A small rant about the 555 :-)

pimpom · 2009-11-22T21:58:19+00:00

The people who designed the 555 timer should be given medals for coming up with a deceptively simple device that is still seeing so much use after nearly four decades. They also deserve to be tarred and feathered for the pin-out configuration. :-)I don't know about you others, but I shudder every time I want to draw a schematic with the pins of the 555 in their relative positions as well as when I need to design a pcb for it.And with that, I'm going to bed. It's almost 3:30 am here. Good night.

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J.A. Legris 16 years ago

-)

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=A0;-)

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Sloman is a rare bird here - intelligent, educated, authoritative. His only obvious fault is that he wastes too much time in this increasingly irrelevant N.G., irrelevance that appears to correlate with the progression of J.T.'s dementia. Quite sad really.

-- Joe

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dagmargoodboat 16 years ago

Even better: LM324

-- Cheers, James Arthur

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John Fields 16 years ago

Not trying to be unkind, but since the pinout is cast in stone it makes no difference whether your pinout scheme would be better or not. What does make sense is to draw your schematic in a way that makes the operation of the device simple to visualize; inputs on the left and top, outputs on the right and bottom whenever possible, and to let the pinout fall where it may. For example: (View in Courier) In this example of an astable, to keep the part symmetrical and because they\'re not used for anything, I put the RESET\\ and VC pins on the right, along with the output, and the important frequency and pulse-width inputs on the left. VCC and GND are located at the top and bottom, as is the convention for power wiring. Easy to read, yes? VCC>--+----------------------+----------+ | |8 | [12K] +----+----+ | | |_ Vcc | | +--------------7-O|D VC|-5- | | | _| | +---[470K]---+--6-|TH R|O-4--+ | | |__ | | +-[1N4148>]--+-2-O|TR OUT|-3---|--->OUT | | GND | | [C] +----+----+ [0.1µF] | |1 | GND>---------------+---------+----------+ _ _ OUT____| |_____________________| |____ -->| |

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Rich Grise 16 years ago

USENET is open 24 hrs. a day. ;-)

Cheers! Rich

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Jamie 16 years ago

10-4

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who where 16 years ago

Jim, were you involved in the 10116/10216 line receivers?

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Jim Thompson 16 years ago

No, that was after my time at Motorola. I did, however, design a couple of LVDS devices for Fairchild (Portland, Maine, ~2001). ...Jim Thompson

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Bill Sloman 16 years ago

man?

ad

Move to the Netherlands and you certainly would be unemployable.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

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Bill Sloman 16 years ago

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Fittng in the bill in my case would mean being a few years younger. If I suffered from krw's restricted skill set, I'd need to be about 20 years younger. Being a little more flexible, I did manage to get a job here when I was 57, which was widely held to be something of a miracle.

So, if somebody has a time machine ...

Who is whining?

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

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Bill Sloman 16 years ago

-)

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=A0;-)

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Care to quote an example of this behaviour?

Or would you prefer to remain labelled as a "trypical" right-wing liar?

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

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krw 16 years ago

Who in their right mind would move to that hell-hole?

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krw 16 years ago

If you "suffered" my restricted skill set you wouldn't be unemployable. Obviously. I am. You can't.

You. Incessantly.

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krw 16 years ago

Look in a mirror, Slowman.

No liar here, Slowman. You are the prototypical leftist loser.

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Jamie 16 years ago

I find it hard to believe that you had any involvement in PortLand, Me? or Maine in general. After all, you do know what they say? We're all related !

Have a good

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Joel Koltner 16 years ago

But what's keeping you in the Netherlands, Bill?

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John Fields 16 years ago

I\'d say your entire employment history was nothing _but_ a series of miracles. ;) JF

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John Fields 16 years ago

A prime example is that in your inability to use 555\'s where it\'s the device of choice, you brand everyone who can use them to good effect as, somehow, subordinate to you. JF

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Jim Thompson 16 years ago

Funny. Here I am about to turn 70, and I'm still getting chip design jobs. Must be something wrong with my "restricted skill set" ;-) ...Jim Thompson

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Rich Grise 16 years ago

Potheads? ;-)

Cheers! Rich

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Bill Sloman 16 years ago

Family responsibilities.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

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A small rant about the 555 :-)

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