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Best advice here. Totally agree.

With respect to oscillators, the old saying of “amplifiers oscillate; oscillators don’t” comes to mind. Electronics is a cruel and unforgiving field.

Also burn myself and let the magic smoke out and I’m apparently qualified in this field. Go figure :)

A broken Tektronix scope will teach you more about electronics than a textbook too. I think I’ve had about 20 of the things over the years.



> "amplifiers oscillate; oscillators don’t”

Indeed. Also, the purpose of expensive integrated circuits is to protect the delicate fuses in your design.


I understand that both of these things are supposed to be ironic, but I don't quite get them. What are they referring to?


Oscillators are supposed to oscillate but when you want them to, they don’t resulting in debugging.

Amplifiers can have a big phase shift and gain which fulfills barkhausen criteria which is the fundamental requirement for something to oscillate. Oscillating amplifiers are usually a very bad problem because it trashes the signal you are amplifying and tends to suck up a lot of power.

Fuses take a glacial amount of time to blow compared to an integrated circuit. When something goes wrong the IC blows up way before the fuse goes.




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