Bring: Capacitor with more capacitance Talk about farads Ignition coil and spark plug? Power with computer PSU maybe Multimeter One more part: diodes I skipped over these last time because I really wanted to move toward transistors Light-emitting diodes A very central component: Transistors Three connections Base: "switch" input, allows power to flow from collector to emitter Collector: Input power Emitter: Output Kinda like a relay, but without the isolation NOT binary. A little power to the base allows a little from collector to emitter This makes it useful for analog electronics Like an amplifier! But, we need to go a different direction, toward digital electronics A note about that though: I have a "digital" amp in my living room The controls are digital The amplification process is analog I play music on my computer that arrives digitally from Spotify It's possible to manipulate volume, etc. digitally Eventually, it reaches my headphone amp (still digital) The headphone amp converts it to an analog signal The headphones are purely analog Only 0 and 1: For logic circuit diagrams we'll do: 0 means "low enough" 1 means "high enough" What's "enough"? More than something Larger something: Bigger switching delay, more power use Smaller something: Smaller switching delay, but could it be too small to detect? So it depends on the application. CPU voltage is usually less than 2. We'll consider transistors to be "on" or "off" If you set the frequency too high, they might not have finished changing... At some level, all electronics is analog Next series on this: Gates! We'll talk about computer parts first. Parts of Computers! Like half of you have already built a computer Help everybody else understand Motherboard / Mainboard: More and more stuff is soldered on Single-board computer: Just solder everything on! Probably most important choice: Chipset It'll dictate what CPUs work, what communication standards, etc Connectors: These mostly just expose features of the chipset Video: Often integrated into the CPU and Chipset "Peripherals": Network card, USB controller, RAID controller, marginal sound card Sometimes stuff is integrated into the chipset instead North vs. South Bridge: Mostly historical at this point CPU: We know a lot about these already Should live under a heatsink Memory: Main memory here, RAM Dictated mostly by the motherboard, but you could buy a lot or a little Supported frequency varies Video Card: I'll try not to talk about these forever Power supply: If building a computer, buy quality. Won't go obsolete as fast as the other stuff Case: Strictly speaking optional. Protects against cats Long-term storage: NAND flash, or maybe spinning Other stuff: Do you want a CD-ROM drive? Usually these attach to the SATA controller Memory card reader? Usually these just attach to a USB header Better sound card? A USB or optical DAC might make more sense.