Good beginners electronics / repair books?

Madpanda

I am getting more into retro consoles and want to start getting beyond basic part replacement repair / modification.

I am somewhat confident with the how of soldering, that will just come with experience. What I am interested in is the why.


I.e how are capacitors and resistors used?

Tejs

I've been having some decent fun with Make: Electronics.

It gets kinda pricey when you buy all the supplies you need, but a lot of it are things you can reuse in different experiments. I'm currently learning what I can so that when I buy shields, I can know which are compatible and what not with my Netduino, as well as how to hook them up.

Dark_Side

Make is a wonderful source of information, and their kits are pretty top notch stuff. As to basic electronics know how...you can go the route I did and simply buy a "dummy's guide to electronics" book. Upsides to it is a nice removable and helpful table of common values, equations, and explanations. Downside is it will make you feel like a 13 year old, and there's a lot of frankly extraneous information if you're simply looking for an easily searchable reference. Another option is to track down an old text book on electronics.

Edit: Also it's always nice to have a handy reference manual, something like this.