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Analog engineering is really difficult because you need to solve differential equations that Wolfram is unable to solve. Most designs were made by very smart p

Analog engineering is really difficult because you need to solve differential equations that Wolfram is unable to solve. Most designs were made by very smart people in the 50s at RCA as far as I can tell. Please tell me about how wrong I am. I admit the analog circuit engineering world has looked totally unapproachable to me even as a reasonably competent working computer scientist.

adgjlsfhk1 3y ago
the good news is you don't need exact solutions and there are pretty robust tools for numerical diffeq solving now. the best are Julia's ecosystem, but sundials is pretty decent also.
CamperBob2 3y ago
"LTSpice is all you need," in the vernacular of the times.
mindentropy 3y ago
>Most designs were made by very smart people in the 50s at RCA as far as I can tell. I am very interested to know this. Do you have any resources on this development work done by RCA and how it has shaped the modern world?
- narrator 3y ago
  When I was looking at catalogs of various analog circuit designs, a lot of them were circuits RCA patented that now are public domain because the patents are now expired. They probably aren't the only ones, but they certainly contributed a lot. https://patents.google.com/?q=(analog+circuit)&assignee=rca&oq=assignee:rca+analog+circuit&sort=old&page=1 https://patents.google.com/?q=(analog+circuit)&assignee=rca&...
eternityforest 3y ago
Something like making a new audio amplifier is pretty specialized, but you don't need any advanced math (Not even algebra) for some of it. As long as you're still pretty much thinking time domain and you don't need to calculate frequency responses and RF stuff there's lots to do. But then again my only analog experience is just IO stuff for digital, I've never done anything interesting in pure analog, I think if you're a real analog enthusiast you might get bored of what you can do without math.

adgjlsfhk1 3y ago

the good news is you don't need exact solutions and there are pretty robust tools for numerical diffeq solving now. the best are Julia's ecosystem, but sundials is pretty decent also.

CamperBob2 3y ago

"LTSpice is all you need," in the vernacular of the times.

mindentropy 3y ago

>Most designs were made by very smart people in the 50s at RCA as far as I can tell. I am very interested to know this. Do you have any resources on this development work done by RCA and how it has shaped the modern world?

narrator 3y ago
When I was looking at catalogs of various analog circuit designs, a lot of them were circuits RCA patented that now are public domain because the patents are now expired. They probably aren't the only ones, but they certainly contributed a lot. https://patents.google.com/?q=(analog+circuit)&assignee=rca&oq=assignee:rca+analog+circuit&sort=old&page=1 https://patents.google.com/?q=(analog+circuit)&assignee=rca&...

eternityforest 3y ago

Something like making a new audio amplifier is pretty specialized, but you don't need any advanced math (Not even algebra) for some of it. As long as you're still pretty much thinking time domain and you don't need to calculate frequency responses and RF stuff there's lots to do. But then again my only analog experience is just IO stuff for digital, I've never done anything interesting in pure analog, I think if you're a real analog enthusiast you might get bored of what you can do without math.