dc/dc converter 12/200V

But when you get on an airplane in the morning and it's -30F out, and step off into, say, 85, 90F in the afternoon, it _feels_ like 120! :-)

Of course, I can one-up Mike. Flew from MSP/snow to Khorat, Thailand, where it really _is_ 120! But people get used to the heat: about the second day there I was miserable - they gave me some Kaopectate and told me to drink a lot of water - and the next day I was fine, although I've never been able to tolerate cold since. In Thailand, in the dead of winter when it gets down to 65, people freeze to death.

Cheers! Rich

No. My spicy stir-fry chicken demands one of those big Kirins.

Well, I did ask. Are race cars "production"?

John

For lunch, we had Steak Kew and shared a bottle of Chalone Chardonnay ;-)

No. But the ignitions models were built on my production line at Dickson Electronics ~1972.

If you want to really test an automotive product, put them in race cars or taxi cabs ;-)

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Yep.

Nope. It wasn't too many transistors but it WAS an ASIC in a ceramic DIL. Pickup processing (analog), BandGap and temperature tracking and that sort of stuff. Since emitter current was measured, there was also a circuit to calculate (also analog) collector current, as the point of shut-off.

[snip]

Yep.

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Well, is it in production? Is it low cost?

In a modern car, the control would use up about 2% of the capacity of the engine control computer, which is computing the advance anyhow.

John

It's exactly the kind of thing that makes it into production - because Low Unit Cost beats *Anything*.

In this case the controller would consist of between Three to six Transistors and *maybe* a reference (probably globbed up in some Epoxied custom assembly, the better to gouge the spare parts buyers). You would spend more on components just to get a uC to *survive* - and they you haven't even done the code yet!

My first insight was when I got a "Philips application notes" Book from when that was on paper: Hardly an IC in any of it, many, many discretes though - I especially liked the entirely discrete switcher for charging a shaver; to keep EMI down, the design stopped the switcher whenever the input rectifier diodes conducted saving a filter.

So, yes, Clever does Make it! Fat and Bloated designs almost* only thrive in Millitary applications - where cost is no object, there are people to nurse the equipment 24/7, it takes years to get permission to solve known problems, and only a few thousands are ever made.

*)

Weelll, Telecoms core also - big on management, mostly *useless* in it's byzantine complexity which will induce any sane person to leave it well alone, where maybe 60MB of valuable memory and Gigs of Hard Disks are squandered to provide "management" to maybe 6 MB of "Job" - Oh and we need an OS to run Java too because the management software is written in this - and the complexity of the management drives the requirements for ever more complex "mangement solutions" to software realiability.

"The Networks" tried to escape by introducing "All IP Networks" but "they" did not achieve escape velocity and are now being pulled into the ground overburdened with garbage software attempting to transmute an IP network into an ATM network.

[snip]

"engine control computer", the most commonly failing component in GM vehicles in AZ ;-)

BTW, Advance isn't "computed", it's dithered until various sensors report stoichiometric and/or onset-of-ping.

...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | | | E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat | |

| 1962 | I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

More than water pumps? Batteries? I've replaced lots of those, but no ecc's so far.

That sounds sort of like computing to me.

John

I'm talking infant failures... within weeks of taking possession of the new vehicle.

UNNATURAL digital implementation of a natural analog process ;-)

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

If you just remind yourself that all those microprocessors are really, inside, just a bunch of overdriven, CMOS push-pull class-A linear amp stages arranged in feedback loops, you'll feel a lot better about them.

John

Of course I do. As the Absolute Master God of Analog I am often called upon to fix issues with "digital" circuits, primarily at Motorola/ON-Semi and Intel, but recently also at Microchip ;-)

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Ah - But we were talking about a Motorcycle initially ...

PS:

I think them modern cars could do with some Management; there seems to be ressources in need of wasting ;-)

The commercially available CDI units made by companies like MSD do not fire only once per combustion cycle. The spark you get from dumping a cap into the primary of an ignition coil lasts only a fraction as long as conventional inductive spark. This can have adverse effects on driveability. If there is a lean spot in the mixture, you might not get combustion; and modern engines run lean. MSD's product and others fire multiple times per ignition, when the rpm's are low enough to allow it. At higher rpm's, they go to a single spark. I guess for practical reasons OEM ignition systems don't use CDI, at least on cars; on smaller engines, yes. Modern ignitions have gotten away from the old-fashioned degree dwell, where the coil current is limited by primary resistance. You see coils now with just a fraction of an ohm primary resistance and computer-controlled dwell.

The commercially available CDI units made by companies like MSD do not fire only once per combustion cycle. The spark you get from dumping a cap into the primary of an ignition coil lasts only a fraction as long as conventional inductive spark. This can have adverse effects on driveability. If there is a lean spot in the mixture, you might not get combustion; and modern engines run lean. MSD's product and others fire multiple times per ignition, when the rpm's are low enough to allow it. At higher rpm's, they go to a single spark. I guess for practical reasons OEM ignition systems don't use CDI, at least on cars; on smaller engines, yes. Modern ignitions have gotten away from the old-fashioned degree dwell, where the coil current is limited by primary resistance. You see coils now with just a fraction of an ohm primary resistance and computer-controlled dwell.

The version I built at Dickson Electronics had multi-firing at low speeds.

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.