Part One · the devices you can hold
Chapters 1 to 8. Everything here is something you could build on a breadboard tonight: a diode, one transistor, a bias network, a pair sharing an output. Boylestad & Nashelsky territory, met on a live bench rather than described.
The Silicon Bench
Everything in electronics is one trick, done to sand.
The Transistor Bench
A small current, put in charge of a large one.
The Follower Bench
The circuit whose gain is one, and which you cannot do without.
The Bias Bench
What sits still, and what wiggles.
The Gain Bench
Where gain comes from, and where it runs out.
The Output Bench
Two transistors, sharing a job neither can finish alone.
The FET Bench
An input that draws no current, and a law that is a parabola, not an exponential.
The Op-Amp Bench
A black box sold as ideal, built from parts that never are.
The Scaling Story
Three different curves have been sharing one name for sixty years.
Part Two · the transistors nobody can touch
Chapters 9 to 12. Several billion devices at a time, on silicon nobody can probe, trim or replace — but which are identical to each other to a precision no discrete circuit can match. Sedra & Smith territory: mirrors, pairs, CMOS logic, and the loop that decides whether any of it is stable.
The Mirror Bench
The circuit everyone calls a current copier is really a voltage copier.
The Difference Bench
Common-mode rejection is not a property of the pair. It belongs to the tail.
The Money
The silicon is the cheapest thing in the building.
The CMOS Bench
A CMOS gate’s power has nothing to do with how strong its transistors are.
The Loop Bench
Stability is not a property of the amplifier. It is a property of the loop.
The Work
Most of the job is proving you were right.