BKHWETWK.RVW   990515

"How Electronic Things Work", Robert Goodman, 1999, 0-07-024630-0,
U$24.95
%A   Robert Goodman
%C   300 Water Street, Whitby, Ontario   L1N 9B6
%D   1999
%G   0-07-024630-0
%I   McGraw-Hill Ryerson/Osborne
%O   U$24.95 905-430-5000 800-565-5758 fax: 905-430-5020
%P   393 p.
%T   "How Electronic Things Work: And What to Do When They Don't"

In the preface, Goodman states that the text is intended for the
general consumer with little or no electronics background.  The
promotion of the book emphasizes the ability to save money on
maintenance and repair costs.  To be blunt, I don't believe this book
can be written.  A biased opinion, to be sure, but one that I have
formed over years of experience with all manner of things electronic. 
In the first place, electronic things work in an enormous variety of
ways.  Certainly the basic discrete components are the same, but the
numbers of components can easily reach hundreds or thousands in the
complex electrical devices on which the book concentrates.  In
addition, any number of service "technicians" do not actually know how
the devices they service really do work.  What they do know is that on
machine A part B fails quite often, and the characteristic symptom of
this failure is C.  This is why it is often dangerous to allow
electrical engineers near your faltering equipment: they *do* know how
things work, but don't necessarily know the frequency of repair rates
for part B on machine A.  Another factor is that many failures in
electronic objects are actually due to mechanical faults, with special
needs in terms of repair.  A final point is that, in an attempt to
ensure that components cannot be damaged, many are now designed in
such a way that they cannot be fixed, either.

Chapter one does not relieve me of any of these concerns.  The
explanations are not simple, they are simplistic.  In fact, the brief
descriptions of discrete components and the like signally fail to
teach what these items are and do.  The illustrations and figures are
appalling.  I am thoroughly familiar with books that do not use
figures effectively, but I don't believe I have ever come across a
work which relies so heavily on pictures, uses so many, labels them so
poorly, and, in the end, conveys so little useful information.  The
author suggests some testing tool circuits as projects, but the simple
diagrams would be completely incomprehensible to those who were not
already fairly heavily involved with electronic hobby work.  (They
make very little sense to me, and I've seen more than a few circuit
diagrams in my life.)  (The projects also require many items that you
might not find in the usual home repair toolkit, such as an
oscilloscope.)  A cartoon of "Piher mini pots" is not very
informative, particularly since neither "piher" nor "pots" are
defined, or even mentioned, in either the text, the index, or the
disjointed glossary.

And so it goes.  Chapter two, on radios, seems to be more of an ad for
Bose than anything else.  I showed the diagram of an "FM dipole
antenna you can make" to a technical colleague, and his immediate
reaction was "what is that?"  Would anyone with "little or no
electronics background" know how to check the B+ voltage on a
capacitor?  Or ensure that they did not arc it to ground?  Or properly
adjust the head penetration depth on a cassette deck (with no more
instruction than that)?  Would they know how to check broken flex
cable trace leads on a CD player circuit board (chapter three)?  Check
the vertical oscillator and output transistors and/or IC stages on a
TV (chapter four)?  Check and replace any broken parts on the idler
tire of your VCR (chapter five)?  Admittedly, some of the material is
not quite so arcane.  Chapter six, on satellite TV dishes, only
recommends those adjustments that can be made from the system menu
accessible to the user.  And, after telling us how to take a camcorder
apart (which might be easier than getting it all together) chapter
seven doesn't actually recommend any action you can't take from the
outside.  But chapter eight seems to think we can check (or even find)
the ring detection circuit on a telephone answering machine.  In
comparison, chapter nine's review of computers is comically brief,
with very little to suggest in the way of repair tips.  Printer and
fax problems and solutions, in chapter ten, focus on paper jams.

There are some magazine level "explanations" of how some of the
technology, such as CDs and FM radio, work.  Generally speaking, these
discourses fail to impart any real understanding that would lead to an
ability to fix something that wasn't working.  In fact, most of the
material in the book simply provides vocabulary, without anything in
the way of conceptual background.

copyright Robert M. Slade, 1999   BKHWETWK.RVW   990515