Funny Call of the Day

haha- that's awesome.

can I ask what IC this was?

And implied rather blatantly, "or that can figure out how they work".

Pitiful.

Ka-ching!

Good news, you can probably expect more such calls from your other ex-employers as American education continues its decline.

Bad news, the callers may not be able to understand your explanations...

Mark L. Fergerson

He mentioned specifically, MC1495 and MC1496. ...Jim Thompson

Tell him to hire you to write a bunch of white papers detailing the circuit theory of each one. Or better yet -- tell him to hire ME to write the white papers, while you get paid to explain the stuff as I go.

:D

Because, of course, you already know this stuff so you'll leave important bits out. But I, being a circuit designer who knows little about IC design, won't be making assumptions.

Boy! Ain't that the truth! I'm presently writing a functional description of a chip design I just completed... with so many intricacies I'm having trouble writing it in a coherent orderly fashion :-( Not a simple loop in the whole thing, snarly loops everywhere, but blessed by the Cadence modeling group :-)

...Jim Thompson

Hmmm, I'm pretty sure Chevy doesn't get calls about the 1970 Chevy Vega anymore! So, your designs seem to have a LOT more staying power!

Jon

Hmmm, yes, that is a worrisome trend! Of course, those must be the "applications engineers" some of who might actually have an engineering degree, but most seem to be marketing guys who know a few buzzwords but really have NO IDEA what they are talking about.

Jon

Yup. Besides the ones still made by ON Semi, there are several others that were licensed over to Lansdale. My first OpAmp, the MC1530/31, is still used in many military applications because of its excellent loop gain and phase (10MHz GBW), its 6V/us slew rate, and it's all NPN ;-) ...Jim Thompson

It's been that way for _many_ years. I got into many brawls with "application" people at Motorola... they wrote the data sheets and were often grotesquely wrong. ...Jim Thompson

The 1976 DeLorean is back in production, though!

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

What did you expect from a company named after a car radio? ;-)

I thought those numbers seemed familiar, but I was thinking = (dyslexically)=20 of the dual regulator:

I have had some experience with analog multipliers, particularly the = AD534.=20 I could not find the MC1495 or 1595 in stock at Newark, but they had = many of=20 the Analog Devices multipliers. Some of them are going for $30 to $50 = each!=20 I think I have 30 pieces of the AD534JD, in gold/ceramic DIP package. = Newark=20 wants $37 each!

-534/dp/31M4088

I used them for watt transducers. We were building watt transducers that =

used an array of diodes and a resistor ladder that performed the = multiply=20 function, but we needed to measure DC watts. That was at least 30 years = ago,=20 with another design in 1990 or so. Now I would use a PIC, since this was = for=20 DC and/or power line frequencies no higher than 400 Hz and mostly 50/60.

It seems the MC1496 (Modem) is still being sold by Newark. They're only=20 about $1.

I still assist in the service of some products I designed for EIL=20 Instruments from 1977 to 1989. That division was sold to our major=20 competitor, then Multi-Amp, and later AVO and Megger. They are in Dallas = and=20 wanted to hire me but only to support the older products that I was = eager to=20 redesign. I said no thanks. And they offered me $5000 for a non-compete=20 agreement. Also no thanks. I've been competing against them since then=20 (1989), on my own and also now through

Paul

There must be a "law" (where "law" is more like an observation, yet close to inviolable) that it take more time/effort to fully document the circuit than it does to design it. :-(

Ed

One possible exception is if you're writing the document as design. That is, you came up with this idea, so you opened a document to write about it. Later you implement it.

But that's kind of cheating, because the implementation is still easier, depending on how much final design gets left out of the functional outline, or if you just get impatient and start building the damn thing halfway through.

Tim

That's for sure. ...Jim Thompson

MC1496 is a raw Gilbert cell, for modulator use.

...Jim Thompson

In 1930 Galvin Manufacturing Corporation introduced the Motorola radio... the company growing from a car radio company into semiconductors and military. ...Jim Thompson

Complete with flux capacitor?

-- "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." (Richard Feynman)

I know their history, I was just teasing you. :)