What Hacker News says

eth0upMar 2026

I figure it's fair enough, since this is a great but not free book, to drop https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/ - a truly amazing, and in my opinion extraordinarily well written and organized free learning resource.

Specifically https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/textbook/

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United857Jan 2023

I like All About Circuits: https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/textbook/

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JacesArchivistDec 2022

https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/textbook/

This site is a gem

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crooJun 2021

Best resource I found so far on the subject is the allaboutcircuits webpage: https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/textbook/direct-current/

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NwtnsMthdSep 2020

I don't have a great answer for you but I'll give it a shot. It sounds like you're trying to get from a basic understanding of analog circuits to understanding the makeup of a simple processor (e.g. the Z80).

The general progression is:

  1. Circuit Theory (how fundamental components work)

  2. Semiconductors(diodes, transistors, op-amps [skip those for now])

  3. Digital Electronics (basic logic gates and boolean algebra)

Once you finish learning about digital electronics you should have the fundamental knowledge to understand how a basic processor might operate. A reasonably good place to start might be here.

https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/textbook/

Read Volume 1, Volume 3 (skip chapters 7-13), and Volume 4. That should get you up to speed reasonably quickly.

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JugurthaAug 2020

Meta:

You can open an account at:

https://www.electro-tech-online.com/

https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/

https://www.edaboard.com/

These are forums with extremely helpful members. The format is different than Stack Overflow's "Question/Answer". It is built on the "Post/Thread". You can have threads that go on for 40 pages and span a year, when someone is doing a project, and these magnificent creatures will accompany the users with feedback.

One thing I've done when starting to do PCB is submitting the design to electro-tech-online.com asking for feedback and how I could improve it. You'll have people there with decades of experience go through it, make actionable suggestions on the design stinks and why they're not good.

You can also share a project you're doing as you are doing it, and they can help with the brainstorming/ideation and implementation, they would ask questions and question assumptions.

If you write firmware for microcontrollers, they can also chime in and help you refine the code. If you get into that community, you'll be on a fast track because you'll have people who can do that in their sleep help you in the nicest way.

PCB Design:

You can get yourself CadSoft EAGLE or KiCad, print the tiny documentation in a booklet format, then read the whole documentation, page by page, annotating it, trying every functionality. Making routes, ground pour, layers, with commands and with the mouse.

Dave Jones' "PCB Design Tutorial"[0], will also be very helpful.

Soldering:

Check out Dave Jones' multi-part videos on soldering[1][2][3]. Part 3 is for surface mount, don't bother with that just yet.

Electronics

Depending on where you're starting from.

Absolute beginner? Take a look at Tony Kuphaldt's "Lessons in Electric Circuits"[4]. It is split into multiple volumes (DC, AC, Semiconductors, etc...)

Somehwat beginner? Take a look at "The Art of Electronics" by Paul Horowitz and Winfield Hill. It's one of the books one has to have just in case civilization is destroyed.

Fun trivia: The chapter on transistors explains them by introducing a figure called "Transistor Man". That figure was drawn by Edward Purcell, which you may have heard of from CPMG (Carr-Purcell-Meyboom-Gill). He also won the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the Nuclear Magnetic Resonnance.

You can get an electronics test board like [5] on which you can experiment circuits without soldering them, and with fewer flying wires. The ones that have the screws that hold power input are nice. Then you can buy a bunch of operational amplifiers, LED, logic cates integrated circuits, resistors/capacitors/inductors and play with that.

A bit more advanced or not:

- Texas Instruments' "Op Amps For Everyone"[6]

- "Op-Amp Concepts" by Greg Kovacs

- "Op-Amp Applications Seminar"

In depth:

- "Troubleshooting Analog Circuits", by Robert Pease.