Yep. The Mimms books are actually terrible. Had loads of problems getting stuff working out of them in the 80s. Assumed it was me.
So roll on a few years and our linear circuits lecturer at uni launched into a 30 minute diatribe about how utterly awful they are and to forget everything. And you know what, he was spot on. The points were specifically extrapolations of what you suggest i.e. poor biasing and feedback designs which forced relying on device characteristics. This was damage multiplied by the crappy second rate parts that Radio Shack sold.
I only ever assume people with positive memories of that crap either never built anything or were lucky enough to have parts that were binned as Mimms' were.
The one thing they were good at was instilling excitement and wonder at what simple designs could do.
But yeah, I think only the digital counter circuits made sense to me then.
Wish Mimms had made books showing biasing and calculations for transistors and op-amps. Maybe too much math for too little space…
I feel like the designs could have been kept simple (a not relied on part characteristics) where almost any transistor of a particular type could be have been used.
Surely a simple audio amp or light detector need not be critically dependent on the exact parameters of a specific part…
Oddly, I remember the books covering SCRs and TRIACs, but those were never covered in my university courses… Think we skipped JFETs too…
So roll on a few years and our linear circuits lecturer at uni launched into a 30 minute diatribe about how utterly awful they are and to forget everything. And you know what, he was spot on. The points were specifically extrapolations of what you suggest i.e. poor biasing and feedback designs which forced relying on device characteristics. This was damage multiplied by the crappy second rate parts that Radio Shack sold.
I only ever assume people with positive memories of that crap either never built anything or were lucky enough to have parts that were binned as Mimms' were.