You must be my evil twin... ... I too came through the old Signetics 2650 'and all the glue' route, although I've kept my fingers occasionally into hardware via my work. I too remember the 300 baud serial VDU made from TTL, and those horrible cassette interfaces. -----Original Message----- From: David Gould [SMTP:dg@ILLUSTRA.COM] Sent: Tuesday, June 03, 1997 12:29 PM what little I ever knew about electronics. Now, I am interested again and would like to do a few things with the PIC. But, I think perhaps wire-wrap is not what I want to do, and maybe I need more than my old 1978 TTL Databook especially since I would like to to some AD and control and I never did know anything about analog. I think that you know enough to get moving pretty fast.... I diddled around using various tools, then did a project using Parallax' Basic Stamp-II modules, just to get the hardware side up to date (i.e. I didn't have to do too much !), then as the desire grew, and time allowed, moved to PICs. I considered 8051s etc, but decided on PICs because I wanted to make small 'cool' solutions that would fit in a matchbox etc. What is a reasonable process for making your own boards these days, or is wirewrap still it for prototypeing? I use proto-boards (you know those white things with bussed connections), and wire-wrap for version one.... Or wire wrap for a single short life project. I do PCBs with cad (hand layout - there has to be a better way), then plot a 2:1 positive at work (beautiful HP plotters!) - take them to a local electronics contact, then receive 1-xx drilled boards back in about a week. ( 2 days in emergencies ) . Are FPGA something I can think about using? I have no idea of the reality of this sort of thing, but the idea of specifying what you need and plugging it into a socket instead of building it out of a pile of chips is compelling. Same thoughts. Although for low-speed / realtime / easy to implement projects, the PIC and Stamp family are pretty good. The FPGA route appeals for high speed where the timing is defined by someone else (e.g. standards), and you don't want to reinvent the wheel in hardware - but have enough time to figure it out in logic. Where can I get (or rather which should I get) a reasonable set of databooks to familiarize myself with the more standard modern components? Both digital and analog please. Not really.. your old TTL books are still a good resource Believe it or not, I am still using a Signetics Logic-TTL data manual on my desk (1978!). It is a good size, quality printing, and the core logic has not changed much over the years (except improved)... so if you work to the 1978 specs, you have even more margin than you expected. Now that we all have computers, I probably don't have to draw my next project by hand. What software (prefer freeware, prefer Linux based, but will pay, will use Windows if need be) should I look for? A very personal path. Visio is neat for quick sketches, Autocad for detailed schematics etc, Microchip's own MPLAB for PIC development. HiTech have a neat C compiler on beta test at the moment. It looks like you just order stuff from Digi-Key these days. Is this true, or are there other better suppliers? Any good surplus places? Sorry - too far away to give advice on that . Regards MC