BOOKSHELF
Transistor handbook
sistors, it is the ultimate reference.
It costs $214 for each annual edi-
tion or $253 if the update edition,
due March 1990, is included.
Our copy came from the Australian agents for D.A.T.A. books,
J.H. Book Services Pty Ltd, PO Box
311, Chatswood, NSW 2067.
Theory handbook
for radio amateurs
D.A.T.A. Digest: Transistors. 59th
edition published 1988 by D.A.T.A.
Business Publishing, San Diego,
California. Soft covers, 215 x
279mm, 1423 pages. ISSN 1040
0230. Price $214.00.
This huge reference is updated
regularly and is acknowledged as
the most comprehensive source
book for transistors. Data Business
Publishing has editions on digital,
linear, interface, memory and
microprocessor ICs, on diodes,
thyristors, power semiconductors
and optoelectronics. All are huge
and encompass a mind-boggling
number of semiconductor devices.
This 1988 edition on transistors
features 56,802 current devices. No
doubt the 1989 edition (due in
September) will have even more.
The D.A.T.A. Transistor Digest is
far more comprehensive than some
of the transistor substitution handbooks that are currently available.
It has an alphanumeric index of all
the current transistors which
refers you to a page and row
number where all the transistor
specs are listed out. Another section lists all the transistors and
gives a substitution together with
the name of the manufacturer.
After that, what can you say. The
listing goes on and on for hundreds
and hundreds of pages, 1423 in
fact. If you need to source tran-
Radio Theory Handbook for
Amateur Operators, by Fred
Swainston. Published 1988 by
Prentice-Hall of Australia. Soft
covers, 211 x 277mm, 345 pages.
ISBN O 7248 1044 7.
According to the preface, this
text "has been written to cover the
Department of Communications
syllabus for the Novice and
Amateur Operator Certificate of
Proficiency (AOCP). It contains the
theory necessary to pass the Certificate of Proficiency and is written to be concise and easy to
understand''.
Superficially, this book does
what it sets out to do. It presents
subject matter applicable to the
complete syllabus for an Amateur
Radio Operator's ticket and I
daresay that someone who went
through the text and used the
answers presented for the sample
questions in each chapter would get
a ticket.
But whoever wrote it or edited it
does not appear to know very much
about electronics. The explanations
of how circuits work are poorly
written and often quite wrong. Furthermore, quite a few of the
diagrams are badly drawn, often
with wrong battery polarities or
just plain wrong.
In fact, the book comes with a
loose correction to a mains filter
circuit which is shown on page 218
with the Active and Neutral
transposed at the output. The
amended circuit shows the Active
and Neutral terminals correctly but
shows .047µF 500V capacitors connected between both sides of the
mains (ie, Active and Neutral) to
Earth. That's two mistakes in one
go. First, the capacitors concerned
should be no larger in capacitance
than .0lµF and second, they should
be rated at 250V AC.
As another example, on page 212
is a circuit of a lead acid battery
charger which supposedly can be
varied in output current from 1 amp
to 4 amps. No values are shown on
the circuit (as is the case on circuits
throughout the book) but as shown
the circuit can only vary the output
voltage, not the output current.
If the above is not sufficient
criticism (we can cite plenty more
examples), then we should also say
that the book is solidly rooted in the
past. For a book that was first
published in 1988 it ignores a great
deal of electronics that has been
developed in the last twenty years
or so; it makes virtually no mention
at all of integrated circuits or
digital circuitry (OK, there are a
couple of pages, 102 to 104).
As far as we are concerned, the
book can't be recommended at all.
There are so many examples of
poor writing, errors in fact and in
circuit diagrams that it deserves to
be thoroughly rubbished. Our copy
came from the NSW division of the
Wireless Institute of Australia. We
suggest that they send their remaining copies to the paper recyclers.
OCT0BER1989
55
