend an ear and a helping hand, and if I never got around to
saying thank-you-well, 30 years is a long time to be an ingrateful lazy bum, but
now’s the time to say, “Thank you, Bruce.”
I want to express my appreciation to the 40-odd friends who helped review the
drafts of these articles, correct my mistakes, and suggest additions. Special thanks go
to Jim Moyer, Tim Regan, Dennis Monticelli, Larry Johnson and to Dan Strassberg
at EDN, who contributed significant technical ideas that were beyond my experience.
I also want to thank Cindy Lewis of Sun Circuits Inc. (Santa Clara, CA.) for her help
in preparing the table of PC-board materials in Chapter 5. Credit goes to Mmeo
Yamatake for his elegant thermocouple amplifier design, Steve Allen, Peggi Willis,
Al Neves, and Fran Hoffart for their photography, and Errol1 Dietz as Key Grip and
Carlos Huerta as Gaffer. Thanks also to Hendrick Santo and to the pple at
Natasha’s Attic in San Jose, for their help in engineering, assembling, and styling
the Czar’s Uniform. And kudos to each of the EDN editors who slaved over my copy:
Julie Anne Schofield, Anne Watson Swager, Charles H. Small, and Dan Strassberg,
in addition to Carol S. Lewis at HighText Publications in San Diego. Each one really
worked hard, and cared a lot about every word and phrase that we debated and argued
and polished and refined.
I am also grateful to Joyce Gilbert, our group’s secretary, who wound up typing a
lot more than she bargained for. She believed me when I told her it would only be 50
or 60 pages typed . . . how were we to know how this would grow to 280 pages??
Note, even though Joyce typed everything in here, I typed everything, too, as I find
that my creative juices flow best when I am typing on a good word processor. I
wouldn’t have asked her to type anything I wouldn’t type. However, with the price of
computers being what they are, shrinking and lowering, I would never want to re-
quire anybody to re-key this kind of text, never again. It’s not that expensive or diffi-
cult to type in an ASCII-compatible format in the first place. I typed my early draft
on my old Coleco ADAM, with a non-compatible cassette memory. Joyce re-typed
everything I wrote with Ashton-Tate Multi-mate, and we sent the ASCII files to
EDN, back in August and November of 1988. I got the typed files back from EDN
and put in dozens and dozens of hours retyping, polishing, refining, and expanding
the text. I also want to express my appreciation for Wanda Garrett, who put up with
an awful lot of dumb questions about how to get the word-processor running for me.
If any of my readers is ever going to write a book, well, think about what you are
going to do, and how you are going to do it. Remember, this text started out as a
single chapter for Al Kelsch’s book on switching regulators! I wouldn’t have gone
about this in such a dumb, inefficient way if I could have imagined what a big project
it would be. But, then, I might never have even started. . . .
As for technical and troubleshooting ideas, well, after all the tips I’ve given you,
it’s only fair that you share your comments with me!
Bob Pease, Staff Scientist
National Semiconductor Corp., M/S C2500A. P.O. Box 58090, Santa Clara, CA 95052-8090.

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