Fast rise time?

I haven't done much better with the 40 GHz Infineon SiGe parts, driving them from < 100 ps edges. I can get a 5-volt, 100 ps edge from a phemt without a huge hassle. Hittite makes a nice 18 GHz distributed amplifier, for about $200 a chip.

We use a lot of distributors.. Pioneer, Hamilton/Hallmark, Future, Arrow, Avnet, Mouser, Digikey, Nu-Horizons, tons of them. Newark and Allied occasionally, but not too much for some reason. We seem to buy direct a lot lately, too.

John

Hello John,

Yes. But usually I try to find a high volume device, something that is used in either satellite tuners or cell phone gear.

Makes me drool, wish I could use that once in a while. The total BOM budget for many of my designs is a fraction of that. OTOH that makes for some interesting challenges and I kind of like those.

Hello Spehro,

Newer versions may not always be the best. When I received the JTAG programmer last year I found that the new stuff locked up on it. Neither IAR nor TI had an answer. So, I went back to a 2004 edition of IAR and had a smooth ride ever since.

I really doubt that the circuit boards were made in Germany. Well, maybe, if fully automated. The MSP430 series was actually conceived in Germany, by the TI group around Lutz Bierl in Freising. That's in Bavaria, or Hefeweizen Country.

Hello Jim,

Mine is not a tunnel dipper but the HD-1250 which uses a FET oscillator. From a friend I later got a McGraw Edison "Megacycle Meter", a tube dip meter. It doesn't have all the coils though.

Then there is the old Eico tube multimeter which I still use sometimes. The main reason is that even the most severe EMI leaves this meter completely unfazed. Same for the accidental HV pulse into the input. One day the aluminum needle decided it had enough. It simply transformed itself into a pile of dust. Now it has a needle cut from a straw, blue for better visibility. After rebalancing the meter acts much faster than before, very handy at times.

Hello Bill,

That corroborates my slope of a little under a nsec with a BFS17A.

There is a serious problem with many EU parts. When you need small qties for a prototype run we often cannot buy them in the US. You spend hours on the phone and come up dry, so I tend to design them in only when I absolutely have to. Many of the big EU semi manufacturers provide excellent R&D but suffer from serious marketing problems. However, they do not seem to see or understand that. Or to say it more arrogantly if they gave me the chance to run the show for a couple years their sales would take off, big time. I'd take the majority of my pay in stock options :-)

The newest version (by 1 increment) IAR works well for me. M*croch*p has had missteps with released IDEs suffering from problems, so I don't upgrade that unless it's necessary and the s/w has been out for a month or so.

So do I. I've heard that Europe and Japan have fairly lax legal requirements for such markings. It looks more like a US-designed or possibly European-designed product, made in China. The schematics are kinda hybrids with resistors shown as Euro style boxes, but with the date in US MM/DD/YYYY format.

Ah, author of "Das große MSP430 Praxisbuch". Interesting.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Hello Spehro,

Yes. Maybe I am going to buy that book when someone comes for a visit or I am over there. The publishing house (Franzis) brings up lots of memories. I used to buy almost all their little project books when I was a kid. Still have them although they won't do anyone any good over here.

That, and a Philips EE20 experimenter's kit is what got me interested in engineering.

Well, at least it's a lead-free short.

Get used to it.

John

Shorts in the same place on another unit. Maybe it's a design feature that just looks bad (like dull lead-free solder joints look bad).

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

That was why I emphasised that the transistors I mentioned were all availalbe from Farnell.

You can buy anything they stock in the U.S. via Newark, in respectably small quantities - one or more for eveything mentioned, except the BSF17A where you have to buy five or more ($4 worth).

Hello Bill,

Been there, tried that, didn't work. Case in point was a BSP297 last year. None in stock, Infineon didn't come through with any samples, my client ended up having to buy a reel just for a few prototypes. Luckily we were at least able to find that reel somewhere.

If you buy a reel it's about 9 cents.

Newark's search engine is a mess, but it looks to me like all the BSF17's are "special order" products with leadtimes in months.

John

I wish that were true. Farnell's site shows a Phycomp 47M 5% 0805 resistor, Farnell #9236473 for =A30.099. The line includes a number of much higher values too--handy for transimpedance amps, picoamps, and such. Newark, alas, has no such thing.

Best, James Arthur

Hello John,

Yes, 216 days. Oh man. That's why I usually start with Digikey. They had them in stock yesterday, today their server flaked out. Mouser has 1681 of them in stock as well. But I always keep a tube of them in the lab anyway.

Newark HasNone.

John

Snarff !

James

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Try contacting them. As far as I know, the deal in the U.S. is the mirror images of the deal in Europe, where we can get anything that Newark stocks in around seven to ten days.

It gets added to their next regular trans-Atlantic shipment ... and you can buy in the same minimum quantities.

When Farnell first took over Newark, Win Hill postively revellled in getting access to Farnell's estensive range of resistors. It's ten years ago now ...

--=20 Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

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Instead of going for Newark I went for Farnell In One Export and clicked on the US. website, giving me the URL above.

There I could find the 9GHz BFR540 ex stock for less than a dollar.

I suspect this is what you would - in fact - be accessing via Newark's "special order" option, and that you'd get your parts faster than the

I also found the Phycomp 47M 5% 0805 resistor

--=20 Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

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Hey, thanks Bill !

James