Let's Take A Vote...

It's amazing that they remain civil--I mean, War between the States, sorry.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

(Recently saw the Confederate Correct-orrr episode of Rocky & Bullwinkle again. Brilliant.)

I have the complete R&B set on DVDs, but I haven't had time to see them all yet. I just got the full Monte Python set as a gift, further compounding my problems.

I use to rush home from school to catch "Rocky the Flying Squirrel" before they changed the name to R&B.

"How long did you scrooch them for, Gidney?"

"Oh, just 30 seconds. Or was it 30 years...."

John

--- Like this one?:

I am so sick of grey, white, black, silver, and repulsive pearl-colored cars. You can drive for blocks around here and see nothing but asphalt-colored cars. When I saw that true-red Audi for sale, I had to have it.

That Mercedes is a decent shade of red, sort of arterial blood color. I've started to see a few new cars on the street that are actual colors, not just midnight blue or mud red, but *colors*. Maybe things are turning around.

Those Germans sure know how to make cars. 0-60 in 3.7 seconds isn't bad at all. That's 0.75 Gs, if I did the math right.

John

or this one?:

Nobody is going to do anything serious about CO2. And maybe we shouldn't anyhow.

This is serious

and we *can* do something about it.

John

n't

say

nd

Great chronoclastic infundibulum!

I used that same quote last night in a discussion of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, which was embedded in a thread about dealing with Muslim governments the way Jefferson dealt with the Barbary pirates.

Absolutely. These are real-world objective issues, about *things*, likely of interest to many engineers, especially as diversions from the psychotic personality-issue cluckings of bizarre old farts.

Things are more interesting than people, which is why I'm an engineer.

John

Oops, never mind. The silicon won't work below about 20K.

John

OK, introduce some different electronics topic, if you know of one.

John

I've been dissapointed by Optomos SSRs recently - not by failure, but lack of availability of the specs I needed (>/= 200 VDC, 4A), SIP, low cost and their slow speed. Maybe they'll keep evolving. I got around 2mS AIRC with the closest to spec one I tested, and had to squeeze the current spec by 50%. I suppose it was a case of wanting to use a pipe wrench to loosen a bolt, as Joerg alluded to recently. :-)

Ed

Majority carriers don't freeze out, though. You can use CMOS down to 4K at least.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Yeah, it was the PV and the PIN diodes I was figuring might not work cold.

Diodes work at cryo temps, sort of. They are used as temperature sensors, if there are not serious magnetic fields around. Below 20K, the junction drop goes up radically and they get sort of resistive.

I did the cryo temperature measurements for the CEBAF (Jlabs) electron accelerator, using diode sensors at 10 uA. They bought the cheap SI diodes, instead of the LakeShore ones, so calibrations changed every batch. That was annoying.

John

Thanks, but we use the LCA710.

"Arc Free with no snubbing circuits" ... "can be used to replace mechanical relays" implied to me that it could switch inductive loads with no snubbing circuits... But of course they don't precisely say that. And they don't, for very long.

Gosh, that sounds almost as if someone might not be telling the entire truth.

I'm digitizing the voltage and currents around the SSR, 100K samples/second, so I know what's going on. The question was to come up with an algorithm (running on a 100 MHz ARM) that opens things to protect the SSR and some stuff in series, in case the customer decides to hook us up to a 100 volt, zillion amp bus or something. So I had to figure out the destructo-energy of these SSRs and some 1206 resistors. I sort of enjoy blowing things up.

John

Be a paragon and say something interesting about electronics. Or something interesting, period.

John

Besides, nothing like the 'admiral's test' to actually know what's going on :) I'm surprised more people don't go for it. I think that's why we have so much easily damaged equipment about these days.

I'm looking at a little rs232 interface module that blew up -- they connect a 78L05 regulator direct to a 24V traction battery charging connector with nothing more than a series fuse, no spike or negative voltage protection. The type of plug used can allow momentary reverse voltage touch -- not enough to blow the fuse in this case, enough to blow a chip.

Replacement cost $180, imported. So I'll add some protection circuitry to the new one. Doubt I can fix the blown one, no circuit, unless only the regulator is gone. All of it tiny smd...

Grant.

We could sit around and praise the 555.

"A measure of flow idiot."

Got it. ;-P

Cheers! Rich

Hmm. Somebody once told me that "A coulomb is the charge carried by 6.25 x

Thanks! Rich