Eeyore wrote in message
...


Jan Panteltje wrote:

Joe Chisolm wrote

Dr Howard Johnson (High Speed Digital Design) had this article in
his email newsletter (and posted on his site). Interesting read.
Rollback RoHS: http://www.sigcon.com/Pubs/news/10_01.htm

Well seems [all] we have to [do is] make some traces .65mm apart :-)

Some ? ALL !

Goodbye microelectronics.

I just came across this too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_pest

" At 13.2 degrees Celsius (about 56 degrees Fahrenheit) and below, pure
tin
transforms from the (silvery, ductile) allotrope of beta-modification
white tin
to brittle, alpha-modification grey tin. Eventually it decomposes into
powder,
hence the name tin pest."


Graham



So when I pull , with just finger tension, a component lead through what was
a lead-free solder joint only a year or so before and there is a grey
powdery looking surface to the lead where it had been inside the solder
joint - is that "tin pest" ?


--
Diverse Devices, Southampton, England
electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on
http://home.graffiti.net/diverse:graffiti.net/

N Cook wrote:

Eeyore wrote

I just came across this too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_pest

" At 13.2 degrees Celsius (about 56 degrees Fahrenheit) and below, pure
tin transforms from the (silvery, ductile) allotrope of beta-modification
white tin to brittle, alpha-modification grey tin. Eventually it decomposes
into
powder, hence the name tin pest."


So when I pull , with just finger tension, a component lead through what was
a lead-free solder joint only a year or so before and there is a grey
powdery looking surface to the lead where it had been inside the solder
joint - is that "tin pest" ?

It could well be I suppose. Here's the problem, we're in 'uncharted territory'
here because the EU insisted on going down this path before the science was
well-established. Document it. It has serious implications for the classic
practice of keeping MI gear in the van / truck, in the (unheated) garage etc.

I'd love to see the idiots at the Commision in Brussels forced to eat humble
pie. It's about time that Emperor Barroso's new clothes were seen for what they
are.

Graham

Alex wrote:

I reworked all the joints with lead-free, as that is what the RoHS
legislation legally charges me to do as a commercial repair outfit, but boy,
the temptation was strong to just reach for the leaded solder, and do the
job 'properly' ...

If you use leadfree solder, remember that the temperature is a bit
higher, and this makes the fumes from resin much more dangerous to
YOU..
Second.. if the components is made for leadfree solder , it can happen
that the tin/lead solder wont make a good solder-joint. ( but I agree
that sometimes one is tempted )

Do you always talk **** ?

Graham

On Jul 25, 1:48 pm, msg wrote:
Jan Panteltje wrote:

snip

How about conductive glue replacing solder?
Na, will have to wait until the first EU politician's cellphone fails in
some emergency.

What ever happened to 'multiwire' (or some such trade name)? It was
a multilayered weld-bonded wiring alternative to multilayer PCBs
in the '60s and '70s and was very rugged, easily implemented with
NC technology, and used no solder of course.

Since each layer is built up in succession, between power and ground
planes, even BGAs can be accomodated.

You just named the problem with Multiwire--wire is sequentially
applied
to a thermoplastic substrate.

Whatever other advantages or problems it may have, it is a
*prototyping*
process, not a mass production process. It is to PCB production as
e-beam is to photolithography.

"Eeyore" wrote in message
...
The debate about lead free solders seem to be nearly as politically charged as
that about anthropogenic global warming and a casualty seems to be useful
data.

I've read plenty of comments to the effect that lead-free is less reliable in
the long term (vibration seems to be a key weakness AIUI - maybe also thermal
cycling) which presumably explains the exemptions for certain categories, yet
I've also seen some studies that claim it can out-perform lead containing
solders.

Is there any real hard and fast information out there that one can rely on ?

Graham

Tin Whiskers:-

For those who though leaded solder was best.
Here is the problem with lead free solder.

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/science/85/8529sci1.html

Colin

"Glen Walpert" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 24 Jul 2007 23:42:47 +0100, Eeyore
wrote:

The debate about lead free solders seem to be nearly as politically
charged as
that about anthropogenic global warming and a casualty seems to be useful
data.

I've read plenty of comments to the effect that lead-free is less reliable
in
the long term (vibration seems to be a key weakness AIUI - maybe also
thermal
cycling) which presumably explains the exemptions for certain categories,
yet
I've also seen some studies that claim it can out-perform lead containing
solders.

Is there any real hard and fast information out there that one can rely on
?

Graham

Don't look to this newsgroup for factual info on lead free! Instead
look at actual test results in the trade publications such as SMT
magazine:
http://smt.pennnet.com/home.cfm
They have published numerous tests comparing various lead free
materials and processes with tin-lead. Some lead free materials and
processes are better than others (no surprise) and picking the best
one for your situation is non-trivial.

My nutshell summary of the published test results is that lead free is
significantly harder to do right than tin-lead, requiring tighter
process controls, but if done right it can be more reliable than
tin-lead for non-shock situations. Lead free is harder, stronger and
more brittle than tin-lead so tin-lead will deform plastically under
high shock when lead free will break, however lead free will withstand
more hot-cold cycles than before failure than tin-lead (better fatigue
resistance). So you need to know what the significant failure
mechanisms are in your design to pick the most reliable materials.

Glen

And in the meantime whilst smaller manufacturers who don't have the
resources of the big boys to research this crap in sufficient detail to find
the 'correct' process to replace the previously utterly reliable and simple
leaded soldering that they were using, cartloads of electronic equipment are
failing as a result of the bad joints that the experimentation or 'best fit'
replacement alloys are causing.

I wonder what qualifies you to make that remark at the beginning of your
post, telling people not to look to this group for 'factual' information on
lead-free ? When I tell you that I work day in day out with equipment from
major manufacturers that uses the stuff, and that since they have been using
it, I have seen the incidence of bad joints in places that would never
previously have suffered, skyrocket, do you consider that to not be
'factual' ? Am I lying perhaps ? There are many good engineers that
contribute to this group, and most have reported seeing an increase in such
bad joints. Are they all being less than 'factual' ?

When push comes to shove, this is an electronic repair group, frequented by,
amongst others, repair professionals who have to deal with the effects of
legislation such as RoHS, and its implications, at the sharp end, which is
more than the manufacturers and political activists / pseudo scientists
responsible for creating these situations, do. As such, I feel that it is
therefore rather presumptuous of you to suggest that opinions voiced on this
group, are not based in fact, and thus not valid.

Arfa

On Wed, 25 Jul 2007 10:41:01 +0100, "N Cook" wrote:

Spurious Response wrote in message
news
On Wed, 25 Jul 2007 08:42:50 +0100, "N Cook" wrote:

Military , aerospace & medical do have derogation from WEEE and RoSH, but
can anyone nail down precisely why they are exempted.



Absolutely. Lead based solder alloys are ****ing superior, and Tin
based, non-leaded alloys are inferior, and have VERY POOR reliability
numbers.

It is really quite simple math.

A mission critical application REQUIRES a system where one does not
have to expect some lame failure mode to creep in due to the utilization
of a VERY POOR, failure mode prone device interconnection methodology.

The next time I get a year or 2 year old 800 GBP/1500 USD combo in for
repair with loose simple, thermally un-stressed,but vibrationally stressed
components, I will actually measure the extraction force of the obviously
suspect ones and some of the remaining ones, with a spring balance and a
hook of wire. I would never have expected otherwise well-soldered (but
obviously lead-free solder) very basic "components" like soldered wire
links,1/3W resistors,TO92 transistors, to have solder failures after
decades, let alone a couple of years.

Most "solder creep" (the expression which describes your scenario)
failures can be tracked back to a poor design as it relates to fixturing
large masses or "tugged on" components or interconnects. Such elements
should be fixtured by means other than the soldered leads.

It was unclear to me whether your situation was a remark about how
quickly a lead free assembly exhibits such failure, or about older.
leaded solder alloys in assemblies.

Some more relevant background text from
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/iemr...202015%20Makin
g%20a%20Visible%20Difference%20EIGT%20Report.pd f
nothing about failure rates in the bullet-points though

Cool.

"..... The lead-free solder proposal was introduced at short notice by the
EU in
1998 as a revision to the WEEE Directive under Article 175 (environment),
and is the subject of qualified majority voting, so the UK has no power of
veto. The UK was the only member state represented by its industry
ministry, and other member states were represented by environmental
ministries. No rigorous fiche d'impact was undertaken. The proposals take
effect from 1 July 2006.

Yep.

Subsequently, the Removal of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) provisions,
which deal with other hazardous substances, were made under Article 95
(single market). So interdependent legislation will be introduced under
different agreement arrangements.
Unintended consequences include:
* Increased material and component costs because some PCB material
and some components cannot be used with higher temperature solder;
* Re-certification costs for safety critical products;
* Damage to soldering equipment from electrochemical corrosion,
following use of tin-rich solder in machines previously used with lead-
based solder;
* Increased capital equipment cost as equipment life shortens;
* Increased costs associated with inspection, testing and tracking to
demonstrate compliance;
* Training and retraining costs for staff working with new materials;
* Increased capital and inventory costs as manufacturers keep separate
lines and stocks for defence and exempt products. ....."


And for solder, it was entirely NOT necessary.

The other substances perhaps, but not for solder.

On Wed, 25 Jul 2007 10:41:13 +0100, Eeyore
wrote:



Spurious Response wrote:

"N Cook" wrote:

Military , aerospace & medical do have derogation from WEEE and RoSH, but
can anyone nail down precisely why they are exempted.

Absolutely. Lead based solder alloys are ****ing superior, and Tin
based, non-leaded alloys are inferior, and have VERY POOR reliability
numbers.

It is really quite simple math.

A mission critical application REQUIRES a system where one does not
have to expect some lame failure mode to creep in due to the utilization
of a VERY POOR, failure mode prone device interconnection methodology.

So pony up your data !


"Data" is a collection of values or attributes for a given observation.

"Information" is processed data.

What you are looking for is information.

"Arfa Daily" wrote in message
...

"Eeyore" wrote in message
...


Spurious Response wrote:

Eeyore wrote:
"Leeper" wrote:

t is really application and chip package specific,

Bull****. Lead based solder alloys are superior in damn near all
electronic realms, and there is no configuration where they would not
be
other than high end commercial and military applications, and they
certainly do not include Tin.

Whilst I don't disagree with you, where's the hard comparative data ?

Considering the fact that we have 5 decade old circuit cards still
operating perfectly, and that we already know what alloys containing Tin
which is not bound by Lead do over time and temperature cycling, I do
not
think that precise numerical analysis is even needed on such a
profoundly
lopsided issue.

Whilst I agree with you, bureacrats tend not to be very receptive to
anecdotal
comment. And make no mistake, the bureacrats are the ones in control of
this.

Graham



I have just this minute finished repairing a Panasonic DAB / FM radio
which was dying as soon as it was switched on, with a "F76 Pdet" error in
the display. I took this to be "power detect", which seemed reasonable,
given the symptoms. When I took the main board out to have a look at the
underside, I found the power supply section riddled with poor and
'cracked-right-round' lead-free solder joints ( the board actually has
"PbF" silk-screened on it ). The poor joints were particularly well
defined on the main free-air cooled regulator transistor, which is
obviously subject to thermal cycling.

I reworked all the joints with lead-free, as that is what the RoHS
legislation legally charges me to do as a commercial repair outfit, but
boy, the temptation was strong to just reach for the leaded solder, and do
the job 'properly' ...

But we know which solder you really used. Of course, you have to pretend
you used the PbF stuff. Just be careful that the lead nazis don't audit
your purchasing of lead content...

Leonard

On Wed, 25 Jul 2007 10:43:08 +0100, Eeyore
wrote:



Spurious Response wrote:

Eeyore wrote:
"Leeper" wrote:

t is really application and chip package specific,

Bull****. Lead based solder alloys are superior in damn near all
electronic realms, and there is no configuration where they would not be
other than high end commercial and military applications, and they
certainly do not include Tin.

Whilst I don't disagree with you, where's the hard comparative data ?

Considering the fact that we have 5 decade old circuit cards still
operating perfectly, and that we already know what alloys containing Tin
which is not bound by Lead do over time and temperature cycling, I do not
think that precise numerical analysis is even needed on such a profoundly
lopsided issue.

Whilst I agree with you, bureacrats tend not to be very receptive to anecdotal
comment. And make no mistake, the bureacrats are the ones in control of this.



If the water tables around an outdoor shooting range had any higher
levels of lead leeched into them, the whole world would know about it,
and that is what we call NEWS.

FACT is that there is no such lead level increase in such areas, and
they dump TONS of lead into the ground at popular ranges.

FACT is that I have been touching, rubbing, etc. lead alloy soldered
circuit card assemblies (as well as the solder itself) my entire adult
life, and my lead levels are lower than the doc had previously seen for
someone my age, the last time I had that test taken ( about four years
ago).

"mpm" wrote in message
oups.com...
And that's if Global Warming doesn't get us first...

If you believe that to be a possibility, are you not concerned about the
additional carbon based fuels used to heat these lead free solders to the
higher temperatures that they require?

Leonard

On Wed, 25 Jul 2007 10:45:30 +0100, Eeyore
wrote:



Spurious Response wrote:

Eeyore wrote:

Personally, I can think of no good reason to attempt to 'recycle' old printed
circuit boards. For example it appears to be both uneconomic and likely energy
wasteful too.

If one (read a business) had an incinerator for refuse, which is common
in the US, one could very easily have enough heat energy "left over" to
reflow, and "Smack and Gather" soldered assemblies after they reach
reflow temperatures.

It would not take long to gather a ton of "solder".

A ton is a ton is a ton, and gathering several grams from each assembly
one has for salvage makes the planet more "green", because reprocessing
lead, and lead alloys is far easier and less costly than mining it.

Incinerators are now deprecated since the greenies say they make dioxins.

Fully operating incinerators are sprinkled all over this country. There
was even some twit on TV the other day claiming that their placement was
racist.

Actually, I'd expect a lot of solder to turn to oxides and go up the smoke stack if
subjected to high temps.

Do you know the rate that pure Lead oxidizes? Do you know the rate at
which 63/37 Tin Lead Solder oxidizes at?

Bullets are still being found in old US Civil War battle fields, and
they are practically pristine balls. No crust whatsoever.

What actually happens with pure Lead is that it's first few mils of
depth become "tempered", similar to aluminum anodization.

So it becomes harder, and would oxidize even less.

On Wed, 25 Jul 2007 12:28:58 +0100, "N Cook" wrote:


If you had not repaired it than also no doubt it would have ended in
landfill taking with it ,perhaps not lead, but antimony, bismuth, tin,
copper, barium , phthalates etc


And lead free utilization does exactly what against these elements and
compounds?

On Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:57:34 GMT, Jan Panteltje
wrote:

On a sunny day (Wed, 25 Jul 2007 08:33:12 -0700) it happened mpm
wrote in
s.com:

On Jul 25, 3:42?am, "N Cook" wrote:

Follow the derogations/exemptions.
Military , aerospace & medical do have derogation from WEEE and RoSH, but
can anyone nail down precisely why they are exempted.

I suspect it is because these fields are considered "life-safety"
fields.
Even ordinance, when you think of it in terms of friendly fire
incidents.
They probably just don't want to recertify their processes, or don't
have the time to do it right.

But the "Truth"?
That's much more elusive.
Does RoHS result in a better environment? I don't know, but I doubt
it.
The sheer number of TV sets that will be obsoleted in the coming years
due to the migration to Digital Television will probably swamp the
RoHS "gains" by orders of magnitude.

Right, I turned in a portable TV last week.
This one was about 30 years old (seventies), and was still working OK,
but no analog transmissions here anymore, all you get is nice equal
distributed noise when tuning in to a digital station.

There are SEVERAL HDTV set top tuners out there that will pipe the
finished signal into a standard TV. What is nice about digital
broadcasts is that when you have the signal, you have it all. No snow,
No herringbone patterns. Crisp and clean, with no caffeine.

Spurious Response wrote:

What is nice about digital broadcasts is that when you have the signal, you
have it all. No snow,
No herringbone patterns. Crisp and clean, with no caffeine.

Except when it breaks up.

Graham

On Wed, 25 Jul 2007 19:03:35 +0100, Eeyore
wrote:



Jan Panteltje wrote:

Joe Chisolm wrote

Dr Howard Johnson (High Speed Digital Design) had this article in
his email newsletter (and posted on his site). Interesting read.
Rollback RoHS: http://www.sigcon.com/Pubs/news/10_01.htm

Well seems [all] we have to [do is] make some traces .65mm apart :-)

Some ? ALL !

Goodbye microelectronics.

I just came across this too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_pest

" At 13.2 degrees Celsius (about 56 degrees Fahrenheit) and below, pure tin
transforms from the (silvery, ductile) allotrope of beta-modification white tin
to brittle, alpha-modification grey tin. Eventually it decomposes into powder,
hence the name tin pest."


That's what cost Napoleon dearly in Russia. He lost his armies to
exposure due to their uniforms literally falling off their bodies.

All Tin buttons, even on their boots.

http://ds.dial.pipex.com/town/terrac...nce/moscow.htm

"Leonard Caillouet" wrote in message
...

"Arfa Daily" wrote in message
...

"Eeyore" wrote in message
...


Spurious Response wrote:

Eeyore wrote:
"Leeper" wrote:

t is really application and chip package specific,

Bull****. Lead based solder alloys are superior in damn near all
electronic realms, and there is no configuration where they would
not be
other than high end commercial and military applications, and they
certainly do not include Tin.

Whilst I don't disagree with you, where's the hard comparative data ?

Considering the fact that we have 5 decade old circuit cards still
operating perfectly, and that we already know what alloys containing
Tin
which is not bound by Lead do over time and temperature cycling, I do
not
think that precise numerical analysis is even needed on such a
profoundly
lopsided issue.

Whilst I agree with you, bureacrats tend not to be very receptive to
anecdotal
comment. And make no mistake, the bureacrats are the ones in control of
this.

Graham



I have just this minute finished repairing a Panasonic DAB / FM radio
which was dying as soon as it was switched on, with a "F76 Pdet" error in
the display. I took this to be "power detect", which seemed reasonable,
given the symptoms. When I took the main board out to have a look at the
underside, I found the power supply section riddled with poor and
'cracked-right-round' lead-free solder joints ( the board actually has
"PbF" silk-screened on it ). The poor joints were particularly well
defined on the main free-air cooled regulator transistor, which is
obviously subject to thermal cycling.

I reworked all the joints with lead-free, as that is what the RoHS
legislation legally charges me to do as a commercial repair outfit, but
boy, the temptation was strong to just reach for the leaded solder, and
do the job 'properly' ...

But we know which solder you really used. Of course, you have to pretend
you used the PbF stuff. Just be careful that the lead nazis don't audit
your purchasing of lead content...

Leonard

Afraid not, Leonard. I take my responsibilities under the law, seriously. I
always rework lead-free joints with lead-free solder, as I am required to
do. Perhaps I am silly for doing so, and it's not to say that I don't think
that I am compounding poor construction techniques with a poor repair, but
never-the-less, I do comply. Of course, a great deal of the kit that I work
on is constructed with leaded solder as it pre-dates the legislation, and
for those repairs, I do indeed use my SnPb solder inventory ... d;~}

Arfa

On Wed, 25 Jul 2007 19:26:58 GMT, Jan Panteltje
wrote:

Too bad....
How about conductive glue replacing solder?
Na, will have to wait until the first EU politician's cellphone fails in
some emergency.

There have been polymer based conductive circuit assembly adhesives
around for several years now.

NOT cheap.

The answer will be Rhodium alloy solders for safety and mission
critical applications... perhaps.

On Wed, 25 Jul 2007 21:56:53 +0100, Eeyore
wrote:



msg wrote:

Jan Panteltje wrote:

snip

How about conductive glue replacing solder?
Na, will have to wait until the first EU politician's cellphone fails in
some emergency.

What ever happened to 'multiwire' (or some such trade name)? It was
a multilayered weld-bonded wiring alternative to multilayer PCBs
in the '60s and '70s and was very rugged, easily implemented with
NC technology, and used no solder of course.

Gone the same way as wire wrap it seems.

Graham


Most VME backplanes utilize a press fit pin, directly into a clad hole,
and it is gas tight in the connection regions and there is no solder
involved. Lasts for years and years.

"Traver" wrote in message
ups.com...
On Jul 25, 1:29 pm, Joe Chisolm wrote:
On Tue, 24 Jul 2007 23:42:47 +0100, Eeyore wrote:
The debate about lead free solders seem to be nearly as politically
charged as that about anthropogenic global warming and a casualty seems
to
be useful data.

I've read plenty of comments to the effect that lead-free is less
reliable
in the long term (vibration seems to be a key weakness AIUI - maybe
also
thermal cycling) which presumably explains the exemptions for certain
categories, yet I've also seen some studies that claim it can
out-perform
lead containing solders.

Is there any real hard and fast information out there that one can rely
on
?

The main issue for lead free in military and aerospace electronics is
tin whiskers. Tin solder will
grow conductive whiskers that even penetrate conformal coatings. In
low power circuit,
the whisker will short something out. In a high power circuit, it
might burn up like a fuse,
but if it happens in a satellite (no atmospheric pressure) the little
whisker will cause
a plasma arc capable of passing huge amounts of current.

We in the defense electonics industry fight with this issue every day
and the information
is very confusing. Parts turn lead free midstream in production and
seems impossible to
keep tack of it. Every company is dealing with it differently. We stay
away from certain
finishes like bright tin and look at the spacing of components and
coatings on our boards.
This can mitigate some of the reliability risks of lead free.

If high-rel is of upmost importance, we struggle to find tin-lead
parts.


That's worrying ...

Arfa

"Eeyore" wrote in message
...


Allodoxaphobia wrote:

Eeyore wrote:

The debate about lead free solders seem to be nearly as politically
charged as
that about anthropogenic global warming and a casualty seems to be
useful data.

More than political -- the subject could easily be viewed as troll bait.
It's been 'discussed' many times in ser.

It's not a troll.

New data ought be available as to the effects on actual in-service
reliability of
lead-free by now. It seems as I expected, anecdotally, that musical
equipment
products that tend to see high levels of vibration are suffering.

Graham


As are most other products that are *not* subject to excessive amounts of
vibration.

Arfa

On Wed, 25 Jul 2007 19:47:40 -0400, "Leonard Caillouet"
wrote:


"mpm" wrote in message
roups.com...
And that's if Global Warming doesn't get us first...

If you believe that to be a possibility, are you not concerned about the
additional carbon based fuels used to heat these lead free solders to the
higher temperatures that they require?



Good one.

On Thu, 26 Jul 2007 01:41:33 +0100, Eeyore
wrote:



Spurious Response wrote:

What is nice about digital broadcasts is that when you have the signal, you
have it all. No snow,
No herringbone patterns. Crisp and clean, with no caffeine.

Except when it breaks up.

Graham


Nope. If you tune the signal, you get ALL of the data. You must exceed
more than ten percent bit error rate for a dropout to occur, and it is
bit error rate that matters most for a "tuned" channel.

"Colin Horsley" wrote in message
...

"Eeyore" wrote in message
...
The debate about lead free solders seem to be nearly as politically
charged as
that about anthropogenic global warming and a casualty seems to be useful
data.

I've read plenty of comments to the effect that lead-free is less
reliable in
the long term (vibration seems to be a key weakness AIUI - maybe also
thermal
cycling) which presumably explains the exemptions for certain categories,
yet
I've also seen some studies that claim it can out-perform lead containing
solders.

Is there any real hard and fast information out there that one can rely
on ?

Graham

Tin Whiskers:-

For those who though leaded solder was best.
Here is the problem with lead free solder.

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/science/85/8529sci1.html

Colin

Yes, a good write-up of the problems, and why leaded solder didn't suffer
from them.

Arfa

Spurious Response wrote:

Eeyore wrote:
Spurious Response wrote:

What is nice about digital broadcasts is that when you have the signal, you
have it all. No snow,
No herringbone patterns. Crisp and clean, with no caffeine.

Except when it breaks up.


Nope. If you tune the signal, you get ALL of the data. You must exceed
more than ten percent bit error rate for a dropout to occur, and it is
bit error rate that matters most for a "tuned" channel.

I have a cable TV set top box. There's no tuning involved. It still breaks up
occasionally.

Graham

Spurious Response wrote:

Eeyore wrote:
Jan Panteltje wrote:
Joe Chisolm wrote

Dr Howard Johnson (High Speed Digital Design) had this article in
his email newsletter (and posted on his site). Interesting read.
Rollback RoHS: http://www.sigcon.com/Pubs/news/10_01.htm

Well seems [all] we have to [do is] make some traces .65mm apart :-)

Some ? ALL !

Goodbye microelectronics.

I just came across this too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_pest

" At 13.2 degrees Celsius (about 56 degrees Fahrenheit) and below, pure tin
transforms from the (silvery, ductile) allotrope of beta-modification white tin
to brittle, alpha-modification grey tin. Eventually it decomposes into powder,
hence the name tin pest."

That's what cost Napoleon dearly in Russia. He lost his armies to
exposure due to their uniforms literally falling off their bodies.

All Tin buttons, even on their boots.

http://ds.dial.pipex.com/town/terrac...nce/moscow.htm

Oh, I recall it now.

It seems that the Open University has studied this issue and has indeed found tin
pest in 'cheap' lead-free solders that are 99%+ tin. These are in commercial use too
!

http://materials.open.ac.uk/srg/srg_tp.htm

The question next should be whether the popular SAC alloys are affected.

Graham

On Thu, 26 Jul 2007 02:37:53 +0100, Eeyore
wrote:



Spurious Response wrote:

Eeyore wrote:
Spurious Response wrote:

What is nice about digital broadcasts is that when you have the signal, you
have it all. No snow,
No herringbone patterns. Crisp and clean, with no caffeine.

Except when it breaks up.


Nope. If you tune the signal, you get ALL of the data. You must exceed
more than ten percent bit error rate for a dropout to occur, and it is
bit error rate that matters most for a "tuned" channel.

I have a cable TV set top box. There's no tuning involved. It still breaks up
occasionally.


IT tunes itself, dip****.

Do you actually think I meant that you had a knob to turn?

Get your head out of your twenty year behind the digitally tuned
receiver world ass.

OK... I'll spell it out for you.

If it ACQUIRES the signal, and locks it in, it gets ALL packets from
the HEAVILY FEC coded stream, and can handle up to a 10% bit error rate
before the "tuning" starts to lose, and not be able to repair with the
FEC, data packets. When that happens, one starts to lose audio and or
video or could see some video artifacts. It usually results in short
term. low frame count dropouts.

So it isn't "breaking up". That is an analog expression. In digital
broadcast streams, the term is "dropout".

On Thu, 26 Jul 2007 06:18:27 +0100, Eeyore
wrote:

The question next should be whether the popular SAC alloys are affected.

Graham


I didn't read that cite I posted a link to well enough. It barely
mentions it.


http://ap.pennnet.com/Articles/Artic...ICLE_ID=216209

Spurious Response wrote:

Eeyore wrote:
Spurious Response wrote:
Eeyore wrote:
Spurious Response wrote:

What is nice about digital broadcasts is that when you have the signal, you
have it all. No snow,
No herringbone patterns. Crisp and clean, with no caffeine.

Except when it breaks up.


Nope. If you tune the signal, you get ALL of the data. You must exceed
more than ten percent bit error rate for a dropout to occur, and it is
bit error rate that matters most for a "tuned" channel.

I have a cable TV set top box. There's no tuning involved. It still breaks up
occasionally.


IT tunes itself, dip****.

Which part of " There's no tuning involved " didn't you understand ?

You press a button, it gives you the channel. Of course I know it does any internal
tuning required in firmware.

Graham

Spurious Response wrote:

So it isn't "breaking up".

Yes it 'breaks up'. Typically with weird pixellation.

That is an analog expression.

No it isn't.


In digital broadcast streams, the term is "dropout".

No, a dropout is a momentary LOSS of signal.

Graham

On Thu, 26 Jul 2007 06:49:56 +0100, Eeyore
wrote:



Spurious Response wrote:

Eeyore wrote:
Spurious Response wrote:
Eeyore wrote:
Spurious Response wrote:

What is nice about digital broadcasts is that when you have the signal, you
have it all. No snow,
No herringbone patterns. Crisp and clean, with no caffeine.

Except when it breaks up.


Nope. If you tune the signal, you get ALL of the data. You must exceed
more than ten percent bit error rate for a dropout to occur, and it is
bit error rate that matters most for a "tuned" channel.

I have a cable TV set top box. There's no tuning involved. It still breaks up
occasionally.


IT tunes itself, dip****.

Which part of " There's no tuning involved " didn't you understand ?

Except that you made the ****ing stupid remark as if you were
attempting to "educate" me. Nice back pedal though.

You press a button, it gives you the channel. Of course I know it does any internal
tuning required in firmware.

You didn't grasp the post though, and made the remark unnecessarily.

On Thu, 26 Jul 2007 06:52:25 +0100, Eeyore
wrote:



Spurious Response wrote:

So it isn't "breaking up".

Yes it 'breaks up'. Typically with weird pixellation.

That is an analog expression.

No it isn't.


In digital broadcast streams, the term is "dropout".

No, a dropout is a momentary LOSS of signal.


No. In HDTV broadcast, "dropout" is when a tuned station has more than
about 10% bit error rate, and the FEC cannot repair the data stream, and
everything from a few picture artifacts appears, to complete frame losses
(dropouts) occur. The picture artifacts are also dropouts, just not
those that cause the tuning device to display a blank screen for that
given frame, which they do when it gets beyond a certain point.

If they wanted to, they could show you the frames, and you would see
horrendous amounts of image artifacts, and likely audio problems as well.

It IS called dropout. Lost packets ARE lost "signal" as the packet would
not have been lost, were it not for the tuner's inability to reconstruct
any missing packet data from the FEC coding. This has been true from way
back in the early satellite receiver days.

Videocipher

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videocipher

Digicipher II (most closely related to the new HDTV broadcast schema).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiCipher_2

The current HDTV broadcast schema is also a General Instrument format,
now owned by Motorola.

On a sunny day (Wed, 25 Jul 2007 17:05:06 -0700) it happened Spurious Response
wrote in
:
Right, I turned in a portable TV last week.
This one was about 30 years old (seventies), and was still working OK,
but no analog transmissions here anymore, all you get is nice equal
distributed noise when tuning in to a digital station.

There are SEVERAL HDTV set top tuners out there that will pipe the
finished signal into a standard TV.

The boxes that are sold here are equipped with a SCART connector, a waste.
My 30 year old portable has no SCART, and neither is it HDTV (high resolution).
HDTV is here only available in HDMI DHCP, and still rare anyways.
The normal broadcasting on 'digitenne' here is not HDTV, but DVB-T 720x576.
The idea of a 'portable' is that you bring it to the camping, switch it on, and
see the picture. This fails now for many portables.
I am watching digital TV via the PC for satellite, and also via USB with
a settop box for terrestrial.
This allows me to record transport-stream, burn to DVD, automate things, etc.

I have not seen any digitenne portable TVs yet, but I am sure the market will
soon overflow with these.
I do see a lot of very cheap analog TVs for sale :-)



What is nice about digital
broadcasts is that when you have the signal, you have it all. No snow,
No herringbone patterns. Crisp and clean, with no caffeine.

mmm, it is actually not so simple, for example with satellite
we now are moving from DVB-S to DVB-S2, and also from 720x576 to 1980x1080 interlaced
or progressive, all with HDCP / HDMI..... using MPEG4 / H264 with some sort
of audio, well we have now mp2, AC3, more to follow.....
That, and your sets fall apart after 3 years because of lead-free, it is a great time
for manufacturers of electronics consumers stuff now ain't it?
Not even to mention Blu-ray versus HD-DVD or whatever, no connector fits....
no format is the same....
It is a wild wild world out there :-)

On a sunny day (Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:48:39 -0500) it happened msg
wrote in :

Jan Panteltje wrote:

snip

How about conductive glue replacing solder?
Na, will have to wait until the first EU politician's cellphone fails in
some emergency.


What ever happened to 'multiwire' (or some such trade name)? It was
a multilayered weld-bonded wiring alternative to multilayer PCBs
in the '60s and '70s and was very rugged, easily implemented with
NC technology, and used no solder of course.

Since each layer is built up in succession, between power and ground
planes, even BGAs can be accomodated.

Regards,

Michael

Never heard of it, sound OK though.

Spurious Response wrote:

Eeyore wrote:
Spurious Response wrote:
Eeyore wrote:
Spurious Response wrote:
Eeyore wrote:
Spurious Response wrote:

What is nice about digital broadcasts is that when you have the signal, you
have it all. No snow,
No herringbone patterns. Crisp and clean, with no caffeine.

Except when it breaks up.

Nope. If you tune the signal, you get ALL of the data. You must exceed
more than ten percent bit error rate for a dropout to occur, and it is
bit error rate that matters most for a "tuned" channel.

I have a cable TV set top box. There's no tuning involved. It still breaks up
occasionally.


IT tunes itself, dip****.

Which part of " There's no tuning involved " didn't you understand ?

Except that you made the ****ing stupid remark as if you were
attempting to "educate" me. Nice back pedal though.

Repeating myself (for emphasis) is backpedalling is it ? What a curious view you have of
the world.


You press a button, it gives you the channel. Of course I know it does any internal
tuning required in firmware.

You didn't grasp the post though, and made the remark unnecessarily.

Don't be absurd.

Graham

Spurious Response wrote:

Eeyore wrote:
Spurious Response wrote:

So it isn't "breaking up".

Yes it 'breaks up'. Typically with weird pixellation.

That is an analog expression.

No it isn't.

In digital broadcast streams, the term is "dropout".

No, a dropout is a momentary LOSS of signal.

No. In HDTV broadcast, "dropout" is when a tuned station has more than
about 10% bit error rate, and the FEC cannot repair the data stream, and
everything from a few picture artifacts appears, to complete frame losses
(dropouts) occur. The picture artifacts are also dropouts, just not
those that cause the tuning device to display a blank screen for that
given frame, which they do when it gets beyond a certain point.

If they wanted to, they could show you the frames, and you would see
horrendous amounts of image artifacts, and likely audio problems as well.

It IS called dropout. Lost packets ARE lost "signal" as the packet would
not have been lost, were it not for the tuner's inability to reconstruct
any missing packet data from the FEC coding. This has been true from way
back in the early satellite receiver days.

Videocipher

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videocipher

Digicipher II (most closely related to the new HDTV broadcast schema).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DigiCipher_2

The current HDTV broadcast schema is also a General Instrument format,
now owned by Motorola.

Thanks for playing. It is like taking candy from a baby though.

Graham

Jan Panteltje wrote:

Spurious Response wrote

Right, I turned in a portable TV last week.
This one was about 30 years old (seventies), and was still working OK,
but no analog transmissions here anymore, all you get is nice equal
distributed noise when tuning in to a digital station.

There are SEVERAL HDTV set top tuners out there that will pipe the
finished signal into a standard TV.

The boxes that are sold here are equipped with a SCART connector, a waste.

I imagine you haven't looked very hard in that case. Many have UHF outputs.

Graham

konijne keutel Eeyore wrote in
:



Jan Panteltje wrote:

Spurious Response wrote

Right, I turned in a portable TV last week.
This one was about 30 years old (seventies), and was still working OK,
but no analog transmissions here anymore, all you get is nice equal
distributed noise when tuning in to a digital station.

There are SEVERAL HDTV set top tuners out there that will pipe the
finished signal into a standard TV.

The boxes that are sold here are equipped with a SCART connector, a waste.

I imagine you haven't looked very hard in that case. Many have UHF outputs.

Graham

If you had as much as a clue, did not cut half the posting, knew at least
half as much about TV as about rabbits, you would be chaising them.

Jan Panteltje wrote:

Eeyore wrote
Jan Panteltje wrote:
Spurious Response wrote

Right, I turned in a portable TV last week.
This one was about 30 years old (seventies), and was still working OK,
but no analog transmissions here anymore, all you get is nice equal
distributed noise when tuning in to a digital station.

There are SEVERAL HDTV set top tuners out there that will pipe the
finished signal into a standard TV.

The boxes that are sold here are equipped with a SCART connector, a waste.

I imagine you haven't looked very hard in that case. Many have UHF outputs.

Graham

If you had as much as a clue, did not cut half the posting

I wasn't replying to the bits I trimmed.

Graham

The one who calls himself rabbitsfriendsandrelations wrote:

Jan Panteltje wrote:

Eeyore wrote
Jan Panteltje wrote:
Spurious Response wrote

Right, I turned in a portable TV last week.
This one was about 30 years old (seventies), and was still working OK,
but no analog transmissions here anymore, all you get is nice equal
distributed noise when tuning in to a digital station.

There are SEVERAL HDTV set top tuners out there that will pipe the
finished signal into a standard TV.

The boxes that are sold here are equipped with a SCART connector, a waste.

I imagine you haven't looked very hard in that case. Many have UHF outputs.

Graham

If you had as much as a clue, did not cut half the posting

I wasn't replying to the bits I trimmed.

Graham

To enlighten the others: to buy anything with any sort of analog output sucks,
as analog is dead at least here in the Netherlands (except for audio).
Buying a settop box with USB output, if you have a laptop with USB, creates the
portable TV with much better quality and recording possibility.
The USB settop box I bought runs from a 12 V adapter, so also from a car battery.
I researched quite a bit to get the best deal, and SCART was not part of that,
let alone a horrible interference prone, PAL coding artefacts decorated
UHF analog output.
ftp://panteltje.com/pub/dvb-t-nl.txt