Great test equipment designs

When I was there, the Stanford EE department flunked about half the students taking quals, but the physics and (especially) Applied Physics quals weren't as ugly. At the time I thought EE was profoundly disrespectful of the students, but on reflection I changed my mind. If you flunk your quals you're on a Masters track, and a masters in EE is a highly useful professional qualification, whereas in physics it isn't.

Applied Physics did its weeding out on the front end--in my year there were a grand total of twelve of us admitted--but took a lot of care that everybody graduated unless they screwed up badly. Since I had a wife and daughter by the time I took my quals, that was very comforting. :)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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Phil Hobbs
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So of course he grilled you. ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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Phil Hobbs

A lot of our classes had open book exams (some with, some without notes). At first, people thought it was a great idea but it didn't take long to figure out you couldn't learn the material in the exam. Those who didn't, weren't around long.

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krw

So far they look OK, as replacements for the smaller Avago parts. Less voltage headroom, but that's OK for us now.

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I wish they would do an ATF-50189.

I'm using GaN in new designs. Maybe they will be around for a while.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

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John Larkin

He would present a problem and ask the class to vote on the answer. After the vote, he'd move on. Only a couple of us ever knew what the answer actually was.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

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John Larkin

Excellent. Both bringing in lecture notes and the comment!

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Tom Gardner

This all seems reminiscent[1] of the famous "Four Yorkshire-men" Monty Python sketch. :-)

[1] I can't believe the speelchcucker didn't mark that word for correction.
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Johnny B Good
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Johnny B Good

My experience is that physics is culturally brutal. I've seen some awful stuff.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
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John Larkin

I am surprised that no one has mentioned the HP 200CD audio oscillator or the John Fluke 803 Differential Voltmeter. Not much in demand now , but pretty good in their day and bullet proof.

Dan

Reply to
dcaster

Do they self-bias like the ATF38143? That's a pretty useful property in nanoamp front ends.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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Phil Hobbs

Depends on the field. Empire builders are bad news in any arena, but guys like George and me just want to hack around on our optical tables, get our purchase reqs signed, and otherwise be left alone. ;)

All the optics folks I've ever worked with (bar one or two empire building types) have been great.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
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Phil Hobbs

Well, it's Friday evening, and I'm sitting here sharing a bottle of Chateau de Chasselais with a few friends. What's your point?

;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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Phil Hobbs

Well, I have a broken 200CD. ;)

It was still in the 1985 HP catalogue--their last product with tubes other than CRTs--but one gathers it was mainly for sentimental reasons.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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Phil Hobbs

That's spelled 'awesome'.

Reply to
whit3rd

Do you mean the venturi effect, where the gate pulls itself negative? I didn't try that. I might if I get time. My last test blew up the one on my proto adapter.

It wouldn't matter to me, but it is interesting. I slam these things hard.

The other thing that would be interesting would be to measure drain current when the gate is pulled negative. Ephemts do sort of dis-enhance, namely go below Idss somewhat as the gate goes below zero. Then, at more negative gate voltage, Id starts to increase again.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
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John Larkin

I was invited to sit in on an oral presentation given to a university physics faculty. The presenter guy wanted to get into the PhD program. He wasn't very good. Midway through, the dean stood up and said "I've heard enough" and walked out. The guy was crushed.

I've seen some brutal insults at conferences, during presentations, too.

I think that, in some circles at least, there is intolerance for perceived stupidity, which is cruel. Not everyone is born smart.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
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John Larkin

That must have been weird. You did buy it back, presumably, for old times sake? I mean they are still quicker than calculators for a limited number of things like reciprocals.

Back in 1991 I bought a Casio FX3400p programmable scientific which despite a lot of heavy use still works like new 27 years on. I look at the current range of calculators and they don't seem to offer any 'must-have' functions to warrant upgrading and they are so bloated in size for some reason. My Casio is so thin I can carry it around in a shirt pocket and it wouldn't notice; can't say the same for modern calcs. For graphing I have the HP39gII but here again it's on the fat side (must be 3/4" thick). It's this increased size that puts me off buying a new scientific, but fortunately my good ol' Casio keeps on going so I don't need to. :) It's astonishing how cheap all this calculating power is these days compared to the early 1970s.

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Cursitor Doom

Having your time wasted by somebody who isn't paying you $$ can get wearing. Of course the dean could have just walked out with a smile and a wave instead of grandstanding like that.

Back around 1992, I took apart a guy at a semiconductor manufacturing conference because he was selling obvious snake oil--a little free-standing electrostatic precipitator mounted to the ceiling of a fab, which was supposedly going to pull particles out of the air upstream against a 100 FPM airflow, from a distance of a few metres.

When I challenged him on it, he said that he was working with people in IBM manufacturing that I didn't know. He didn't realize that all the contamination control folks in the late lamented IBM Microelectronics were customers of the group I worked in.

Riiiiigggghhhhhtttt. So I asked him for names, and he had zilch.

I could have done the same thing a bit more gently, but cheats like that were a bit more of a novelty when I was 33 than they are now. (More's the pity.)

And being smart is far from the only valuable human quality.

Cheers

Phil "I'd rather be lucky" Hobbs

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Phil Hobbs

With +4 on the drain, gate open, the gate drives itself to +0.12 volts, where Id = 22 uA.

At +5 on the drain, it turns itself on pretty hard. Not very self-biasing.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
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John Larkin

Curses, foiled again. ;)

Thanks

Phil Hobbs

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Phil Hobbs

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