Dropping a few tenths of a volt problem

OK, thanks, that's all I need to know, I believe. I'm going to apply the probe to the earpiece socket rather than the tube itself, though. That is where I'm taking the pulses from for the stretcher after all, so those are the levels I'm interested in. Plus I avoid HT like the plague if humanly possible, having been electrocuted far too many times for comfort in the past!

Neat trick. To "electrocute" is to kill with electricity and that can usually only happen once. Tell us how you were repeatedly raised from the clinically dead ...

I'm prepared to believe that you have had numerous sub-lethal electric shocks, and don't fancy another.

The problem is that I simply don't know whether any of the many shocks I've had in the past have killed me. If they had been lethal, then I simply wouldn't know. I'd have survived because at that point I force the multiverse to 'make up its mind' as to which universe I survive in and I carry on living none the wiser as to my fate in the other - where I leave a load of grieving relatives behind. Have you not read about Princeton's Max Tegmark and his quantum suicide thought experiment? He explains it far more elegantly than I can.

Can't say I have. Neal Stephenson's "Anathem"

plays with the idea entertainingly. I read "Physics Today" so I'm familiar with the concept.

Happily, this universe is one where you never got electrocuted, so here you are guilty of using the wrong word.

Cursitor Doom scribbled thus:

Oooo ! That speaks volumes :-)

The very word is a portmanteau of electrical execution, and strictly does not even refer to death by electricity by any means other than state death sentence.

After all this folderol, a simple Silicon diode (0.6V @ 1mA) will drop

Seriously? That was one of the first suggestions someone chipped in with and I kind of dismissed it instinctively assuming there would be insufficient current flow during quiescence to get the necessary drop. I'lll sim it and take a closer look....Just out of curiosity. I find simple solutions annoying. ;-)

Why go simple? What you obviously need is a microprocessor >:-} ...Jim Thompson

Ha! Yeah, someone (who shall remain nameless) actually suggested that and I believe they were not kidding!

Some people get themselves into such ruts.

I just finished a hand-holding job... a microchip design no less... where the standard design procedure was pasting in already existing cells, like OpAmps, comparators, etc. When I showed them transistor-level solutions that took 1/10 the area, they were astonished. ...Jim Thompson

In a video circuit, I once replaced a $15 100MHz OpAmp with a straight wire. Didn't even have to change the PCB. The Purchasing Mgr actually came over to my desk and stared at me musing "...straight wire..." while shaking his head in disbelief. At 2,000 units per month saved a bit on their overhead.

Sounds like over engineered at the CAD software and never re-engineered at the hardware end point.

Jamie

Or under-specified at the requirements stage and never really specified or revisited after.