Getting started in electronics

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1. MisterTeaMay 2026
   The Mims books are fantastic. As a kid I collected every mini notebook and the green Radio Shack "Getting Started in Electronics." They were my intro to electronics along with the Radio Shack kits.
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2. CommenterPersonJun 2025
   "Getting Started in Electronics" by Forrest Mims, if you don't know basic electronics. It's a delightful hand drawn book, even if you do. Also some basic tools. Then, all you need is a broken gadget. If you search for the symptoms, and the name / brand of the gadget, you'll find the most likely causes. Open it up and check for the simplest / most probable cause, and work through them.

   My most recent fix was on a washing machine. After ruling out the simpler issues .. it turned out to be dry solder on the main relay on a rather hairy looking control board. Before this the drain pump had died .. it was amazing technology shipped home by someone on ebay for $20!

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3. GracanaMar 2025
   Forrest Mims books were great for me as a kid who wanted to learn about electronics. I'd recommend Getting Started In Electronics, which you can still buy new. There's a copy on archive.org, but I'd recommend getting a copy.. the hand-written notebook format is much nicer in the book than it is here in scanned form. https://archive.org/details/getting-started-in-electronics/m...
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4. jeffwassMar 2024
   “Getting Started In Electronics” by Forrest Mims. Start from there.

   http://www.forrestmims.org/publications.html

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5. carapaceOct 2023
   I want to point out that computers in particular are just not that hard to understand. E.g. "Getting started in electronics" by Forrest M. Mims III ( https://archive.org/details/gettingstartedin00mims ) covers gates and silicon down to the sub-atomic level, and it's suitable for a bright child.

   Let's not try to excuse the mess in IT by appeals to the aircraft industry until we have a semblance of their professionalism, dedication to safety, and history of handling faults and errors and learning from the process.

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6. neilvSep 2023
   His "Getting Started in Electronics" ("https://archive.org/details/gettingstartedin00mims/") and magazine articles were a big influence on me.

   I didn't know he was self-taught in electronics.

   I wonder, had he gotten an EE in college, what he would've ended up doing, and would it have had as much positive impact as he ended up having.

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