Talk:Digital Circuits

I set up a basic outline that I think is pretty good, although we can probably add some things and delete some other things. I think we can move some more advanced topics into a different wikibook on "Digital Signal Processing", or something similar. --Whiteknight 18:28, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

I had several text books that I was going to use to verify alot of my information before i wrote it down, but i left those books at home (i am away at school), and can't get to them for a little while. I would rather write nothing then write something that is factually incorrect or incomplete. Other people may feel free to write about these topics, but i wont add anything for a little while. --Whiteknight 14:19, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Changed a little of the outline to reflect more like a text book, so that a reader can go though the book in a sequential direction --Asm2750 23:05, 23 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I made more changes still. See my note below. --Whiteknight (talk) (current) 18:23, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Glad to be on board, I'll try to flesh out many of the headings and provide the extra sections nessecary to bring this book into a more developed state. --HL-SDK (talk) 22:51, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Combinational vs. sequential Circuits
According to wikipedia, and what I understood before, Combinational circuits have outputs that depend only on inputs, and not past states. Therefore, latches, flip fops and registers would be sequential logic, not combinational. I think combinational circuits would be decoders, multiplexers, and arithmetic circuits.Hithisishal (talk) 01:59, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Karnaugh Maps
I think that Karnaugh Maps should probably go under the section with optimizations. Maybe shannon's expansion should also. --Whiteknight 22:51, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

I decided to put back the Karnaugh Map in the logic area, due to the fact that it is pretty much the first thing you learn after boolean algebra, and is one of the foundations of digital logic. --Asm2750 23:05, 23 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Kept the Karnaugh map page where it was essentially, as per your decision, but i made it a top-level page. --Whiteknight (talk) (current) 18:22, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

What this book is not
i've done this on a few of the other books, but i feel that it is important to lay down precisely what the scope of a new wikibook is, so that it doesnt grow out of control, and suffer from "feature creep." Here is what i think this book should be, although these guidelines are certainly not set in stone:


 * 1) This is not a Computer Science book. We are not here to teach programming, although i dont think it would be out of the question to include some examples using an HDL such as Verilog or VHDL. However, if we do include programming examples, we should definately not teach how to program because that is a topic best left reserved to the fine people on the CS bookshelf.
 * 2) This is not a physics book. We are not talking about the physical concepts concerning transistors. In fact, i dont think we should talk about transistors much at all, except in a macroscopic sense.
 * 3) This book has a limited scope, and a target audience. This book is designed to talk about what a logic gate is, and how they are used in the design of more complicated circuits. An engineer can walk down to a local electronics store and purchase a set of logic gate ICs. There is no sense reinventing the wheel. There has been an amazing amount of information written on the properties of silicon, or on the construction of a transistor, and there is no need to reproduce that here.

This is my 2 cents, and i would like to hear some input because this wikibook is still in the very early stages of development, and can easily be redirected if necessary. --Whiteknight 22:04, 17 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Many textbooks have been dedicated to digital circuits.
 * Other textbooks (such as our own Electronics Wikibook) include "digital circuits" as one chapter of a larger work.


 * If I suddenly remember some crucial fact about digital circuits that new learners simply must learn, do I put it in the Digital Circuits Wikibook, or into the "Digital Circuits" section of the Electronics Wikibook? --DavidCary (talk) 12:59, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Big Changes
As of April 28th, I made a few big changes to the aesthetics of this book: If anybody has any questions about these changes, or thinks that they should be reverted or whatever, leave me a message and let me know. --Whiteknight (talk) (current) 18:26, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) I flattened out the naming scheme. No more "Digital Circuits/Chapter/Page" notation.
 * 2) I put 4 headings per page, at least. This way there is an automatic TOC on each page, and each page looks like it has substantial information
 * 3) Changed the page naming scheme for all pages from "Digital Circuits:Page" to "Digital Circuits/Page". This is a better convention for all pages.
 * 4) I combined material from subpages into the main pages, so that all pages have a good amount of information on them.
 * 5) I changed some of the "section" headings on the Table of Contents

Another Restructure
I've been busy with college and work for the last few months so I havent had any time to work on this book. But I'm thinking of moving some subjects around again. I'll take a look at this again in a week or two. -- asm2750 17:50, 8 December 2006

Templates and resources
Here is a list of templates and category resources that are used in this book:


 * Template:Digital Circuits Page
 * Template:Digital Circuits Stub
 * Category:Electric Circuits
 * /Stubs

More information for each is available on their respective pages. --Whiteknight (talk) (projects) 16:52, 28 June 2006 (UTC)


 * And some more:
 * Template:Digital Circuits/Exercise — template for writing exercise and solutions
 * Template:Truthtable1 — one-input, one-output truth table
 * Template:Truthtable2 — two-input, one-output truth table
 * Template:Truthtable3 — three-input, one-output truth table
 * Again for more info, see the respective page. Inductiveload (talk) 18:14, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

merge
I suggest merging the Digital Electronics Wikibook into the Digital Circuits wikibook. A box of "digital circuits" is practically synonymous with a box of "digital electronics", right?

Some of the current contents of the Digital Electronics Wikibook look like they would be better suited for a "Computer Architecture" book -- is Microprocessor Design/Computer Architecture and Computer Systems Engineering the closest we have right now? --68.0.124.33 (talk) 22:17, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

I teach digital electronics using givone "digital principles and design" and would like to move to a wikibook. We offer both an engineering and technology digital course. The labs may overlap, but the text can not. There has to be a clear boundary. The text books are going to differentiate the courses more than the labs. This text aligns more with the engineering course. I want to expand it. The digital math is missing X0R and lots of examples right now .. sample homework problems that push design rather than troubleshooting. I agree the design has to lead to FPGA programming. I don't think technologists are going to be troubleshooting this code. 1sfoerster (discuss • contribs) 19:26, 26 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Dear 1sfoerster,
 * Why does there have to be a clear boundary? --DavidCary (discuss • contribs) 04:32, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

copy-and-paste
One edit of the Digital Circuits/Multipliers page appears to be a word-for-word copy-and-paste from "Booth Recoding" by Geoff Knagge. I suspect Geoff Knagge wrote the original and someone copied it to Wikipedia rather than vice versa, since his version is the only one with the "figure 2" referred to in the text.

What should we do about it? --DavidCary (discuss • contribs) 04:32, 1 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I've reverted the edit knowing it's a full copy and paste without source. --atcovi (talk) 04:36, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Endianness, bytes, word length
Should there be a mention of bit ordering (endianness) ? How about word length? If we are adding two numbers we have to assume they are the same length for carry-in and carry out. There is some mention that N bits can represent 2^N possible values. How about error correcting codes and parity checking?

I’m just thinking out loud. . . GreenChileNM (discuss • contribs) 22:14, 1 August 2020 (UTC)