DORDT COLLEGE ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT
          PROF. DE BOER'S ITEMS ON RESERVE IN THE DORDT COLLEGE LIBRARY

You can see the library's list of books on reserve for Prof. De Boer by 
using the library's web pages.  From the "Finding Books" section, click 
on "Dordt WebCat."  Then from the top menu select "Reserve Desk."  Then 
in the search box enter "de boer" and click on "Instructor."  From the 
list of instructors, choose "De Boer, Douglas."  Then click on the course 
you are interested in.  Take the notes below as annotations of the lists 
that the above steps produce via WebCT.

1.) Linear Circuits and Electronics (EGR 220)

    Circuit Analysis Theory and Practice (book)
    Robins, Alan H.
        This is an electronics technology textbook with content parallel 
        to the course textbook.  This book has excellent colorful 
        illustrations.  The advantage of a technology-oriented text can 
        be seen for example in the presentation on capacitors (page 396 
        and following).  There is detail on how they are made, what they 
        look like, and on how to test them with common lab equipment. 
        There is also information on how they typically fail. 
        (page 408-9)  This type of detail is generally not included in an 
        engineering curriculum for lack of time.  
        
        Use this book as a supplement for your course text, but do not 
        rely on it for theory.  The mathematical and theoretical 
        treatment of topics is too shallow.  For example, the formulae 
        for the equivalent capacity of capacitors in series is based on 
        an assertion that capacitors in series share equal charge.  
        Compare that to the more complete derivation in your textbook.  
        The differences become more important as the topics get more 
        complicated. For example, this book's coverage of effective (RMS) 
        value is based on a graphical interpretation that holds only for 
        sine waves.  (See pages 585-6.)  Engineering textbooks present 
        the general theory that is needed to develop the graphical 
        interpretation.  (See for example pages 489-91 in Dorf & Svoboda, 
        Introduction to Electric Circuits, 5th ed.) 

    About five books on Matlab.
        Matlab is a programming language, something like Visual Basic.  
        It has strong support for doing mathematics with complex numbers, 
        arrays, and as the name implies, matrices.  It also has graphics 
        capabilities that are superior to those of Mathcad.  On the other 
        hand, Matlab is not as easy to learn as Mathcad is.  (No pain, no 
        gain.) 

        "Getting Started with Matlab" by Pratap, is the title of a 
        tutorial--recommended as a starting point.  There are various 
        editions of this.  The older versions might be easier.  They 
        don't introduce all the latest features and get right down to 
        business.  Sometimes less is more.  In a similar line, the older 
        user's guide for the student version of matlab has a shorter
        tutorial than the newer versions of the user's guide has.  It 
        will likely get you further into the understanding Matlab in less 
        time than a newer, longer tutorial (covering lots of features) 
        will. 
        
        "Using Matlab Version 6" and "Reference Guide" are the basic 
        manuals for using Matlab.  "Using Matlab Graphics Version 6" 
        gives still more information.  These three manuals are the 
        publisher's hardcopy documentation that comes with the license to 
        the program.  You can also download these manuals in *.pdf form 
        from the Mathworks Web site.  Most of the content in these 
        manuals is included in the extensive online help system in the 
        program.  


    Orcad Family Lite Edition Software version 9.2 (CD-ROM)
    Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (publisher of this CD-ROM)
        Cadence is a popular vendor of software for electrical engineers.     
        This CD-ROM contains demo versions of 
             Orcad Capture, a CAD program for drawing circuit schematics.
             Orcad Layout, a CAD program for printed circuit boards.
             PSpice, an electrical circuit simulator.
             . . . and more.
        These programs all work together.  That is, a circuit drawn in 
        Capture can be simulated via Pspice.  Since this is a demo version, 
        there are limits to the software.  For example, PSpice is limited 
        to circuits with 64 or fewer nodes, and there are other limits 
        which are listed in the users guides (see below.)
                      
        Recommended:
        ------------
        Before installing anything from this CD-ROM, use "Windows 
        Explorer" ("My Computer" will not work in some cases--for 
        reasons unknown) to open the readme file 
        d:\html\readme.htm.  Then click on "Orcad family Release 
        9.2 Notes."  See especially the instructions regarding 
        Adobe Acrobat Reader.  You need version 4.x or higher to 
        use the manuals for this software.  There could be 
        problems if an older version gets incorrectly updated.

        If for some reason you decide to uninstall an application 
        before installing Orcad (maybe you need more disk space), 
        be sure to reboot just before uninstalling.  Some 
        uninstallers do a more complete job if there has been a 
        recent re-boot.

        Just before starting the installation, reboot your 
        computer.  This free's up memory and terminates any file 
        sharing that is no longer actually in use.  If you do not 
        re-boot just before installing this can leave old DLL's 
        on your hard disk that should have been updated.  The 
        result will be an unstable machine.

        All the manuals for this software are available in *.pdf format on 
        the CD-ROM in the d:\document folder (or e:\document etc. as the 
        case may be for your computer).  You can read these without 
        installing anything, assuming Acrobat Reader 4.x is already 
        installed on your computer.  Get to them via "Windows Explorer."  
        ("My Computer" will sometimes only let your install.)  

        Good documentation files for getting you started are:   

             ref92pdf.pdf  A web-like "home page" for all documentation
                           You can get to the documents below from here.  

             pspug.pdf     Pspice User's Guide
             PSpcRef.pdf   Pspice Reference Guide
             capug.pdf     Capture User's Guide (for drafting schematics)


    Schaum's Outlines--Electric Circuits (book)
    Edmininster, Joseph
        There are books in the Schaum's Outlines series available for 
        almost every college course (you can order them from a 
        bookstore).  Here is the Schaum's Outline for this course.  In it 
        you will find an overview of the theory, but the highlight of 
        this book, and all the books in the Schaum's Outline series, is 
        the focus on helping students with homework.  In this book there 
        are hundreds of worked examples, and more problems with answers 
        given.   
    
2.) Linear Systems Analysis (EGR 221)
        Labview documentation (books)
        Matlab documentation (books--see above remarks for EGR 220)

3.) Microprocessor Interfacing (EGR 304)
        You can find the documentation for the USB here.
        (Loose-leaf binder--Universal Serial Bus Standard)

4.) Digital Signal Processing (EGR 366)
        Matlab documentation (books--see above remarks for EGR 220)