Help. Please advice beginner's guidebook.

yau · Post by **yau** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 6:10 pm

Hello all,

I'm deeply impressed with wii laptop and many portable systems, but as an engineering idiot, i know nothing about circuit, switch, and many names of parts like PCB or even headers. Having tolerated my ignorance on this for so many years, I really want to learn from scatch now and wish one day i could build my own wii laptop.

Could anyone recommend a step-by-step illustrative and graphical book for novice? Ben's book seems so great, but i believe that I couldn't understand it. I need a 101 guidebook for something like how circuit works, etc.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks!!

Kurt_ · Post by **Kurt_** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 6:17 pm

Ben's book is pretty basic. It even tells you which end you hold the soldering iron from!

And it's not a boring read at all.

ATOMICMAN · Post by **ATOMICMAN** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 6:18 pm

well the first step is to buy a soldering iron (low wattage like 15-20 watts), desoldering iron, some solder, wire, a pcb board, and maybe one of the basic electronics books from radioshack. should teach you the basics and how to solder. learn some basic soldering and desoldering skills and then maybe start one of the easy portables like a noac. take it slow and double check everything.

dshacker · Post by **dshacker** » Sun Feb 11, 2007 7:03 pm

for desoldering, just use your soldering iron with some solder on it and keep it on untill the soldered item is out of the solder, and also, get a flux pen for soldering so you dont bridge two pins or anything else together, cause that is a pain in the butt to desolder and make it not bridge

yau · Post by **yau** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 1:13 am

Thanks a lot for all your help and advice.

Soldering iron is new to me, and that's surely what I will practice.

Besides this, I'm always amazed by mod experts' knowledge on circuits and boards. When reading http://nfggames.com/wiki/doku.php?id=av ... _av_pinout , I have no idea about what it is, but they can instantly realize how the AV port of Wii is designed. If that's the way I'm heading to, are there any good books for me to read?

Ahem... I don't mean i want to learn these stuff within a few days, but i really want to learn it from scratch so that i can design my our own Wii laptop in the future. (maybe in the summer)

Post by **Skyone** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 2:13 am

Well, once you analyze more basic circuits, you'll grow up to finding more complicated things (an easy way to find the pinouts of an A/V port is to use an oscilloscope).

Anyways, I think a nice first step would be buying Ben's book, it's a nice read.

yau · Post by **yau** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 6:19 am

As many of you suggest this book, finally i come seriously to read its table of content. Surprisingly, it's really an idiot guide and seems to be able to answer my silly questions on many basic electronics components.

More novice than i think, and more detailed than i expect. This book seems to be able to answer many of my idiotic questions on the electronics of portable devices. (

it's not advertising)

Thanks again for all of your help. I'm going to buy one today.

yau · Post by **yau** » Mon Feb 12, 2007 6:27 am

Yeah, got it. My local bookshop sells it for US$30.6 in hong kong, but still a bit cheaper than amazon's (plus shipping cost). Couldn't wait for it now!