Going from Beginner To Pro (self-taught), Understanding Electrical Hardware

I want to start understanding how computers,consoles and video/audio standards work. I want to learn without the help of a traditional postsecondary school and figure it out on my own.

It's a dream of my to be able to make my own adapters and mods among other things or perhaps developing my own emulator projects.

But, I have no clue how to go from dreaming to taking that first step towards accomplishing that dream.

What would be the best way to approach this in steps I'm wondering.
I know I would have to "build" up my knowledge slowly and take this step by step?

I'm not sure what exactly I'd want to attempt due to my uncertainty over the difficulty levels of different electronic engineering projects.

I'd go to school, but I found in that past that university/colleges provide a horrible learning experience. Professors are hired for research abilities rather than their teaching abilities for instance. Plus, class sizes are too huge to allow for a real face to face interaction with the teachers. Then you have the crazy costs of things like School fees, residence fees, etc. It's too much money.

 

You can do distance learning courses in electronics. They're usually pretty good.

 

I'm looking at this myself, except with a few differences.

With this upcoming Fall semester, assuming I pass four classes I will have earned three A.A degrees and general education certification for CSU (California State Universities). With that I was thinking of transferring to a proper 4 year college type in the CSU system (local to California only best I know) for a BA and then a MS in Electrical Engineering (most people in the US don't differentiate Electrical Engineering and Electronic Engineering FYI).

Which will take another 4-6 years if not more. In the mean time I've slowly tackled being self taught by going after one project and then another working upwards in terms of complexity. Region mods->video mods->overclock mods on DIP hardware->overclock on SMT/SMD->taking schematics and putting them onto verboard.

What I can't really do is too much entirely from scratch as of yet. Need to get ahold of a good schematic capture program that has all of the symbols under the sun and start making PCBs. The last project I attempted was the crystal clear Genesis audio mod and due to stopping and starting that board so many times I feel I probably have made a mistake or three. An actual PCB would have prevented that.

 

I teach (English and Language and Humanities stuff) at a university that has Mechanical-Electronic engineering (Mechatronics, they call it here) as its main focus. Many times, I have had to help students translate tutorials and documents for their projects.

From this, and from looking at some electronics books I came across (I picked up a box off the street a few years back) - I have formed a basic understanding of how these things work... but I'm so god damn clumsy that I'd never be able to pick up a soldering iron and make stuff with it.

But now I have a very basic understanding of this stuff.

So - I recommend you READ and practice. Find books and tutorials and combine knowledge. If my psycho-motor skills were not so dysfunctional, I'd already be able to do some very basic mods with the right tools. You should be able to get a very basic understanding of this stuff from reading and buying materials and building stuff from tutorials.

I have reconditioned (cleaned and whatnot) old consoles and found what was wrong with them and stuff, but I always consult a real engineer (either one of my high-school friends, or some of my former students) before I do any practical work.

If you are precise enough and read a lot and practice with tutorials (and you don't have my embarrassing lack of skills), you'll be able to do basic stuff, for certain.

 

if its the electronic hardware (components) you want to understand, I'd recommend this book as a starter:
http://www.amazon.com/Make-Electron...3740/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1309284456&sr=8-1
(check the reviews !)

it teaches you the components (from resistor to PICAXE chip), laws, ... by DOING stuff.
No dry theories, lots of pictures, much better to start than a lot of theoritical stuff I tried.
Beware, besides the book you'll have to buy components to effectively build what they say ! (but if you're serious about it, that shouldn't be a problem)

After that you should be able to figure the rest of your path by yourself.

 

Doing is all well and good, but you really do need the theory in the first place. Sorry if it's boring to you, but it's necessary. You only learn so much by doing. That, and I don't think I'd trust a book that tells me to lick a power source! :\

 

I completely agree that you need it. Just not necessarily in the first place.
This book's approach is different than most books: first build something, see the result, and then receive a good explanation of why it does it.
The theory is there, just not as first place in each experiment.

As long as the book states very clearly that you can only do it with small batteries, but shouldn't do it otherwise, it's ok I guess...
... but I didn't try that experiment

 

This is what I'd like to do myself. I'm starting in the fall as a Computer Science/Programming major. Eventually, I'd like to transfer to another school and pick up Computer Engineering.

The ability to write code and design hardware simultaneously has interested me for years.

Good luck to you in your independent research, man! That's truly the most difficult method of learning, but sometimes it can be the best.