breadboarding fast, tiny stuff

More likely, the spring broke from over-winding after all that up and down wrist action.

Tar is not a compressed format--zip dates from the days of 360k floppies, remember!

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

Well, that brings up another point: Archiving and data compression are two independent functions. The whole philosophy of UNIX-like systems used to be to have programs that did one thing well, and that you could pipe together in various ways. This is amazingly powerful, once you get the hang of it.

This is totally lost on today's developers, who all seem to make programs that do-it-all-and-then-some. That leads to many different implementations of the same sort of functionality, all incompatible to some extent and all with different idiosyncratic bugs.

Jeroen Belleman

Great info! Any suggestions on how to drive such fast devices? (i.e. how can you speed up slow edges?) Is there any comparator out there? Perhaps a LVDS receiver?

Pere

What's interesting is that pipes never really caught on in a GUI'd environment.

The problem with "piping things together on the command line" is that there's more to remember: "someunpacktool -jsdlf furball.pack | tar -xvfg" is just not as easy for the "casual" user as, "Double click on the .Zip file and follow the instructions in the dialog that appears."

This is certainly true, but honestly the "hard core" UNIX approach goes too far to the other extreme. There is some happy medium between "pipe everything together on the command line with infinite options and super powers" and "double-click but, no, there are no options for configuring anything, if you don't like what happens, get another tool."

---Joel

Nah. That just broke the watch band.

--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I\'ve got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

Expensive short circuits.

John

It has been called creeping featuritis. Its roots began in the early

1960's with FORTRAN II and PL1.

Not entirely true. There has been many implementations of GUI over CLI implantations that were very effective and provided piping capabilities. In other cases it was a single tool where piping was not really logical, see qtparted for an example.

I'm sure Terry Given or anyone else in the business could tell stories about induction heaters and rings, or something like that. ;-)

Tim

-- Deep Fryer: A very philosophical monk. Website @

And that's one reason I like L-View Pro 1.D2/32 for image editing. It's from 1996, so hell, it's *dinky*. There isn't much I can't do with it, so it's quite convienient. Nothing with pipes, but it does illustrate the "using a single tool" concept. I guess...

Probably the only piping I ever do is "| more".

Tim

-- Deep Fryer: A very philosophical monk. Website @

there's

just not

follow

too

everything

you

Nah, it's way older than that. Bigger and bigger fins on cars...automatic carriage return on typewriters...pilot lights on gas stoves...all the way back to buttons so you don't have to tie your loincloth on.

Cheers,

Phil "In my day we used every durn _part_ of the brontosaurus" Hobbs

Tim Williams a écrit :

Yup, or about 10kW 5V PSUs... ouch!

--
Thanks,
Fred.

Hi-Q resonators?

Cheers, James Arthur

Hi Joseph,

Ah, good to know. I should have written that as, "What's intersesting is that pipes never really caught on in any GUI I've used..."

Do you have a link to some examples? I'm curious to see what it "looks" like...

That depends on where you bought your ring now, doesn't it? :-)

message

works

shelf so

pad

This is the second time I've seen this issue come up in SED. Since I'm the one who gave that CPU to John, and would be loathe to deprive the world of him a picosecond before his time, I'll add my $0.02.

BeO is a marvellous thermal material, an insulator with the thermal conductivity of aluminum (300w/(m*K)).

Berylliosis is a dreadful but rare condition occurring if and only if

1) Be is inhaled, 2) in small enough particles, 3) by a person who's sensitive or allergic to Be (estimated as 1-10% of the general population).

The CPU in question is actually a TI486SXL2-G66-GA. It has a deep bluish-purple tone, and is indeed a fabulous x-acto hone.

I don't know for a fact whether it contains beryllium, but I rather think not. Here's why, and even if so, why AFAICT any danger would be minimal:

I. Be CONTENT DOESN'T APPEAR LIKELY

1) BeO is white, and expensive. This CPU is purple, and cheap (a budget '486 clone, sold on price).

2) The dangers of BeO have been known since the '40s, and I recall reading warnings in Motorola literature pointing out which of their products contained beryllium *within* the product, so that they might be properly handled come disposal time. (Basically, no special precautions except *don't grind it up.")

As Motorola was aware enough to warn people of Be *within* their semiconductor assemblies by datasheet warnings in the '60s, I'd think TI remiss not to warn people of products with cases made of the stuff in the '90s. Especially since these things are ground up and reprocessed by recyclers for their gold; it'd be a BIG DEAL--important to publicize this--if the parts contained BeO.

3) Googling then and now, I find no matches suggesting TI has used the stuff, much less in their bargain 'x86 CPUs, much less as a casing.

4) BeO is usually used as the heat-spreader, a thin thermal interface sheet within a product. That is, the die mount. (Exception: certain older, white, ceramic RF power transistors, whose entire cases were BeO, IIRC).

II. LOW RISK OF EXPOSURE

5) When used as a hone, I doubt much dust could be made. a) The reason it's used as a hone, after all, is that it's so much harder than the knife blade, and b) mine's been used for years & shows no evidence of wear whatsoever--no glazing, no grooves / gouges / polish. None.

6) Most (but admittedly not all) times I hone with oil, which would capture any dust.

7) Even all the 1-6 above failing, the exposure levels would be very low. The rate of berylliosis and Chronic Beryllium Disease (CBD) wasn't that high even in machinists who were grinding the ceramics and machining beryllium alloys back in the day, steeped in the stuff. Small consolation if you're one of the genetically unlucky hyper- sensitive individuals, true, but most people aren't affected.

III. LOW RISK OF HARM FROM EXPOSURE

8) As stated already, only 1-10% of the population is susceptible, so multiply any above risk by that factor.

So, I'd feel a tiny bit better knowing for sure, but I don't think the risk is significant for this use of this CPU. I view it like lead solder: don't eat the stuff, don't breathe the fumes, and you're fine.

Here, don't run a diamond wheel dry on this guy whilst huffing the dust. Informed opinions to the contrary welcomed. Meanwhile, I'm still using mine.

Cheers, James Arthur

P.S. Oh, and BeO is not subject to RoHS, for whatever that's worth, so you know it's safe. (NOT !)

Clarification: 1-10% of the population are estimated "susceptible", i.e. beryllium-sensitive, but the risk of problems is lower still-- only a fraction of these, when exposed (to an adequate dose of sufficiently fine particulate), develop CBD.

Cheers, James Arthur

And how sweaty your hands are when you put it on, too!

Cheers, James Arthu