Funny Call of the Day

That response was for the clueless who don't know you were teasing ;-) ...Jim Thompson

How about the other 1%? After all, 'they' are "The 99%"! ;-)

Any design, not just circuit design.

=A0 =A0 =A0...Jim Thompson

Yuck. I tried to use them when they were shiny and new, and got the impression that they could have used a decent application note. The MC4044 and MC4024 combination actually did get a decent application note, but they still weren't easy to use (and the 4046 blew them away for all sorts of reasons, much as the AD534 and the AD734 blew away the MC1495 - helped by the fact that Analog Devices did produce decent application notes, though Barry Gilbert being better at his job than Jim Thompson may also have had something to do with it.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmnegen

I'm quite fond of the 1496. It's pretty easy to make nice strong low frequency mixers with gain, though the fact that the output is differential and far from ground is inconvenient.

The 1496 is also a good deal quieter than any of the fancy multipliers.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

We used them in our video combiners for deep space telemetry diversity receiving systems. The video output would track within .01 dB, under control of the linear AGC output of each receiver. They had a

It seems like Sloman can't use any IC without insurmountable problems.

If you always have your head up your ass you have to expect to see only dung beetles ;-) ...Jim Thompson

Even dung bettles wouldn't go near that ass.

We used to use the MC1496 in the late 70s for a quadrature detector in an FM tuner at Specrto Acoustics.

Worked great !

Thanks !

boB

till

;-)

me!

=A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0...Jim Thompson

It seems - once again - as of Mike Terrell can't read. Back in 1974 I used the MC4024/MC4044 in a circuit that did exactly what I wanted it to, and I've used the MC4046 to do similar sorts of jobs since then. I never did use the MC1495 or MC1496 - by the time I needed something to solve that kind of problem, Analog Devices offered better solutions, which I did use - with success.

The only insurmountable problem around here is Michael A Terrell's problem with reeading comprehension - he can't absorb any information that doesn't suit his point of view.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

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to me!

=A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0...Jim Thompson

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They don't go near any arse - their habit is piles of ageing s*it, as Michael Terrell should have been able to work out from local observation.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

still

;-)

me!

=A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0...Jim Thompson

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Jim-out-of-touch-with-reality-Thompson expects to find dung bettles in fresh dung?

He's obviously got his head firmly jammed up his own ass - but that's been obvious for years.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

It would have to be fresh enough for the dung beetles to roll it into balls.

ls.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dung_beetle

Some of the smaller species simply attach themselves to the dung-providers = to wait for their reward."

But once they've got their dung they roll it away, lay eggs in it, and bury it. The human fundament isn't dung beetle territory - although Jim Thompson, may present an exception - unless you want to argue that his branch of the human race is busy devolving back to something closer to the ancestral ape, which isn't easy to reconcile with the propostion that they still retain language, of a sort.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

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=A0 =A0 =A0 ...Jim Thompson

It was designed as a mixer, and should properly be compared with Barry Gilbert's - numerous - mixers, rather than with his multipliers. If you leave out the extra transistors that linearise fancy multipliers you also eliminate noise sources.

It's still a very primitive circuit, dating from the Stone Age of integrated circuit design, and while Jim Thompson may be a competent integrated circuit designer, he's never been a Bob Widlar or a Barry Gilbert. The only place he scored as a genius was on Mensa's self- deceiving IQ tests, and even Jim had enough sense not to take that seriously.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

I didn't "design" any of those, they were done by young bucks under my tutelage. MC1496 was a licensed version of Barry Gilbert's work, MC1494 and MC1495 were done as Master's Theses by two of my guys... implementing improvements and extras for specific applications... and a couple of gimmicks of mine ;-) ...Jim Thompson

You know, Bill, this name-calling thing you have going is getting kind of tiresome. I think everybody here already knows that you don't like Thompson, and apart from reharsing your apparently irrational dislike of certain old parts that are very cheap and work very well for many applications, there isn't much content here.

Besides, pouring scorn on someone for not being Barrie Gilbert is pretty amusing--like telling a chemist that he's not Linus Pauling, or telling a 25-cent 1496 that it isn't a $25 AD534.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

till

;-)

me!

=A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0...Jim Thompson

Jim Thompson reported me to the FBI as dangerously anti-American, which presumably got him filed as fruit-cake - at one point I had a security clearance that got me into US Army ECOM at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey - and I feel I have a duty to remind people what an outright nitwit he is.

My dislike of the MC1495 goes back a lot longer than my disdain for Jim Thompson - I tried to use it as a multiplier once around 1974, and was impressed by how amazingly unhelpful the design was for the people trying to use it.

Jim Thompson carries on as if he is *the* integrated circuit designer, rather than an a rather mediocre example of the breed. Barry Gilbert is good, but he's no Linus Pauling either - Bob Widlar fills that slot, as you'd be aware if you knew much about integrated circuit history.

You've got it backwards. The AD534 isn't all that much more difficult to make than the MC1496, though the laser-trimming does put up the manufacturing cost. It sells for more because the customers are prepared to pay more money for it.

The MC1496 sells for $0.25 because that's all most people will pay for it. The AD534 is a laser-trimmed legacy part, that is only made to sell into existing designs. The markedly faster AD734 - also laser- trimmed - is half the price. I doubt if it costs Analog Devices all that much to make it, but they probably wouldn't enlarge the market enough by lowering the price to actually collect more money, and it is useful enough that customers are prepared to pay through the nose to get it.

Analog Devices sell untrimmed multipliers - the AD633 comes to mind - which are even cheaper (9.90 euro in small quantities from Farnell in the Netherlands) and that define what the MC1496 could be selling for if the design had been less minimal.

As Jim has pointed out, the basic design for the MC1495 and MC1496 was licensed from Barry Gilbert and what I'm bitching about is the absence of any intellectual added value.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

No, the new version uses the 'No-clean flux capacitor'. ;-)