Like many people who repair stuff, [Learn Electronics Repair] has an oscilloscope. But after using it to test a motherboard crystal oscillator, he started thinking about how people who don’t own a ...

Oscillators are as ubiquitous—and, some might argue, as important—as power supplies in electronics systems, finding use in anything that needs a timing signal, from digital watches to TVs and PCs.

Using this Pierce-oscillator circuit, users can test and verify the basic operation of a crystal in parallel-resonance mode. It allows the user to calculate and set the critical external capacitor ...