Practical Electronic Fault-Finding and Troubleshooting

Book excerpt: It isn't enough to be able to design. It isn't even enough to be able to debug. To be a real fault finder, you must be able to get a feel for what is going on in the circuit you are examining. In this book Robin Pain explains the basic techniques needed to be fault finder.Simple circuit examples are used to illustrate principles and concepts fundamental to the process of fault finding. This is not a book of theory. It is a book of practical tips, hints, and rules of thumb, all of which will equip the reader to tackle any job, whether it is fixing a TV, improving the sound from a hi-fi, or locating the fault in a piece of process equipment. You may be an engineer or technician in search of information and guidance, a college student, a hobbyist building a project from a magazine, or simply a keen self-taught amateur who is interested in electronic fault finding but finds books on the subject too mathematical or specialised. But you have one thing lacking, no fault-finding strategy. Seasoned professional designers have that peculiar knowledge of their own work and specialised knowledge of its components to allow them to analyse and remove faults quickly on the spot (design errors take a little longer!). Fault finders can never have this depth of specialisation;commercial pressures demand a minimum-knowledge-to-do-the-job approach. Practical Electronic Fault Finding and Troubleshooting describes the fundamental principles of analog and digital fault finding (although of course there is no such thing as a `digital fault' - all faults are by nature analog). This book is written entirely for a fault finder using only the basic fault-finding equipment: a digital multimeter and an oscilloscope. The treatment is non-mathematical (apart from Ohm's Law) and all jargon is strictly avoided. Robin Pain was originally trained to service colour TV, and has worked as an industrial fault finder for manufacturers of mobile radio, audio equipment, microcomputers and medical equipment. He has lectured at home and abroad on microcomputer fault finding.