Customer Reviews

Fun with Computer Electronics

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This kit and book might just light a spark in a childs mind. Great and easy to understand projects using common components and integrated circuits. You can even get all of the chips and components from this book at Radio Shack and reproduce some of the projects on your own. The 10 Led Chaser/Sequencer makes really cool fake car alarm warning lights for your dash. The authors choice of components is great because it simplifies the circuits you build quite a bit. Putting the breadboard together you experiment on is very easy. I don't really have anything bad to say about it. Please be careful with the chips until you understand the way they work. They are CMOS and easy to damage if wired wrong. CMOS chips can also be damaged by static so you don't want to go scuffing your feet across the carpet before using the kit. Just touch your kitchen faucet and get rid of the static electricity in your body before touching the chip leads.

This work carefully defines basic electronics concepts.
It is written for a wide constituency including young
children and early teens. The work would be very helpful
in formulating a grade school or early high school project
in science. Advanced terms are defined in simple english.
i.e. insulators, conductors, chips, diodes, modems, resistors,
capacitors and the piezo transducer.Midway through the book,
the author describes how to assemble a workbench and test
the circuitry. Later on, the author describes the vocabulary
of truth tables i.e. AND, OR, XOR and NAND
There is even a section on binary numbers. This work is
an excellent introduction into the complex area of electricity.

My kids (6 and 7 years old) got this kit for Christmas from a good friend of ours. Since the target users of the kit appear to be older kids and dad (me) is an electrical engineer, I ended up preparing the kit for my kids. The explanations of components, circuits and functions are nicely written for the intended audience in my opinion. The illustrations are fun and instructive. The kit is not overpriced. It took me a while to assemble the breadboard. It helps if you've done this kind of work before. An impatient novice could get frustrated. The projects seem to be instructive.

Be aware, however, that there is a classic digital design flaw in projects 11, 17, and 20 that may cause some consternation. In these projects, the reset line is driven by a one of the counter's outputs. I won't go into details, but it may result (as it did on mine), in incomplete resets. It's called a "runt pulse" in digital design texts and should be avoided at all costs on real products.

But this is a student kit and there's probably a way to design a fix for this problem with the available kit resources. There will be a quiz next class.

I guess one way to learn about computer electronics is to buy a kit that has a defective chip and then do ad hoc diagnostics on each component using a 9-volt battery to determine that the Toshiba TC4011BP ain't workin'.

This is not what I had in mind when I bought this kit, but it *was* my "out-of-the-box experience."

I've learned a lot about LEDs and logic gates, but I've had to use my imagination instead of confirming my understanding with LEDs that actually emit light. Oh well: typical "Made In China" quality, even if the bad chip in question was originally Japanese.

The too cute documentation is, in places, too cute, and I found several obvious errors in the booklet that could have been fixed if someone had just bothered to follow *all* of the instructions. For example, you're told to take out "the three red and black wires" when there are obviously only two of each in the kit. But at least the author tries to use complete sentences, unlike the majority of hardware data sheets coming out of South Korea. But some of the projects are very clever.

I think I could probably do a better job if I just made the time do "build a better mousetrap"...Maybe I should.

What do computers do? How do they do it? These two questions welcome inquisitive minds as they begin to embark on a quest for these answers with this book and kit.

The language used to describe relatively complicated concepts is simple enough for an eager ten-year-old to understand. However, the hands-on activities and the knowledge gained about computers from this kit makes it an enjoyable product for "kids" of all ages.

The book contains an introduction to the various components of a circuit board and includes several projects that demonstrate some of the inner workings of a computer. After setting up the cardboard "breadboard" and completing some of the projects, the user will understand concepts such as AND gates, NAND gates and flip flops. The hands-on portion of the kit gives the user the satisfaction that comes when a project works, along with the knowledge of why it works.

Anyone who wants to gain a better understanding of the electronics behind the computer should check out this book and kit.

As an Electronic Tech. I found this "TOY" to be beyond anyone other than a Electronic Tech or Engineer. The parts are cheep and difficult to work with not to mention the need to resolder several conncetions on the ICs.

NOT for children.