Some hints on how to get to the meat of a circuit:
The most important thing is to learn what to ignore, stuff that has to be there to help a circuit work, but that don't tell you much about what it does
- ignore all the power stuff
- in particular capacitors oriented with the two lines horizontal are usually decoupling capacitors, ones oriented the other way tend to carry interesting signals
- learn to find and ignore the biasing resistors around transistors
Rules of thumb:
- outputs of transistors are usually inverted from their inputs if taken from the collector/drain
- signals usually move from left to right
- chips vaguely have inputs on the left and outputs on the right (or pins that work together grouped together)
- Positive voltages tend to be above negative voltages in a schematic (ground is usually more negative than the power rail) nodes between them on the page tend to be between those voltages
The most important thing is to learn what to ignore, stuff that has to be there to help a circuit work, but that don't tell you much about what it does
- ignore all the power stuff
- in particular capacitors oriented with the two lines horizontal are usually decoupling capacitors, ones oriented the other way tend to carry interesting signals
- learn to find and ignore the biasing resistors around transistors
Rules of thumb:
- outputs of transistors are usually inverted from their inputs if taken from the collector/drain
- signals usually move from left to right
- chips vaguely have inputs on the left and outputs on the right (or pins that work together grouped together)