"Lloyd E. Sponenburgh" lloydspinsidemindspring.com writes:

I'd say they are. Even though the purchase cost of autos has gone up vs
real income, the _usage_ cost has plummetted. Most cars of the 1960s and
early 70s required things like valve jobs every 30K; not a minor cost to
someone who could not do the work themselves. Now, it's common to go
200K without a major repair, and only the 'timing belt issue' to deal
with in the interim. "Tune-ups"? Phhhfffttt! Thing of the past. A car
can easily go 100K without even looking at the plugs.

Everything about modern cars works better, is more comfortable, and lasts
FAR longer than those of even 40 years ago. They're more efficient with
fuel and lubricants, and they're far safer.

All true. But they're no *fun*.


--
Mike Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada

rangerssuck fired this volley in
:

Is that even recommended? I'd worry about mechanical characteristics.
Besides, it's pretty thick wire.

No, but it gets the chip located well, because you can keep all the pins
liquid at once. After it solidifies, then you can selectively wick off the
Chip-Quick, and re-flow with the correct solder while not disturbing the
chip position. A little liquid flux helps there.

Lloyd

Mike Spencer fired this volley in
:

All true. But they're no *fun*.

I don't know if the fun was in the fixing. I'd pit my Mitsubishi Galant
against my old Gymkana cars of the 60's any day, and win by half a circuit.
It's a pretty fun car to drive, if you can horse it around a little.

There's still 'fun' to be had in tricking them out, if that's what you're
into.

Lloyd

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 24 Sep 2014 09:44:23 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
. ..
On Tue, 23 Sep 2014 19:49:00 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

For a 6 layer board you put the power planes on layers 2 and 5 and
set
the preferred directions on signal layers 3 and 4 at right angles to
each other, which is standard practice anyway to make autorouting
simpler. ...

I can't imagine how difficult that was before the software design
packages became available.

I thought CAD software slowed me down because I could see the whole
board at 2x or 4x magnification on the light table, but only a small
window on the screen, and I could use both hands to apply the tape
strips. The snap-to grid in CAD was a little easier to stay on and
much easier to change than the printed grid sheet on the light table.

You plan out the path of each connection separately, the same way
you'd plan a trip on a map. The difference is that you run each new
trace alongside the previous ones so you don't quickly clog the
remaining free space, and move vertically on one side and horizontally
on the other. On a 386 computer a good designer could hand-route
almost as fast as the autorouter, like man vs machine chess. The
program advanced incrementally, tried every dead end, and couldn't
step away for a global overview.

I complained of eye strain to get my boss to buy a $2000 20"
long-persistance (no flicker) CAD monitor, which helped a lot because
I could see both ends of the trace I was hand-routing to minimize the
number of inductive corners and unwanted coupling to other signals. I
still had to avoid red which the eye focuses at a different distance
from other colors.

If the power and ground planes are properly bypassed either can
serve
about equally well as the "ground" plane, but you need to consider
the
noise rejection margins both ways for asymmetrical logic families
like
TTL. CMOS doesn't care. It's really necessary to distribute
low-impedance Tantalums around the board and have 0.1uF and 0.001uF
MLC caps at each device, since the two sizes have different
frequency
responses in the GigaHertz range.

TTL? Old style. GHz fast TTL? Is that possible?

74AS hi-to-lo transitions are fast enough to excite GigaHertz
resonances. Another department brought me a board to troubleshoot with
a problem that had eluded them. I found that they had used low-speed
analog design rules to make a star-pattern ground plane and where 74AS
signals crossed from one lobe of it to another the ground bounce
during a hi-to-lo bus transition was over 3V, because the signal's
return reflection in the plane couldn't make it out to the
single-point plane junction and back along the other side in a
nanoSecond.

Being bested by a lab tech doesn't do a Ph.D's self-image any good. I
had to present the evidence very clearly on a scope display, which
usually took longer than finding the problem, and be as diplomatic as
possible, letting them see the evidence and make their own judgement.

It was surprising how much trouble some of them had with mental math,
like converting the time between pulses to frequency. Quick, what's
the frequency for a 60 nanoSecond period?

Many discrete components' properties look terrible when you sweep them
with a microwave network analyzer. This shows the deviation of a chip
cap in an SMT package that's larger than necessary for its value.
http://www.murata.com/~/media/webren...ow/12to14.ashx

...Even the less
sensitive (more stable) instruments in the production machine could
detect a person's electrical field at 10-20 feet if unshielded. I
used
that to make it wake up and greet anyone who approached it after
hours, mostly the programmers. For some reason it ignored me sitting
still next to it, perhaps it accepted me as its master.

Holy ****, Batman! Dat's hi-tech schtuff.

When the company was bought the competitors sued that it was "unfair"
that the biggest company in the ATE field had acquired the small one
they acknowledged to be the best. The cost of fighting that suit
destroyed us.

The deeper you delve into most anything, the more that happens.
Constants aren't. Temperature, humidity, sound, & light can affect
lots of things in strange ways, as you just recalled.

Engineers don't learn those strange ways unless they encounter them in
practice. I did a job for a well-respected mechanical engineering prof
who devised an overly complex way to assemble a robot chassis because
he had never heard of Pemnuts.

-jsw

On 25 Sep 2014 02:27:52 -0300, Mike Spencer
wrote:


"Lloyd E. Sponenburgh" lloydspinsidemindspring.com writes:

I'd say they are. Even though the purchase cost of autos has gone up vs
real income, the _usage_ cost has plummetted. Most cars of the 1960s and
early 70s required things like valve jobs every 30K; not a minor cost to
someone who could not do the work themselves. Now, it's common to go
200K without a major repair, and only the 'timing belt issue' to deal
with in the interim. "Tune-ups"? Phhhfffttt! Thing of the past. A car
can easily go 100K without even looking at the plugs.

Everything about modern cars works better, is more comfortable, and lasts
FAR longer than those of even 40 years ago. They're more efficient with
fuel and lubricants, and they're far safer.

All true. But they're no *fun*.
I've driven a lot of both new and old cars - and there is more "fun"
per lb on a lot of today's cars than on the old ones. A WHOLE lot more
power, and less weight - as well as suspensions that actually HANDLE.

On Thu, 25 Sep 2014 12:55:43 -0400, wrote:

On 25 Sep 2014 02:27:52 -0300, Mike Spencer
wrote:


"Lloyd E. Sponenburgh" lloydspinsidemindspring.com writes:

I'd say they are. Even though the purchase cost of autos has gone up vs
real income, the _usage_ cost has plummetted. Most cars of the 1960s and
early 70s required things like valve jobs every 30K; not a minor cost to
someone who could not do the work themselves. Now, it's common to go
200K without a major repair, and only the 'timing belt issue' to deal
with in the interim. "Tune-ups"? Phhhfffttt! Thing of the past. A car
can easily go 100K without even looking at the plugs.

Everything about modern cars works better, is more comfortable, and lasts
FAR longer than those of even 40 years ago. They're more efficient with
fuel and lubricants, and they're far safer.

All true. But they're no *fun*.
I've driven a lot of both new and old cars - and there is more "fun"
per lb on a lot of today's cars than on the old ones. A WHOLE lot more
power, and less weight - as well as suspensions that actually HANDLE.

Handling is better. Power is greater. But weight is grotesquely
higher.

A 1965 Mustang had a curb weight of about 2,700 lb. A 2014 Mustang has
a curb weight over 3,500 lb, with the smallest V6 engine. And so on.

I don't knock the current crop of cars -- they're great pieces of
engineering, and so many of the old bugs have been engineered out that
you can drive much faster, with greater safety and control.

But fun? I don't know about that. My smaller sports cars from the '50s
and '60s were so light and so responsive that I have to give them the
edge for driving fun. Even my AC Aceca, which had exactly the same
chassis as an AC Cobra, and which was twitchy as hell at high speeds,
was fantastically responsive.

So I guess it's a matter of what's fun to you. I drove a nice new
Japanese coupe this summer, with lowered suspension, active
anti-understeer, and other trick items, and I couldn't believe how
well it handled. But you can't hide all of that adipose tissue. g It
was like a greased pig, but it still felt piggy.

--
Ed Huntress

On Thu, 25 Sep 2014 13:47:39 -0400, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Thu, 25 Sep 2014 12:55:43 -0400, wrote:

On 25 Sep 2014 02:27:52 -0300, Mike Spencer
wrote:


"Lloyd E. Sponenburgh" lloydspinsidemindspring.com writes:

I'd say they are. Even though the purchase cost of autos has gone up vs
real income, the _usage_ cost has plummetted. Most cars of the 1960s and
early 70s required things like valve jobs every 30K; not a minor cost to
someone who could not do the work themselves. Now, it's common to go
200K without a major repair, and only the 'timing belt issue' to deal
with in the interim. "Tune-ups"? Phhhfffttt! Thing of the past. A car
can easily go 100K without even looking at the plugs.

Everything about modern cars works better, is more comfortable, and lasts
FAR longer than those of even 40 years ago. They're more efficient with
fuel and lubricants, and they're far safer.

All true. But they're no *fun*.
I've driven a lot of both new and old cars - and there is more "fun"
per lb on a lot of today's cars than on the old ones. A WHOLE lot more
power, and less weight - as well as suspensions that actually HANDLE.

Handling is better. Power is greater. But weight is grotesquely
higher.

What did a 1949 6 cyl chevy weigh??? A 4 door sedan weighed 3150 lms
dry. What does a 2014 Impala weigh??? 3800 lbs wet - so yes, a bit
heavier - with AC and automatic transmission that were not on the '49

A 1965 Mustang had a curb weight of about 2,700 lb. A 2014 Mustang has
a curb weight over 3,500 lb, with the smallest V6 engine. And so on.

And a '72 v8 coupe weighed in at 3025
I don't knock the current crop of cars -- they're great pieces of
engineering, and so many of the old bugs have been engineered out that
you can drive much faster, with greater safety and control.

But fun? I don't know about that. My smaller sports cars from the '50s
and '60s were so light and so responsive that I have to give them the
edge for driving fun. Even my AC Aceca, which had exactly the same
chassis as an AC Cobra, and which was twitchy as hell at high speeds,
was fantastically responsive.

So I guess it's a matter of what's fun to you. I drove a nice new
Japanese coupe this summer, with lowered suspension, active
anti-understeer, and other trick items, and I couldn't believe how
well it handled. But you can't hide all of that adipose tissue. g It
was like a greased pig, but it still felt piggy.

OK - so they are heavier, but I find them much more resposive and they
hold the road much better. A 1972 Rover 2000TC handled like it was on
rails and rode not half bad, but a 1995 Mystique would run it's wheels
off and outhandle it in the twisties. 500 miles a day in a '53 Dodge
was a workout. In a 2003 Taurus, even being 40 years older than I was
when driving the '53, I get out relaxed after 800 miles. And it rides
better, handles better, is quieter, is easier on gas, and needs a
WHOLE lot less repairs.
Was my old mini fun? Sure was. And a lot lighter than today's mini -
but it wasn't fun after the first 200 miles per day!!!!

On Thu, 25 Sep 2014 17:47:49 -0400, wrote:

On Thu, 25 Sep 2014 13:47:39 -0400, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Thu, 25 Sep 2014 12:55:43 -0400, wrote:

On 25 Sep 2014 02:27:52 -0300, Mike Spencer
wrote:


"Lloyd E. Sponenburgh" lloydspinsidemindspring.com writes:

I'd say they are. Even though the purchase cost of autos has gone up vs
real income, the _usage_ cost has plummetted. Most cars of the 1960s and
early 70s required things like valve jobs every 30K; not a minor cost to
someone who could not do the work themselves. Now, it's common to go
200K without a major repair, and only the 'timing belt issue' to deal
with in the interim. "Tune-ups"? Phhhfffttt! Thing of the past. A car
can easily go 100K without even looking at the plugs.

Everything about modern cars works better, is more comfortable, and lasts
FAR longer than those of even 40 years ago. They're more efficient with
fuel and lubricants, and they're far safer.

All true. But they're no *fun*.
I've driven a lot of both new and old cars - and there is more "fun"
per lb on a lot of today's cars than on the old ones. A WHOLE lot more
power, and less weight - as well as suspensions that actually HANDLE.

Handling is better. Power is greater. But weight is grotesquely
higher.

What did a 1949 6 cyl chevy weigh??? A 4 door sedan weighed 3150 lms
dry. What does a 2014 Impala weigh??? 3800 lbs wet - so yes, a bit
heavier - with AC and automatic transmission that were not on the '49

A 1965 Mustang had a curb weight of about 2,700 lb. A 2014 Mustang has
a curb weight over 3,500 lb, with the smallest V6 engine. And so on.

And a '72 v8 coupe weighed in at 3025
I don't knock the current crop of cars -- they're great pieces of
engineering, and so many of the old bugs have been engineered out that
you can drive much faster, with greater safety and control.

But fun? I don't know about that. My smaller sports cars from the '50s
and '60s were so light and so responsive that I have to give them the
edge for driving fun. Even my AC Aceca, which had exactly the same
chassis as an AC Cobra, and which was twitchy as hell at high speeds,
was fantastically responsive.

So I guess it's a matter of what's fun to you. I drove a nice new
Japanese coupe this summer, with lowered suspension, active
anti-understeer, and other trick items, and I couldn't believe how
well it handled. But you can't hide all of that adipose tissue. g It
was like a greased pig, but it still felt piggy.

OK - so they are heavier, but I find them much more resposive and they
hold the road much better.

They corner faster, no question. Much better suspension, but above all
-- and above all by a *lot* -- is wider, much better tires.

A 1972 Rover 2000TC handled like it was on
rails and rode not half bad...

I've driven that car. It had a wonderfully stiff chassis, which was
the cornerstone of its handling.

..., but a 1995 Mystique would run it's wheels
off and outhandle it in the twisties. 500 miles a day in a '53 Dodge
was a workout. In a 2003 Taurus, even being 40 years older than I was
when driving the '53, I get out relaxed after 800 miles. And it rides
better, handles better, is quieter, is easier on gas, and needs a
WHOLE lot less repairs.
Was my old mini fun? Sure was. And a lot lighter than today's mini -
but it wasn't fun after the first 200 miles per day!!!!

Well, you're introducing a lot of different issues here. The original
Mini was so small and light it was almost like driving a Go-Cart. When
they were stiffened up for solo events, they felt almost like a little
formula car.

I haven't driven today's Mini but I own a car that's not a lot
different (Ford Focus ZX3 hatchback, 2.3L, 2,600 lb curb weight), and
it's a nice handling little car. But in no way does it feel like the
original Mini. Or like my '67 MG Midget. Nor my '58 Alfa Romeo
Guilietta Spyder.

Those cars were so light (in the neighborhood of 1,500 lb.) and small
that they had a catagorically different feel to them. I still love
that feeling, as rarely as I get to experience it these days. And,
besides, what's a sports car without the smell of mold emanating from
the floor mats? g

I would not consider owning one as an everyday driver. I do appreciate
how much better cars are today. But I go back to that original
statement, about fun. They were more fun, in the terms that cars are
fun for me.

Except for sex. Having sex in an MG Midget was pretty awful. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress

On Thu, 25 Sep 2014 08:51:08 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
.. .
On Wed, 24 Sep 2014 09:44:23 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 23 Sep 2014 19:49:00 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

For a 6 layer board you put the power planes on layers 2 and 5 and
set
the preferred directions on signal layers 3 and 4 at right angles to
each other, which is standard practice anyway to make autorouting
simpler. ...

I can't imagine how difficult that was before the software design
packages became available.

I thought CAD software slowed me down because I could see the whole
board at 2x or 4x magnification on the light table, but only a small
window on the screen, and I could use both hands to apply the tape
strips. The snap-to grid in CAD was a little easier to stay on and
much easier to change than the printed grid sheet on the light table.

I wasn't speaking incrementally, rather about the difference between
doing it by hand then, and doing it now with sophisticated software.
(Yeah, I know, you had to take the long, hard route. Condolences.)


You plan out the path of each connection separately, the same way
you'd plan a trip on a map. The difference is that you run each new
trace alongside the previous ones so you don't quickly clog the
remaining free space, and move vertically on one side and horizontally
on the other. On a 386 computer a good designer could hand-route
almost as fast as the autorouter, like man vs machine chess. The
program advanced incrementally, tried every dead end, and couldn't
step away for a global overview.

I toyed with the freebie downloads of autorouters for the low-level
stuff, just for fun. A decade later, both software and hardware were
multi-generations better, faster, and smarter.


I complained of eye strain to get my boss to buy a $2000 20"
long-persistance (no flicker) CAD monitor, which helped a lot because
I could see both ends of the trace I was hand-routing to minimize the
number of inductive corners and unwanted coupling to other signals. I
still had to avoid red which the eye focuses at a different distance
from other colors.

Remember the yelonblu screens way back when? Ayieeeeeeeeeeeee!
Nice monitors are great. While you played with CAD, I was buying
better than average (but nowhere your grade) monitors for graphic
design work. A friend had an old Multilith 1250 press and I'd print
out 8.5x14" polyester plates (4-color seps) with my HP LJ5p laserjet.
That was low-tech fun. Once I got a better monitor, I could see the
problems beforehand and avoid printing them. Resolution is God.


If the power and ground planes are properly bypassed either can
serve
about equally well as the "ground" plane, but you need to consider
the
noise rejection margins both ways for asymmetrical logic families
like
TTL. CMOS doesn't care. It's really necessary to distribute
low-impedance Tantalums around the board and have 0.1uF and 0.001uF
MLC caps at each device, since the two sizes have different
frequency
responses in the GigaHertz range.

TTL? Old style. GHz fast TTL? Is that possible?

74AS hi-to-lo transitions are fast enough to excite GigaHertz
resonances. Another department brought me a board to troubleshoot with
a problem that had eluded them. I found that they had used low-speed
analog design rules to make a star-pattern ground plane and where 74AS
signals crossed from one lobe of it to another the ground bounce
during a hi-to-lo bus transition was over 3V, because the signal's
return reflection in the plane couldn't make it out to the
single-point plane junction and back along the other side in a
nanoSecond.

Hah! That's a helluva bounce, a bit more than a couple pf could
handle, wot? (But how do you damp the ground plane?)


Being bested by a lab tech doesn't do a Ph.D's self-image any good. I
had to present the evidence very clearly on a scope display, which
usually took longer than finding the problem, and be as diplomatic as
possible, letting them see the evidence and make their own judgement.

Oh, joy! Diplomatic Dog & Pony Shows suck.


It was surprising how much trouble some of them had with mental math,
like converting the time between pulses to frequency. Quick, what's
the frequency for a 60 nanoSecond period?

"I don't need to know that. Ask my secretary."


Many discrete components' properties look terrible when you sweep them
with a microwave network analyzer. This shows the deviation of a chip
cap in an SMT package that's larger than necessary for its value.
http://www.murata.com/~/media/webren...ow/12to14.ashx

...Even the less
sensitive (more stable) instruments in the production machine could
detect a person's electrical field at 10-20 feet if unshielded. I
used
that to make it wake up and greet anyone who approached it after
hours, mostly the programmers. For some reason it ignored me sitting
still next to it, perhaps it accepted me as its master.

Holy ****, Batman! Dat's hi-tech schtuff.

When the company was bought the competitors sued that it was "unfair"
that the biggest company in the ATE field had acquired the small one
they acknowledged to be the best. The cost of fighting that suit
destroyed us.

Suckage. More often than not, lawsuits destroy everything they touch.
Ban Lawyers!


The deeper you delve into most anything, the more that happens.
Constants aren't. Temperature, humidity, sound, & light can affect
lots of things in strange ways, as you just recalled.

Engineers don't learn those strange ways unless they encounter them in
practice. I did a job for a well-respected mechanical engineering prof
who devised an overly complex way to assemble a robot chassis because
he had never heard of Pemnuts.

Indeed. Too many of those uberProfs never get into the trenches at
all, missing 2/3 of knowledge in their field by default. The result
is that I seldom trust anyone with anything over a Master's. Too
often, it _is_ Piled Higher and Deeper.

--
Give me the luxuries of life.
I can live without the necessities.
--anon

On 25 Sep 2014 02:27:52 -0300, Mike Spencer
wrote:


"Lloyd E. Sponenburgh" lloydspinsidemindspring.com writes:

I'd say they are. Even though the purchase cost of autos has gone up vs
real income, the _usage_ cost has plummetted. Most cars of the 1960s and
early 70s required things like valve jobs every 30K; not a minor cost to
someone who could not do the work themselves. Now, it's common to go
200K without a major repair, and only the 'timing belt issue' to deal
with in the interim. "Tune-ups"? Phhhfffttt! Thing of the past. A car
can easily go 100K without even looking at the plugs.

Everything about modern cars works better, is more comfortable, and lasts
FAR longer than those of even 40 years ago. They're more efficient with
fuel and lubricants, and they're far safer.

All true. But they're no *fun*.

Oh, SURE they are! I can take the winding road into town at 65mph in
the rain with one hand now in my '07 Tundra. I could hardly keep the
road at 45mph in the old '90 F-150. EFI has stopped all the old
hesitations in the morning that I had with carbureted vehicles.
Granted, if I were still wrenching for a living, I'd have lots less to
do nowadays. And EFI gives instant performance at all RPM. I don't
miss carbs at all.

The only thing wrong with today's technology is the cost to repair
anything. I used to pay less to buy a brand new vehicle than I do to
finance a major repair today. Tundra tires just cost me a GRAND, fer
chrissake!

--
Give me the luxuries of life.
I can live without the necessities.
--anon

Larry Jaques fired this volley in
:

Indeed. Too many of those uberProfs never get into the trenches at
all, missing 2/3 of knowledge in their field by default. The result
is that I seldom trust anyone with anything over a Master's. Too
often, it _is_ Piled Higher and Deeper.

Heh! I hired an East Indian once who hired on as hourly 'work' staff at
the fireworks plant, but who professed to be a degreed mechanical
engineer by trade.

It became clear early on that he had zero manual skills, and no knowledge
of tools or physical methods. He was simply astounded and enthralled by
a simple scissor-style PVC pipe cutter, when it was demonstrated to him.

I once asked him, as inoffensively as I could, how it could be the case
that he was both degreed in the trade, and absent the manual skills. He
said, "Oh, engineers nebber get deyer hands durty! Dat is for de
laborers! We design... Dey make de products!"

OhhhhhhKaayyyyy!

Never met an engineer worth his salt who couldn't turn a wrench!

LLoyd

On Fri, 26 Sep 2014 05:32:23 -0500, "Lloyd E. Sponenburgh"
lloydspinsidemindspring.com wrote:

Larry Jaques fired this volley in
:

Indeed. Too many of those uberProfs never get into the trenches at
all, missing 2/3 of knowledge in their field by default. The result
is that I seldom trust anyone with anything over a Master's. Too
often, it _is_ Piled Higher and Deeper.

Heh! I hired an East Indian once who hired on as hourly 'work' staff at
the fireworks plant, but who professed to be a degreed mechanical
engineer by trade.

It became clear early on that he had zero manual skills, and no knowledge
of tools or physical methods. He was simply astounded and enthralled by
a simple scissor-style PVC pipe cutter, when it was demonstrated to him.

I once asked him, as inoffensively as I could, how it could be the case
that he was both degreed in the trade, and absent the manual skills. He
said, "Oh, engineers nebber get deyer hands durty! Dat is for de
laborers! We design... Dey make de products!"

OhhhhhhKaayyyyy!

Never met an engineer worth his salt who couldn't turn a wrench!

LLoyd

Actually it is quite common in parts of Asia. Largely because in the
developing countries people who attain a collage degree usually come
from wealthy families. Do you spend all that money to have the kid out
mucking about with the hired help :-)
--
Cheers,

John B.

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 25 Sep 2014 08:51:08 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

I wasn't speaking incrementally, rather about the difference between
doing it by hand then, and doing it now with sophisticated software.
(Yeah, I know, you had to take the long, hard route. Condolences.)

I kept up while the company was willing to pay for the CAD seat, and
used the same program later at Segway. Advancing tech made more
complex designs feasible, but didn't actually speed the small, simple
ones because of the growing overhead of setup.

The older DOS version was easier to use because it wasn't as burdened
with complex options.

This reflects mainly his inexperience with it, but it really is
illogical and difficult to learn
http://offlogic.wordpress.com/2009/0...ery-very-much/


TTL? Old style. GHz fast TTL? Is that possible?

74AS hi-to-lo transitions are fast enough to excite GigaHertz
resonances. Another department brought me a board to troubleshoot
with
a problem that had eluded them. I found that they had used low-speed
analog design rules to make a star-pattern ground plane and where
74AS
signals crossed from one lobe of it to another the ground bounce
during a hi-to-lo bus transition was over 3V, because the signal's
return reflection in the plane couldn't make it out to the
single-point plane junction and back along the other side in a
nanoSecond.

Hah! That's a helluva bounce, a bit more than a couple pf could
handle, wot? (But how do you damp the ground plane?)

It needs to be continuous under the signal path, like the shield
around coax which carries the same current as the signal in the
reverse direction. I learned to carefully account for ground return
current paths in sensitive or high-speed circuits at the ATE company.
Whether to use a continuous or single-point ground can be a difficult
judgement call. The ATE company had separate grounds and rules for
digital, analog and measurement. Only some of them helped when I was
shunted by a reorg from computer logic into microwave digital radio
without any training or previous experience and had to pick it up
FAST.

The company sponsored a Ham Radio class taight by a Brit radar wizard
retiree which helped considerably. He would describe some exotic
property of the Ionosphere and then tell us which of the antennas on
the lawn outside he had used to measure it.

It was surprising how much trouble some of them had with mental
math,
like converting the time between pulses to frequency. Quick, what's
the frequency for a 60 nanoSecond period?

"I don't need to know that. Ask my secretary."

They were clustered around the oscilloscope, asking me to explain what
they were looking at on their own designs.

Many discrete components' properties look terrible when you sweep
them
with a microwave network analyzer. This shows the deviation of a
chip
cap in an SMT package that's larger than necessary for its value.
http://www.murata.com/~/media/webren...ow/12to14.ashx

When the company was bought the competitors sued that it was
"unfair"
that the biggest company in the ATE field had acquired the small one
they acknowledged to be the best. The cost of fighting that suit
destroyed us.

Suckage. More often than not, lawsuits destroy everything they
touch.
Ban Lawyers!

Lawsuits are an effective way to destroy a startup you can't compete
with technically. I've dodged close involvement in several, once
because I knew alternate commercial uses of of a circuit idea they
claimed was proprietary, though not patented.

The deeper you delve into most anything, the more that happens.
Constants aren't. Temperature, humidity, sound, & light can affect
lots of things in strange ways, as you just recalled.

Indeed. Too many of those uberProfs never get into the trenches at
all, missing 2/3 of knowledge in their field by default. The result
is that I seldom trust anyone with anything over a Master's. Too
often, it _is_ Piled Higher and Deeper.

I gravitated toward Ph.Ds who wanted to and could create something, or
they did toward me. The trouble was that they'd leave for other
opportunities as soon as the project was complete. The more academic,
less innovative ones stayed where they were secure, but sent me no lab
work.
-jsw

"John B. Slocomb" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 26 Sep 2014 05:32:23 -0500, "Lloyd E. Sponenburgh"
lloydspinsidemindspring.com wrote:


Actually it is quite common in parts of Asia. Largely because in the
developing countries people who attain a collage degree usually come
from wealthy families. Do you spend all that money to have the kid
out
mucking about with the hired help :-)
--
Cheers,

John B.

I've met and worked with a lot of them and they didn't know what to
make of me; multilingual, very well educated and entirely willing to
take on delicate manual lab work. I did the miniscule soldering for a
Chinese female engineer who couldn't.

The Industrial Revolution and the modern world arose mainly from the
discoveries of well-educated Englishmen of the Royal Society who were
willing to experiment with their own hands.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmond_Halley
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hooke
plus a few foreign experimentalists like Lavoisier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Lavoisier
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Stevin

I've debated this with an engineer from Bangladesh who couldn't
understand why Europe had so suddenly surpassed Indian culture, and
didn't like my answers

-jsw

On Fri, 26 Sep 2014 08:22:51 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
.. .
On Thu, 25 Sep 2014 08:51:08 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

I wasn't speaking incrementally, rather about the difference between
doing it by hand then, and doing it now with sophisticated software.
(Yeah, I know, you had to take the long, hard route. Condolences.)

I kept up while the company was willing to pay for the CAD seat, and
used the same program later at Segway. Advancing tech made more
complex designs feasible, but didn't actually speed the small, simple
ones because of the growing overhead of setup.

I see.


The older DOS version was easier to use because it wasn't as burdened
with complex options.

Remember back when you could run a computer on a 17kb kernel and
programs were a few kb themselves?


This reflects mainly his inexperience with it, but it really is
illogical and difficult to learn
http://offlogic.wordpress.com/2009/0...ery-very-much/

I found Adobe Illustrator to be extremely much that way. Why write
illogical and tough-to-learn software? deep sigh


signals crossed from one lobe of it to another the ground bounce
during a hi-to-lo bus transition was over 3V, because the signal's
return reflection in the plane couldn't make it out to the
single-point plane junction and back along the other side in a
nanoSecond.

Hah! That's a helluva bounce, a bit more than a couple pf could
handle, wot? (But how do you damp the ground plane?)

It needs to be continuous under the signal path, like the shield
around coax which carries the same current as the signal in the
reverse direction. I learned to carefully account for ground return
current paths in sensitive or high-speed circuits at the ATE company.
Whether to use a continuous or single-point ground can be a difficult
judgement call. The ATE company had separate grounds and rules for
digital, analog and measurement. Only some of them helped when I was
shunted by a reorg from computer logic into microwave digital radio
without any training or previous experience and had to pick it up
FAST.

I hope you had help from current users/designers/techies.


The company sponsored a Ham Radio class taight by a Brit radar wizard
retiree which helped considerably. He would describe some exotic
property of the Ionosphere and then tell us which of the antennas on
the lawn outside he had used to measure it.

Taight? Sounds more like a Scot.


It was surprising how much trouble some of them had with mental
math,
like converting the time between pulses to frequency. Quick, what's
the frequency for a 60 nanoSecond period?

"I don't need to know that. Ask my secretary."

They were clustered around the oscilloscope, asking me to explain what
they were looking at on their own designs.

Oy, vay.


Suckage. More often than not, lawsuits destroy everything they
touch.
Ban Lawyers!

Lawsuits are an effective way to destroy a startup you can't compete
with technically. I've dodged close involvement in several, once
because I knew alternate commercial uses of of a circuit idea they
claimed was proprietary, though not patented.

You were very lucky.


The deeper you delve into most anything, the more that happens.
Constants aren't. Temperature, humidity, sound, & light can affect
lots of things in strange ways, as you just recalled.

Indeed. Too many of those uberProfs never get into the trenches at
all, missing 2/3 of knowledge in their field by default. The result
is that I seldom trust anyone with anything over a Master's. Too
often, it _is_ Piled Higher and Deeper.

I gravitated toward Ph.Ds who wanted to and could create something, or
they did toward me. The trouble was that they'd leave for other
opportunities as soon as the project was complete. The more academic,
less innovative ones stayed where they were secure, but sent me no lab
work.

That doesn't sound like much fun.


--
Give me the luxuries of life.
I can live without the necessities.
--anon

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 26 Sep 2014 08:22:51 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
. ..
On Thu, 25 Sep 2014 08:51:08 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

The older DOS version was easier to use because it wasn't as
burdened
with complex options.

Remember back when you could run a computer on a 17kb kernel and
programs were a few kb themselves?

I started with 256 -bytes- of RAM.
http://www.jameco.com/Jameco/Products/ProdDS/42198.pdf

A sympathetic engineer gave me some vendor's samples of HM6116 2K x 8
static RAM so I could write a useable operating system, text editor
and assembler. They are pin-compatible with 2716 UVPROMs but I changed
things too much to want the code locked in a PROM. The EEPROM (flash)
version was useful when I finally got one.

Before I added battery backup to the first 6116 I had to toggle in a
32-byte bootstrap loader from the minicomputer-style front panel
switches, then run it to read a Teletype tape whose last act was to
overwrite the Reset0 jump destination with its own entry point.

With battery-backed memory the machine would wake to whatever it was
doing when turned off, like this XP one.

...Only some of them helped when I was
shunted by a reorg from computer logic into microwave digital radio
without any training or previous experience and had to pick it up
FAST.

I hope you had help from current users/designers/techies.

We were all advancing beyond our previous experience. That's the
nature of R&D.

The company sponsored a Ham Radio class taight by a Brit radar
wizard
retiree which helped considerably. He would describe some exotic
property of the Ionosphere and then tell us which of the antennas on
the lawn outside he had used to measure it.

Taight? Sounds more like a Scot.

The ink is wearing off my laptop's external keyboard. I keep using it
because it's narrow enough to fit the mouse pad along side it on the
pull-out shelf.

-jsw

On Thu, 25 Sep 2014 21:31:04 -0700, Larry Jaques
wrote:

On 25 Sep 2014 02:27:52 -0300, Mike Spencer
wrote:


"Lloyd E. Sponenburgh" lloydspinsidemindspring.com writes:

I'd say they are. Even though the purchase cost of autos has gone up vs
real income, the _usage_ cost has plummetted. Most cars of the 1960s and
early 70s required things like valve jobs every 30K; not a minor cost to
someone who could not do the work themselves. Now, it's common to go
200K without a major repair, and only the 'timing belt issue' to deal
with in the interim. "Tune-ups"? Phhhfffttt! Thing of the past. A car
can easily go 100K without even looking at the plugs.

Everything about modern cars works better, is more comfortable, and lasts
FAR longer than those of even 40 years ago. They're more efficient with
fuel and lubricants, and they're far safer.

All true. But they're no *fun*.

Oh, SURE they are! I can take the winding road into town at 65mph in
the rain with one hand now in my '07 Tundra. I could hardly keep the
road at 45mph in the old '90 F-150. EFI has stopped all the old
hesitations in the morning that I had with carbureted vehicles.
Granted, if I were still wrenching for a living, I'd have lots less to
do nowadays. And EFI gives instant performance at all RPM. I don't
miss carbs at all.

The only thing wrong with today's technology is the cost to repair
anything. I used to pay less to buy a brand new vehicle than I do to
finance a major repair today. Tundra tires just cost me a GRAND, fer
chrissake!
But what would 22 inch tires have cost back when? Figure out the
cost in hours worked - not dollars - and you are still getting a
bargoon. 16 inch light duty truck tiresay 225/75/16 cost about $150
each today. For a skilled worker - say a mechanic, plumber, or
electrician today that tire represents mabee 5 hours of work.
Back in 1973 5 hours of a mechanic's time was $25 - an electricians,
about $40. From what I remember, that would not buy a decent 16" truck
tire in 1973. I remember $72 for a cheap truck tire. A fancy oversized
"mudder" tire was closer to $150 back then. Damn close to a week's
takehome pay.

On Fri, 26 Sep 2014 10:41:13 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
.. .
On Fri, 26 Sep 2014 08:22:51 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 25 Sep 2014 08:51:08 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

The older DOS version was easier to use because it wasn't as
burdened
with complex options.

Remember back when you could run a computer on a 17kb kernel and
programs were a few kb themselves?

I started with 256 -bytes- of RAM.

OK, you win.


http://www.jameco.com/Jameco/Products/ProdDS/42198.pdf

Wow, Jameco! I haven't heard that name in damnear 40 years.



I hope you had help from current users/designers/techies.

We were all advancing beyond our previous experience. That's the
nature of R&D.

Grok that.


The company sponsored a Ham Radio class taight by a Brit radar
wizard
retiree which helped considerably. He would describe some exotic
property of the Ionosphere and then tell us which of the antennas on
the lawn outside he had used to measure it.

Taight? Sounds more like a Scot.

The ink is wearing off my laptop's external keyboard. I keep using it
because it's narrow enough to fit the mouse pad along side it on the
pull-out shelf.

g I always wear out the nubs on the F and J keys on my keyboards,
so my hand positions sometimes get one key off, making the resultant
typing a real jumble.

--
Give me the luxuries of life.
I can live without the necessities.
--anon

On 9/26/2014 5:32 AM, Lloyd E. Sponenburgh wrote:
Larry Jaques fired this volley in
:

Indeed. Too many of those uberProfs never get into the trenches at
all, missing 2/3 of knowledge in their field by default. The result
is that I seldom trust anyone with anything over a Master's. Too
often, it _is_ Piled Higher and Deeper.

Heh! I hired an East Indian once who hired on as hourly 'work' staff at
the fireworks plant, but who professed to be a degreed mechanical
engineer by trade.

It became clear early on that he had zero manual skills, and no knowledge
of tools or physical methods. He was simply astounded and enthralled by
a simple scissor-style PVC pipe cutter, when it was demonstrated to him.

I once asked him, as inoffensively as I could, how it could be the case
that he was both degreed in the trade, and absent the manual skills. He
said, "Oh, engineers nebber get deyer hands durty! Dat is for de
laborers! We design... Dey make de products!"

OhhhhhhKaayyyyy!

Never met an engineer worth his salt who couldn't turn a wrench!

LLoyd

Right. Engineers Hammer is a 3 1/2 pound double headed hammer that they
use in the work. No claws - double flat heads.

Engineers move around the world making and putting up stuff from tunnels
to rails to bridges to buildings......airplanes...missiles...to large
and small machines.

I know - I grew up with one in the house and one who daughters lived
together waiting for Dad to come home. Both grown. Did that all
of their and their Mom's life. He was a civil engineer and moved
mountains. He worked all over south America.

My Dad, I and my next brother were all engineers and we moved world
wide doing work as needed.

Martin

Larry Jaques on Thu, 25 Sep 2014
21:31:04 -0700 typed in rec.crafts.metalworking the following:

All true. But they're no *fun*.

Oh, SURE they are! I can take the winding road into town at 65mph in
the rain with one hand now in my '07 Tundra. I could hardly keep the
road at 45mph in the old '90 F-150. EFI has stopped all the old
hesitations in the morning that I had with carbureted vehicles.
Granted, if I were still wrenching for a living, I'd have lots less to
do nowadays. And EFI gives instant performance at all RPM. I don't
miss carbs at all.

The only thing wrong with today's technology is the cost to repair
anything. I used to pay less to buy a brand new vehicle than I do to
finance a major repair today. Tundra tires just cost me a GRAND, fer
chrissake!.

AH, but how much were tires in hours of labor (and mean mileage
till replacing) back then vs now?

I learned to drive at age twelve in pickup trucks with three in
the tree. Now that was A Skill to master - especially when on dirt
roads and you can barely see over the dash. ("Kids these days, with
their paved roads and drivers ed in school ...") Anyway, some of
those old vehicles were "fun" to drive - for some values of "fun". The
rest of the time - as you observed: carbs get real finicky about
weather, temps, altitude, phase of the moon, color paint ...


--
Give me the luxuries of life.
I can live without the necessities.
--anon
--
pyotr filipivich
"With Age comes Wisdom. Although more often, Age travels alone."

On 2014-09-27, Larry Jaques wrote:
On Fri, 26 Sep 2014 10:41:13 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

[ ... ]

Remember back when you could run a computer on a 17kb kernel and
programs were a few kb themselves?

I started with 256 -bytes- of RAM.

OK, you win.

My Altair 680B has 1024 bytes of RAM, and originally 256 bytes
of eprom (the terrible 1702A).


http://www.jameco.com/Jameco/Products/ProdDS/42198.pdf

Wow, Jameco! I haven't heard that name in damnear 40 years.

They're still around. I recently got a drawer set full of
useful transistor mixes from them for not much at all.

[ ... ]

The company sponsored a Ham Radio class taight by a Brit radar
wizard

[ ... ]

Taight? Sounds more like a Scot.

The ink is wearing off my laptop's external keyboard. I keep using it
because it's narrow enough to fit the mouse pad along side it on the
pull-out shelf.

Oh -- no two-shot mulded keycaps then? Well -- still a couple
of notches better than the keyboards on the first Commodore Pet
computers. Chicklet keycaps with anodized aluminum overlays with the
key marking in the anodizing, and thin films of transparent plastic --
Teflon, I think -- on top. Those quickly flaked off, and then the
anodized markings wore off almost as quickly. :-)

g I always wear out the nubs on the F and J keys on my keyboards,
so my hand positions sometimes get one key off, making the resultant
typing a real jumble.

:-)

You know -- the post office used to have people skilled at
figuring out addresses typewritten with that Obie-Wan error.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Remove oil spill source from e-mail
Email: | (KV4PH) Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

On 28 Sep 2014 03:27:52 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"
wrote:

On 2014-09-27, Larry Jaques wrote:
On Fri, 26 Sep 2014 10:41:13 -0400, "Jim Wilkins"
wrote:

[ ... ]

Remember back when you could run a computer on a 17kb kernel and
programs were a few kb themselves?

I started with 256 -bytes- of RAM.

OK, you win.

My Altair 680B has 1024 bytes of RAM, and originally 256 bytes
of eprom (the terrible 1702A).

When I helped my buddy do PM on an old Baird Gamma Camera, it had a
"computer" with 16 3-way toggles on it. The preload was switched in
binary, then it could read the 14" hard drives. I tried to avoid
learning too much about that thing, if you know what I mean.


http://www.jameco.com/Jameco/Products/ProdDS/42198.pdf

Wow, Jameco! I haven't heard that name in damnear 40 years.

They're still around. I recently got a drawer set full of
useful transistor mixes from them for not much at all.

I can imagine.


The ink is wearing off my laptop's external keyboard. I keep using it
because it's narrow enough to fit the mouse pad along side it on the
pull-out shelf.

Oh -- no two-shot mulded keycaps then? Well -- still a couple
of notches better than the keyboards on the first Commodore Pet
computers. Chicklet keycaps with anodized aluminum overlays with the
key marking in the anodizing, and thin films of transparent plastic --
Teflon, I think -- on top. Those quickly flaked off, and then the
anodized markings wore off almost as quickly. :-)

Yabbut, by that time, you'd have learned to touch-type, right? I'm
sure glad I took typing in 9th grade. Lots of guys gave me grief
about it, and I didn't think the old lady (30) teaching it was pretty
(until 3 years later, when I realized that she was a total babe) After
I got a computer, 20-odd years later, I thanked Crom that I had taken
that class. It has served me well.


g I always wear out the nubs on the F and J keys on my keyboards,
so my hand positions sometimes get one key off, making the resultant
typing a real jumble.

:-)

You know -- the post office used to have people skilled at
figuring out addresses typewritten with that Obie-Wan error.

As well they should. Now they have trouble getting people who can
even speak, read, and write simple English. Got Prep?

--
Give me the luxuries of life.
I can live without the necessities.
--anon

On 2014-09-28, Larry Jaques wrote:
On 28 Sep 2014 03:27:52 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"
wrote:

[ ... ]

My Altair 680B has 1024 bytes of RAM, and originally 256 bytes
of EPROM (the terrible 1702A).

When I helped my buddy do PM on an old Baird Gamma Camera, it had a
"computer" with 16 3-way toggles on it. The preload was switched in
binary, then it could read the 14" hard drives. I tried to avoid
learning too much about that thing, if you know what I mean.

I had to deal with a Data General Nova, which required keying in
a bootstrap loader (about 16 words, IIRC) which would then read a length
of punched tape. After that, you could simply set the switches to a
specific setting and it would load whatever (usually the BASIC
interpreter) from cassette tape. No disks on this thing. And luckly,
you only had to key in that bootstrap loader *once* (until something
went wrong and overwrote all of memory) because it had core memory --
remembers things while power if off. There was a 32K semiconductor
memory board and a 16K core memory, so it was important to have the core
memory where the bootstrap loader lived. :-)

[ ... ]

The ink is wearing off my laptop's external keyboard. I keep using it
because it's narrow enough to fit the mouse pad along side it on the
pull-out shelf.

Oh -- no two-shot molded keycaps then? Well -- still a couple
of notches better than the keyboards on the first Commodore Pet
computers. Chicklet keycaps with anodized aluminum overlays with the
key marking in the anodizing, and thin films of transparent plastic --
Teflon, I think -- on top. Those quickly flaked off, and then the
anodized markings wore off almost as quickly. :-)

Yabbut, by that time, you'd have learned to touch-type, right?

If you did not already know how, it wouldn't help you. The rows
of buttons were not staggered like on a normal keyboard. just a square
grid of keys -- and each key had some special symbol on it (like a
"heart" for print I think), so even if you could handle touch typing,
that would not help you with the rest, unless you remembered where all
the "special" symbols lived.

I'm
sure glad I took typing in 9th grade. Lots of guys gave me grief
about it, and I didn't think the old lady (30) teaching it was pretty
(until 3 years later, when I realized that she was a total babe) After
I got a computer, 20-odd years later, I thanked Crom that I had taken
that class. It has served me well.

I didn't take it in school, but a great aunt taught me when I
was loaned an old, heavy, skeleton typewriter. She had a bunch of
rubber caps, and a wall chart, and forced me to use that instead of
looking at the keyboard.

Boy has that served me well ovet the decades. :-)

g I always wear out the nubs on the F and J keys on my keyboards,
so my hand positions sometimes get one key off, making the resultant
typing a real jumble.

:-)

You know -- the post office used to have people skilled at
figuring out addresses typewritten with that Obie-Wan error.

As well they should. Now they have trouble getting people who can
even speak, read, and write simple English. Got Prep?

Yes -- we keep getting mail for someone at the same house
number, but a few streets over. (Not too much recently, but for a while
it was pretty bad.) And also things for the neighbor to either side of
us.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Remove oil spill source from e-mail
Email: | (KV4PH) Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

Jim Wilkins wrote:
"pyotr filipivich" wrote in message
...
"Michael A. Terrell" on Tue, 23 Sep
2014
03:40:23 -0400 typed in rec.crafts.metalworking the following:

pyotr filipivich wrote:


You know when your design is complete - not when there is
nothing
left to add, but when there is mottling left to take away.

OTOH, rarely are products "completed" so much as the designers
run out of time to make any improvements or changes.


AKA: Muntzed

Okay, I give - vvhat means "muntzed"?
--
pyotr filipivich

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



Muntz would run the rf section and the if section through the same tube
saving a bunch of tubes.

John

On 29 Sep 2014 03:45:20 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"
wrote:

On 2014-09-28, Larry Jaques wrote:
On 28 Sep 2014 03:27:52 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"
wrote:

[ ... ]

My Altair 680B has 1024 bytes of RAM, and originally 256 bytes
of EPROM (the terrible 1702A).

When I helped my buddy do PM on an old Baird Gamma Camera, it had a
"computer" with 16 3-way toggles on it. The preload was switched in
binary, then it could read the 14" hard drives. I tried to avoid
learning too much about that thing, if you know what I mean.

I had to deal with a Data General Nova, which required keying in
a bootstrap loader (about 16 words, IIRC) which would then read a length
of punched tape. After that, you could simply set the switches to a
specific setting and it would load whatever (usually the BASIC
interpreter) from cassette tape. No disks on this thing. And luckly,
you only had to key in that bootstrap loader *once* (until something
went wrong and overwrote all of memory) because it had core memory --
remembers things while power if off. There was a 32K semiconductor
memory board and a 16K core memory, so it was important to have the core
memory where the bootstrap loader lived. :-)

Yeah, bootstrap loader. I had forgotten the term. It may well have
been a Nova that I tried to avoid working with.


[ ... ]

The ink is wearing off my laptop's external keyboard. I keep using it
because it's narrow enough to fit the mouse pad along side it on the
pull-out shelf.

Oh -- no two-shot molded keycaps then? Well -- still a couple
of notches better than the keyboards on the first Commodore Pet
computers. Chicklet keycaps with anodized aluminum overlays with the
key marking in the anodizing, and thin films of transparent plastic --
Teflon, I think -- on top. Those quickly flaked off, and then the
anodized markings wore off almost as quickly. :-)

Yabbut, by that time, you'd have learned to touch-type, right?

If you did not already know how, it wouldn't help you. The rows
of buttons were not staggered like on a normal keyboard. just a square
grid of keys -- and each key had some special symbol on it (like a
"heart" for print I think), so even if you could handle touch typing,
that would not help you with the rest, unless you remembered where all
the "special" symbols lived.

Nonetheless, if you had memorized -that- particular keyboard before
the key markers had worn off, you wouldn't be in bad shape.


sure glad I took typing in 9th grade. Lots of guys gave me grief
about it, and I didn't think the old lady (30) teaching it was pretty
(until 3 years later, when I realized that she was a total babe) After
I got a computer, 20-odd years later, I thanked Crom that I had taken
that class. It has served me well.

I didn't take it in school, but a great aunt taught me when I
was loaned an old, heavy, skeleton typewriter. She had a bunch of
rubber caps, and a wall chart, and forced me to use that instead of
looking at the keyboard.

Boy has that served me well ovet the decades. :-)

Ayup.


g I always wear out the nubs on the F and J keys on my keyboards,
so my hand positions sometimes get one key off, making the resultant
typing a real jumble.

:-)

You know -- the post office used to have people skilled at
figuring out addresses typewritten with that Obie-Wan error.

As well they should. Now they have trouble getting people who can
even speak, read, and write simple English. Got Prep?

Yes -- we keep getting mail for someone at the same house
number, but a few streets over. (Not too much recently, but for a while
it was pretty bad.) And also things for the neighbor to either side of
us.

Makes one wonder if they might miss a vital piece of mail, like the
notice of a lawsuit, which you'll lose if you don't respond, or the
discovery of a large sum of money in a will by an unknown family
member addressed to you...

I think we should disband the USPS and let known companies handle the
mail from now on. I would likely be much more efficient (No mansions
to buy for the Postmasters. Did you hear that scandal? No $1,000,000
ads during the farkin' Superbowl, etc.) and a helluva lot more
reliable. Some of the postmen might be hired by the company, but most
would be too damned stupid, inefficient, and set in their ways to be
retained by an -aware- business. And it's not like we have an actual
U.S. gov't entity delivering our mail now, is it? g Just imagine,
junk mail senders having to pay full boat for the pounds of daily crap
they inundate us with...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congres...Office_scandal

http://tinyurl.com/8qaf9xh junk mail

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/1...n_4423045.html

http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/20...11-6-bil-loss/

http://cagw.org/media/press-releases...at-gop-senator

http://www.cnn.com/blogarchive/siu.b...ffice-mansion/

And it goes on and on...

--
Give me the luxuries of life.
I can live without the necessities.
--anon

On Mon, 29 Sep 2014 08:30:41 -0700, Larry Jaques
wrote:

I think we should disband the USPS and let known companies handle the
mail from now on. I would likely be much more efficient (No mansions
to buy for the Postmasters. Did you hear that scandal? No $1,000,000
ads during the farkin' Superbowl, etc.) and a helluva lot more
reliable. Some of the postmen might be hired by the company, but most
would be too damned stupid, inefficient, and set in their ways to be
retained by an -aware- business. And it's not like we have an actual
U.S. gov't entity delivering our mail now, is it? g Just imagine,
junk mail senders having to pay full boat for the pounds of daily crap
they inundate us with...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congres...Office_scandal

http://tinyurl.com/8qaf9xh junk mail

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/1...n_4423045.html

http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/20...11-6-bil-loss/

http://cagw.org/media/press-releases...at-gop-senator

http://www.cnn.com/blogarchive/siu.b...ffice-mansion/

And it goes on and on...

Missed the latest one....

http://www.theguardian.com/world/201...rded-mail-2005


New York postal worker caught 'hoarding' 40,000 pieces of mail

Postal worker Joseph Brucato kept 2,500lbs of undelivered mail in his
home, car and locker, federal complaint says

Associated Press in New York
theguardian.com, Friday 26 September 2014 11.46 EDT


Letters in pigeon holes Up to 30,000 German households have received
letters from the Swiss media agent that says it holds copyright on the
films. Photograph: Tobias Schwarz/Reuters

A New York City postal carrier is accused of failing to deliver more
than 40,000 pieces of mail, some dating to 2005.

According to a federal court complaint, Joseph Brucato hoarded the
mail at his home, car and post office locker. He was arrested
Wednesday after a supervisor noticed undelivered mail piled up in
Brucato’s personal vehicle.

The 67-year-old Brucato was arraigned Wednesday and released on his
own recognizance.

Magistrate Vera Scanlon ordered him to “abstain from excessive alcohol
consumption.”

Brucato’s attorney says his client suffered from depression.

Authorities say about 2,500lbs of US mail postmarked as far back as
2005 was recovered.

Brucato’s route included businesses and residences in Brooklyn’s
Flatbush section.



"At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child,
miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied,
demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless.
Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats."
PJ O'Rourke

On Monday, September 29, 2014 11:30:41 AM UTC-4, Larry Jaques wrote:
On 29 Sep 2014 03:45:20 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"

wrote:

On 2014-09-28, Larry Jaques wrote:

On 28 Sep 2014 03:27:52 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"

wrote:

[ ... ]



My Altair 680B has 1024 bytes of RAM, and originally 256 bytes

of EPROM (the terrible 1702A).



When I helped my buddy do PM on an old Baird Gamma Camera, it had a

"computer" with 16 3-way toggles on it. The preload was switched in

binary, then it could read the 14" hard drives. I tried to avoid

learning too much about that thing, if you know what I mean.



I had to deal with a Data General Nova, which required keying in

a bootstrap loader (about 16 words, IIRC) which would then read a length

of punched tape. After that, you could simply set the switches to a

specific setting and it would load whatever (usually the BASIC

interpreter) from cassette tape. No disks on this thing. And luckly,

you only had to key in that bootstrap loader *once* (until something

went wrong and overwrote all of memory) because it had core memory --

remembers things while power if off. There was a 32K semiconductor

memory board and a 16K core memory, so it was important to have the core

memory where the bootstrap loader lived. :-)



Yeah, bootstrap loader. I had forgotten the term. It may well have

been a Nova that I tried to avoid working with.





[ ... ]



The ink is wearing off my laptop's external keyboard. I keep using it

because it's narrow enough to fit the mouse pad along side it on the

pull-out shelf.



Oh -- no two-shot molded keycaps then? Well -- still a couple

of notches better than the keyboards on the first Commodore Pet

computers. Chicklet keycaps with anodized aluminum overlays with the

key marking in the anodizing, and thin films of transparent plastic --

Teflon, I think -- on top. Those quickly flaked off, and then the

anodized markings wore off almost as quickly. :-)



Yabbut, by that time, you'd have learned to touch-type, right?



If you did not already know how, it wouldn't help you. The rows

of buttons were not staggered like on a normal keyboard. just a square

grid of keys -- and each key had some special symbol on it (like a

"heart" for print I think), so even if you could handle touch typing,

that would not help you with the rest, unless you remembered where all

the "special" symbols lived.



Nonetheless, if you had memorized -that- particular keyboard before

the key markers had worn off, you wouldn't be in bad shape.





sure glad I took typing in 9th grade. Lots of guys gave me grief

about it, and I didn't think the old lady (30) teaching it was pretty

(until 3 years later, when I realized that she was a total babe) After

I got a computer, 20-odd years later, I thanked Crom that I had taken

that class. It has served me well.



I didn't take it in school, but a great aunt taught me when I

was loaned an old, heavy, skeleton typewriter. She had a bunch of

rubber caps, and a wall chart, and forced me to use that instead of

looking at the keyboard.



Boy has that served me well ovet the decades. :-)



Ayup.





g I always wear out the nubs on the F and J keys on my keyboards,

so my hand positions sometimes get one key off, making the resultant

typing a real jumble.



:-)



You know -- the post office used to have people skilled at

figuring out addresses typewritten with that Obie-Wan error.



As well they should. Now they have trouble getting people who can

even speak, read, and write simple English. Got Prep?



Yes -- we keep getting mail for someone at the same house

number, but a few streets over. (Not too much recently, but for a while

it was pretty bad.) And also things for the neighbor to either side of

us.



Makes one wonder if they might miss a vital piece of mail, like the

notice of a lawsuit, which you'll lose if you don't respond, or the

discovery of a large sum of money in a will by an unknown family

member addressed to you...



I think

I disagree.

we should disband the USPS and let known companies handle the

mail from now on.

Yeah right. Let two competitors deliver each others mail to each other. Great idea. I wonder when the a single mistake might happen with that idea.

"DoN. Nichols" wrote:

I had to deal with a Data General Nova, which required keying in
a bootstrap loader (about 16 words, IIRC) which would then read a length
of punched tape. After that, you could simply set the switches to a
specific setting and it would load whatever (usually the BASIC
interpreter) from cassette tape. No disks on this thing. And luckly,
you only had to key in that bootstrap loader *once* (until something
went wrong and overwrote all of memory) because it had core memory --
remembers things while power if off. There was a 32K semiconductor
memory board and a 16K core memory, so it was important to have the core
memory where the bootstrap loader lived. :-)

I scrapped a DG Nova around 1990 that had a 9-trck drive. I needed
the pair of racks more than I needed the computer.

--
Anyone wanting to run for any political office in the US should have to
have a DD214, and a honorable discharge.

John wrote:

Jim Wilkins wrote:
"pyotr filipivich" wrote in message
...
"Michael A. Terrell" on Tue, 23 Sep
2014
03:40:23 -0400 typed in rec.crafts.metalworking the following:

pyotr filipivich wrote:


You know when your design is complete - not when there is
nothing
left to add, but when there is mottling left to take away.

OTOH, rarely are products "completed" so much as the designers
run out of time to make any improvements or changes.

AKA: Muntzed

Okay, I give - vvhat means "muntzed"?

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

Muntz would run the rf section and the if section through the same tube
saving a bunch of tubes.


Reflex circuits. It was a common practice to pass RF and audio
through the same tubes, when one cost a week's pay.




--
Anyone wanting to run for any political office in the US should have to
have a DD214, and a honorable discharge.

Larry Jaques wrote:

On Tue, 23 Sep 2014 13:25:54 -0400, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:


Larry Jaques wrote:

On Tue, 23 Sep 2014 03:26:31 -0400, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:


Larry Jaques wrote:

That's cool. I envy your vast knowledge/experience base. (I only made
it to half vast.) Had I wanted to go to college, I likely would have
taken both electrical and mechanical engineering courses. My parents
offered to pay the price. But I was too fed up with people, being a
hermit by nature. I chose auto mechanic tech school over college, as
machines don't talk back.


Sure they do. You can even carry on conversations with some of them.
I told more than one piece of equipment that if it didn't behave I would
scrap it for parts.

What I meant was that they don't talk back...much.


You've lead a very sheltered life.

Hayull no! I buy more refined machinery, sir.


They get refined, as scrap metal for being obstinate.

--
Anyone wanting to run for any political office in the US should have to
have a DD214, and a honorable discharge.

Jim Wilkins wrote:

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
m...

Today, .01% are easy to get.
LaSer trimmed can be even closer.

You can buy 'as marked' but they are only that value at a specific
temperature and they aren't cheap. Considering that the first
standard
was 50%, .01% is a 5000% improvement. I've bought reels of .o1% on
Ebay
for well under one cent per part.

GM solved its problem by changing from analog op amps and comparators
to digital microcontrollers in the ABS module. I heard that the analog
ABS design had come from someone who created it in his garage and then
dropped dead before he had properly documented it.

The bigger accuracy issue in building high-precision automated test
equipment, where I used the 0.01% resistors, was actually capacitance.

While dual-slope A/D converters may automatically compensate for
temperature drift, the storage caps in the input Sample-and-Holds
don't. They matter because they are very small to track fast and the
FET that isolates the cap from the signal to maintain a steady voltage
during the conversion also couples unwanted charge into the cap from
the voltage swing on its gate. We could couple a trimmed compensating
charge switched by the gate control into the sample cap but the
tempcos weren't matched since the compensating cap was a small patch
on the circuit board.

The larger capacitance error source was dielectric absorption, when a
polar capacitor dielectric acts slightly like a chemical battery and
takes a short while to fully charge or discharge after the voltage
changes. When you have only 5mS to set up and make a measurement it
becomes a serious concern. We had to have W.L.Gore make custom
Teflon-wrapped reed relays to cut the dielectric absorption in the
relay matrix that configures each test down so it didn't degrade
accuracy.


Some things are still better handled as analog. As a couple IC
designers like to remind people, Digital is a subset of analog. That's
why so many under educated designers run into layout problems on circuit
boards. A DDS is quick, but very dirty. A PLL controlled VCO has some
settling time, but can have very low phase noise. That is what was used
to track deep space probes at micro watt (and lower) power levels. Even
the front end in the SP based RCB2000, the front end was still analog,
prior to the A/D conversion of the IF of the 50 to 90 MHz range.



--
Anyone wanting to run for any political office in the US should have to
have a DD214, and a honorable discharge.

Jim Wilkins wrote:

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
m...

Jim Wilkins wrote:


So did HP. My early-70's 8555A spectrum analyzer is a masterpiece
of
both electronic and mechanical design. It even has a Magic Crystal
for
a heart
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YIG_sphere

Then they lost their way on the scopes with keypads and a single
control dial that took two minutes to change any setting. I have
one
because it sold cheap but much preferred their Infinium with
separate
knobs for each function.


I like my Tek 2465A scopes. The newer HO spectrum analyzers could
print the screen, but the setup was six menus deep and it only
worked
with a couple HP printers. Engineers would come to the production
floor
to ask us to set one up for them.

I bought Tek until they 'lost the process" around 2000. The HP
Infinium was a good substitute, and it had an Internet browser so as a
sight gag I could leave it hooked to a prototype circuit but
displaying weather radar.

I also wrote a screen saver for it that imitated a PPI air search
radar screen with occasional bogies flying by, and one with the Matrix
waterfall of random characters.

I can learn to use LeCroy, Phillips or Hitachi but not really to like
them.

I couldn't pass up the 1 GSa HP digital storage scope for $300 at
auction. The down side was that the company being mostly liquidated
was my employer.


I never cared for HP scopes. We had some of their early digital models
at Microdyne, but none of them could touch the 2565B, four channel 400
MHz scope on my bench.


--
Anyone wanting to run for any political office in the US should have to
have a DD214, and a honorable discharge.

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
...

Jim Wilkins wrote:


Some things are still better handled as analog. As a couple IC
designers like to remind people, Digital is a subset of analog.
That's
why so many under educated designers run into layout problems on
circuit
boards. A DDS is quick, but very dirty. A PLL controlled VCO has
some
settling time, but can have very low phase noise. That is what was
used
to track deep space probes at micro watt (and lower) power levels.
Even
the front end in the SP based RCB2000, the front end was still
analog,
prior to the A/D conversion of the IF of the 50 to 90 MHz range.

I was thrown into Digital Radio by a reorg and had to learn it
quickly. I think I did well enough as none of my receiver circuit
boards needed a second revision.
-jsw

Jim Wilkins wrote:

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
...

Jim Wilkins wrote:


Some things are still better handled as analog. As a couple IC
designers like to remind people, Digital is a subset of analog.
That's
why so many under educated designers run into layout problems on
circuit
boards. A DDS is quick, but very dirty. A PLL controlled VCO has
some
settling time, but can have very low phase noise. That is what was
used
to track deep space probes at micro watt (and lower) power levels.
Even
the front end in the SP based RCB2000, the front end was still
analog,
prior to the A/D conversion of the IF of the 50 to 90 MHz range.

I was thrown into Digital Radio by a reorg and had to learn it
quickly. I think I did well enough as none of my receiver circuit
boards needed a second revision.


How complex? These were $80,000, and built as VXI style cards with a
plasma display on the front panel. They could process any modulation,
up to the then state of the art FQPSK. They also had the ability to
remote control them with RS232, RS422, IEEE-488 or Ethernet. They ran
embedded Windows CE from a 40 MB M-Disk solid state drive in a 28 pin
package. They had an optional spectrum display, and a 70 MHz D/A output
so the data could be fed into a tape drive, or digital data recorder.

--
Anyone wanting to run for any political office in the US should have to
have a DD214, and a honorable discharge.

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
...

Jim Wilkins wrote:

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
...

Jim Wilkins wrote:


Some things are still better handled as analog. As a couple IC
designers like to remind people, Digital is a subset of analog.
That's
why so many under educated designers run into layout problems on
circuit
boards. A DDS is quick, but very dirty. A PLL controlled VCO has
some
settling time, but can have very low phase noise. That is what
was
used
to track deep space probes at micro watt (and lower) power
levels.
Even
the front end in the SP based RCB2000, the front end was still
analog,
prior to the A/D conversion of the IF of the 50 to 90 MHz range.

I was thrown into Digital Radio by a reorg and had to learn it
quickly. I think I did well enough as none of my receiver circuit
boards needed a second revision.


How complex? These were $80,000, and built as VXI style cards with
a
plasma display on the front panel. They could process any
modulation,
up to the then state of the art FQPSK. They also had the ability to
remote control them with RS232, RS422, IEEE-488 or Ethernet. They
ran
embedded Windows CE from a 40 MB M-Disk solid state drive in a 28
pin
package. They had an optional spectrum display, and a 70 MHz D/A
output
so the data could be fed into a tape drive, or digital data
recorder.

The most complex one I can mention was a satellite network simulator
to evaluate vendor's tactical SATCOM terminal prototypes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milstar
"The Electronic Systems Center at Hanscom AFB is responsible for the
US Air Force portion of the terminal segment development and
acquisition."

The Mitre offices were almost under the flight path, right off the end
of Hanscom's main runway, fortunately the quieter downwind landing
end.

Jim Wilkins wrote:

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
...

Jim Wilkins wrote:

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
...

Jim Wilkins wrote:


Some things are still better handled as analog. As a couple IC
designers like to remind people, Digital is a subset of analog.
That's
why so many under educated designers run into layout problems on
circuit
boards. A DDS is quick, but very dirty. A PLL controlled VCO has
some
settling time, but can have very low phase noise. That is what
was
used
to track deep space probes at micro watt (and lower) power
levels.
Even
the front end in the SP based RCB2000, the front end was still
analog,
prior to the A/D conversion of the IF of the 50 to 90 MHz range.

I was thrown into Digital Radio by a reorg and had to learn it
quickly. I think I did well enough as none of my receiver circuit
boards needed a second revision.


How complex? These were $80,000, and built as VXI style cards with
a
plasma display on the front panel. They could process any
modulation,
up to the then state of the art FQPSK. They also had the ability to
remote control them with RS232, RS422, IEEE-488 or Ethernet. They
ran
embedded Windows CE from a 40 MB M-Disk solid state drive in a 28
pin
package. They had an optional spectrum display, and a 70 MHz D/A
output
so the data could be fed into a tape drive, or digital data
recorder.

The most complex one I can mention was a satellite network simulator
to evaluate vendor's tactical SATCOM terminal prototypes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milstar
"The Electronic Systems Center at Hanscom AFB is responsible for the
US Air Force portion of the terminal segment development and
acquisition."

The Mitre offices were almost under the flight path, right off the end
of Hanscom's main runway, fortunately the quieter downwind landing
end.

We knew what our hardware could do, but not why people were lined up
to buy millions of dollars worth before they were ready for market.
Being software comntrolled, they could be customized over the internet.
--
Anyone wanting to run for any political office in the US should have to
have a DD214, and a honorable discharge.

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
...

Jim Wilkins wrote:

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
...

Jim Wilkins wrote:

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in
message
...

Jim Wilkins wrote:


Some things are still better handled as analog. As a couple
IC
designers like to remind people, Digital is a subset of
analog.
That's
why so many under educated designers run into layout problems
on
circuit
boards. A DDS is quick, but very dirty. A PLL controlled VCO
has
some
settling time, but can have very low phase noise. That is
what
was
used
to track deep space probes at micro watt (and lower) power
levels.
Even
the front end in the SP based RCB2000, the front end was still
analog,
prior to the A/D conversion of the IF of the 50 to 90 MHz
range.

I was thrown into Digital Radio by a reorg and had to learn it
quickly. I think I did well enough as none of my receiver
circuit
boards needed a second revision.


How complex? These were $80,000, and built as VXI style cards
with
a
plasma display on the front panel. They could process any
modulation,
up to the then state of the art FQPSK. They also had the ability
to
remote control them with RS232, RS422, IEEE-488 or Ethernet. They
ran
embedded Windows CE from a 40 MB M-Disk solid state drive in a 28
pin
package. They had an optional spectrum display, and a 70 MHz D/A
output
so the data could be fed into a tape drive, or digital data
recorder.

The most complex one I can mention was a satellite network
simulator
to evaluate vendor's tactical SATCOM terminal prototypes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milstar
"The Electronic Systems Center at Hanscom AFB is responsible for
the
US Air Force portion of the terminal segment development and
acquisition."

The Mitre offices were almost under the flight path, right off the
end
of Hanscom's main runway, fortunately the quieter downwind landing
end.

We knew what our hardware could do, but not why people were lined
up
to buy millions of dollars worth before they were ready for market.
Being software comntrolled, they could be customized over the
internet.

There isn't that much hardware difference between a digital radio and
a digital sampling oscilloscope. We used oscilloscope flash A/D
converters and exotic low-loss circuit board materials. Usually the
radio mixes and downconverts with simple analog hardware to the
Intermediate Frequency because only the modulation matters, but if you
have the need and money you can capture the multi-GHz Radio Frequency
directly, like a scope.

On the digital side I had already designed a multiport DRAM controller
for the TMS320C30 DSP that was favored for digital radios, and really
only had to learn more about active double balanced mixers and
elliptical and SAW filters. A SAW is an acoustic filter, speaker
tuned pathway microphone, that operates at 70MHz.

Now you can find do-anything Software Defined Radios cheap at ham flea
markets.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software-defined_radio
"Most receivers use a variable-frequency oscillator, mixer, and filter
to tune the desired signal to a common intermediate frequency or
baseband, where it is then sampled by the analog-to-digital converter.
However, in some applications it is not necessary to tune the signal
to an intermediate frequency and the radio frequency signal is
directly sampled by the analog-to-digital converter (after
amplification)."

The NEAR ham fleamarket this past weekend was mostly rained out, but
I did find a used (1% wear) Micron SSD for $40 and 750GB 100MB/S HD
for $30 to speed up the dual-core "parts" laptop I bought there last
spring for $25. It boots Win 7 in 20 seconds. Now I have to learn the
secrets of properly setting up Solid State Drives.

-jsw

Jim Wilkins wrote:

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
...

Jim Wilkins wrote:

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
...

Jim Wilkins wrote:

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in
message
...

Jim Wilkins wrote:


Some things are still better handled as analog. As a couple
IC
designers like to remind people, Digital is a subset of
analog.
That's
why so many under educated designers run into layout problems
on
circuit
boards. A DDS is quick, but very dirty. A PLL controlled VCO
has
some
settling time, but can have very low phase noise. That is
what
was
used
to track deep space probes at micro watt (and lower) power
levels.
Even
the front end in the SP based RCB2000, the front end was still
analog,
prior to the A/D conversion of the IF of the 50 to 90 MHz
range.

I was thrown into Digital Radio by a reorg and had to learn it
quickly. I think I did well enough as none of my receiver
circuit
boards needed a second revision.


How complex? These were $80,000, and built as VXI style cards
with
a
plasma display on the front panel. They could process any
modulation,
up to the then state of the art FQPSK. They also had the ability
to
remote control them with RS232, RS422, IEEE-488 or Ethernet. They
ran
embedded Windows CE from a 40 MB M-Disk solid state drive in a 28
pin
package. They had an optional spectrum display, and a 70 MHz D/A
output
so the data could be fed into a tape drive, or digital data
recorder.

The most complex one I can mention was a satellite network
simulator
to evaluate vendor's tactical SATCOM terminal prototypes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milstar
"The Electronic Systems Center at Hanscom AFB is responsible for
the
US Air Force portion of the terminal segment development and
acquisition."

The Mitre offices were almost under the flight path, right off the
end
of Hanscom's main runway, fortunately the quieter downwind landing
end.

We knew what our hardware could do, but not why people were lined
up
to buy millions of dollars worth before they were ready for market.
Being software comntrolled, they could be customized over the
internet.

There isn't that much hardware difference between a digital radio and
a digital sampling oscilloscope. We used oscilloscope flash A/D
converters and exotic low-loss circuit board materials. Usually the
radio mixes and downconverts with simple analog hardware to the
Intermediate Frequency because only the modulation matters, but if you
have the need and money you can capture the multi-GHz Radio Frequency
directly, like a scope.

On the digital side I had already designed a multiport DRAM controller
for the TMS320C30 DSP that was favored for digital radios, and really
only had to learn more about active double balanced mixers and
elliptical and SAW filters. A SAW is an acoustic filter, speaker
tuned pathway microphone, that operates at 70MHz.

Now you can find do-anything Software Defined Radios cheap at ham flea
markets.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software-defined_radio
"Most receivers use a variable-frequency oscillator, mixer, and filter
to tune the desired signal to a common intermediate frequency or
baseband, where it is then sampled by the analog-to-digital converter.
However, in some applications it is not necessary to tune the signal
to an intermediate frequency and the radio frequency signal is
directly sampled by the analog-to-digital converter (after
amplification)."

The NEAR ham fleamarket this past weekend was mostly rained out, but
I did find a used (1% wear) Micron SSD for $40 and 750GB 100MB/S HD
for $30 to speed up the dual-core "parts" laptop I bought there last
spring for $25. It boots Win 7 in 20 seconds. Now I have to learn the
secrets of properly setting up Solid State Drives.


The cheap SDR radios work for some applications, but how many can do
all the functions I described at the same time? How many have a $450 10
MHz frequency standard that can be tired to a local standard source?
Can they do doppler offsets to follow a satellite as its speed changes?
Can they process a 40 MHz wide video signal?

--
Anyone wanting to run for any political office in the US should have to
have a DD214, and a honorable discharge.

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
...

Jim Wilkins wrote:


Now you can find do-anything Software Defined Radios cheap at ham
flea
markets.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software-defined_radio


The cheap SDR radios work for some applications, but how many can
do
all the functions I described at the same time? How many have a $450
10
MHz frequency standard that can be tired to a local standard source?
Can they do doppler offsets to follow a satellite as its speed
changes?
Can they process a 40 MHz wide video signal?

You know, I can't play mine's-bigger-than-yours with sensitive Air
Force projects. I did integrate a Rubidium 10.0000000 MHz atomic clock
into one of them. I was a newly hired lab tech without an electronics
degree and that circuit which counted the time and more importantly
resynchronized it to GPS was the first they let me design.
-jsw

Jim Wilkins wrote:

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
...

Jim Wilkins wrote:


Now you can find do-anything Software Defined Radios cheap at ham
flea
markets.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software-defined_radio


The cheap SDR radios work for some applications, but how many can
do
all the functions I described at the same time? How many have a $450
10
MHz frequency standard that can be tired to a local standard source?
Can they do doppler offsets to follow a satellite as its speed
changes?
Can they process a 40 MHz wide video signal?

You know, I can't play mine's-bigger-than-yours with sensitive Air
Force projects. I did integrate a Rubidium 10.0000000 MHz atomic clock
into one of them. I was a newly hired lab tech without an electronics
degree and that circuit which counted the time and more importantly
resynchronized it to GPS was the first they let me design.


I didn't ask you to, and this was a team effort.

This had nothing to do with GPS. It was an off the shelf, customer
configurable, diversity Telemetry system. The 10 MHz came from other
equipment. It could be configured from 1 KHz to 40 MHz bandwidth fo it
could be applied to anything from tracking a deep space probe with low
data rate telemetry, to remote controlled weapons. They didn't tell us
what they were used for, or how they were used. All they did was
sometimes requset a feature not programmed into a standard unit. It was
the last new design I worked on.


-jsw


--
Anyone wanting to run for any political office in the US should have to
have a DD214, and a honorable discharge.