According to Pete: Digital Circuits

Let's look at some basic digital concepts and circuit structures to help bridge the gap between the land of the continuous and the land of the discrete.

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Greetings, and welcome to October! Big news: We're giving away an Analog Discover 2 USB oscilloscope. Watch this episode to find out how!

I originally wanted to specifically cover memory types. But I decided at some point that there wasn't enough fun & juicy stuff to talk about there, so it morphed to cover a bunch more, including rudimentary material pertaining to digital concepts...ok, what does that mean?

We're talking about basic digital functionality and comparing it to analog solutions, discussing TTL and CMOS circuits and how they work, and ultimately breaking down how a clocked S-R flip-flops.

At the end of the episode I'm going to pose a question, your answer to which could win you an Analog Discovery 2 USB oscilloscope. To enter, put your answer in the comment section on YouTube. Entries will be judged both by upvotes and ... well, my opinion. Yep, I'm the ultimate judge on this one.

The winner will be declared on October 15th, 2018 (so late entries are pretty much pointless), by way of our various media channels as well as on the home page. Good luck!

Additional reading:

TTL

CMOS

[Flip-flops](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip-flop_(electronics)

Videos you might want to check out:

Diodes and Transistors

Transistor Biasing Configurations

Mosfets


Comments 9 comments

  • exeng / about 5 years ago / 1

    And the winner is?????

    • As posted on the Youtube page: The winner of the Digilent Analog Discovery 2 USB Oscilloscope from ATP: Digital Circuits is Tanishq Jaiswal for his suggestion of a flash ADC! Thanks everybody for playing!

  • Member #134773 / about 6 years ago / 1

    One other thing: I can certainly sympathize with your "bent wing"! I have far, far too much experience in that area. I have osteogenesis imperfecta (a.k.a. "brittle bone disease"). Between the ages of 2 and 15 I had about 45 broken legs. (I sometimes joke that I've had more broken legs than most football teams!). Kids with OI today at least have home computers and the Internet! (And remote controls are standard on TVs, unlike when I was a kid and they were a rarity -- not good when you can't get out of bed or reach the TV from the bed!)

    On the bright side, I'm glad you went into electronics rather than medicne. I can just hear them paging "Doctor Doktor"! ;-)

    • Thanks, and that's quite a story, sorry to hear all of that. But I'm glad that you're hanging with us! And if I had a doctorate, I'd make everyone call me "Doctor Dokter". Even my mom.

      • Member #134773 / about 6 years ago / 1

        Well, if you ever do "Pile it higher and Deeper", get a white lab coat embroidered with "Dr. Doktor" and have a stethescope handy, and wear them whenever you have reason to go to a hospital! ;-)

  • Member #134773 / about 6 years ago / 1

    I originally wanted to specifically cover memory types. But I decided at some point that there wasn’t enough fun & juicy stuff to talk about there

    Typical analog guy think... Well, sonny, I don't quite go back to the days of drum memory, but I do remember magnetic core memory, before "memory chips" were a "thing" and even before 7400 series was a "thing". (Senior moment -- I don't recall any part numbers for DTL, which was "current" [at least for non-military] when I first started playing in electronics.) Anyway. there's RAM, [mask programmed] ROM, [one-time programmable] PROM, [UV erasable] EPROM, EEPROM, Flash memory, and Ferroelectric RAM to name a few. Each has their advantages and disadvantages, and most are available in a variety of underlying technologies. (OK, these days ROM, PROM, and EPROM are rarely used. But still, you could talk a bit about how RAM, EEPROM, Flash, and FRAM work and why EEPROM and Flash have limited write cycle life making FRAM "interesting".)

    One "interesting" use for EPROM or EEPROM is as a replacement for "random logic" circuits, assuming you don't need really high speed.

    BTW, when you talked about digital being boring, I kept thinking about the days when there was only analog video. You wouldn't have gotten very far in making this video back then!

  • Member #134773 / about 6 years ago / 1

    Since you expect folks to go to the YouTube post, how about putting a link of how to get there? (I'm sure that at least a few readers have only interacted with YouTube by clicking on the "go" button in the Blog...)

    • Of course! Try this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU8OrRnV2lE

      • Member #134773 / about 6 years ago / 1

        Thanks! Guess I'll have to sign up for a YouTube account so I can post an entry...

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