Re: Great Movie Line from an Old Bob Hope Movie

Nice.

Just out of curiosity (I'm not after $$ figures), but how is a chip project like that handled?

Did you design that chip specifically for SC Johnson, under contract?

On what are your payments based? Was it a fixed-amount one-time payment, per-piece license fee? Who owns the rights to the design?

Finally, who handles your licensing/contract agreements?

Thanks for any info --

must be one of those obscure definitions of "contribution" with which I am not familiar.

Hello,

I'm looking to make a model of an Avalanche Photodiode in PSpice. I have the student version 9.1

The way I think of it, I can have a fake digital input into the component to trigger an avalanche as if a photon hit it, and just have the resistance be zero after that rising edge until the voltage across the diode drops to a sufficiently low value.

Does anyone know of a component like this? Could someone give me advice or perhaps direct me to a tutorial?

Thank You,

-Michael

The uA711 was a dual uA710 comparator.

--Mike

I like that more than the air freshener, I'm afraid.

I read in sci.electronics.design that Jim Thompson wrote (in ) about 'One of My High Technology Contributions to Microchip Design', on Fri, 16 Jul 2004:

Have you got versions for elderly electronic engineers that emit 'sawing Ebonite', 'hot Paxolin' and 'selenium dioxide'? (;-)

I'm impressed. OK, how much does it cost? I'd like to see a scaled-back version, with 0.1ns resolution, and 8 channels, etc. Smaller perhaps and cheaper. Scalable to 16, 24, 32 channels.

Thanks, - Win

(email: use hill_at_rowland-dot-org for now)

Not so easy there. There's a 60 day refill life, but there's a 6 month battery-life spec ;-)

It's a custom ASIC, not publicly available; and the piezo-mechanical pump was developed by Fitch, an SC Johnson subsidiary.

...Jim Thompson

But not due to lack of ruggedness. Every Radio Snack carries (or carried) these, and they just gathered dust on the shelf, indicating to me that there were not many of them going bad. Must've been built like the proverbial brick sh#thouse. ;-)

Each one being connected to an automobile, so you can get a good idea of the quantity by looking at the number of vehicles sold.

Unfortunately huge volume would mean very low cost, and not a lotta $$$.

Who makes them? Or who makes the circuit board? Or who makes.... :-?

That's pretty cute. My wife wants to know if you could add a sensor to it that would increase the squirt frequency when I need a shower.

I thought that's why god made EEPROMs - so you could make major changes with a chip change. You can just charge the customer a couple thou to fly a tech out and 'upgrade ' the box, and recal it.

Hi John,

How about "drilling bakelite"? Or "overloaded carbon resistor", "eau de electrolytics" and "parfume de tubes with dust on them"?

Regards, Joerg

Hi Jim,

If you count the "C" siblings that came after your original I probably added another boat load of consumed chips here ;-)

Regards, Joerg

Right -- I forgot. One of my raining on the OT parades.

Oh well.

I've got to ask, how in the world did you remember that JT killfiled me?

Can you give any more info about the pump, sounds like it might be handy for micropumping applications, at a fraction of the price of a proper one.

Can the timer be defeated so it runs whenever it gets power?

Just shows that though it's a simple circuit, that even I could design in a couple of hours, and probably use no more than 7 components that there'll be a place for custom silicon for a while yet.

That's basically what I'd ask, but if you recall, Jim kill filed you. Maybe you've been pardoned by now.

Doesn't it bug you, the avenues open to making a living these days?

When you think of all the things that really need doing; and then even serious work gets diverted. For example ...

A biomedical laser (portable in-office cataract surgery) ends up being used as a high tech paint-ball on a tank.

A blood analyser ends up being used mainly for sports drugs or other 'personnel' employee security clearance work.

It doesn't matter how high tech it is, if the chimpanzee you give it to only uses it to make noises by banging it against rocks or the bars to it's cage.

RL