Question for Win Hill

I read in sci.electronics.design that John Larkin wrote (in ) about 'Question for Win Hill/ Athlon64', on Sun, 2 Jan 2005:

Heresy!!!!!

By all means reduce the transformer, but the filter caps MUST be each

100000000 uF, military grade, gold-plated if you can't get mithril, and at least six in parallel.

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Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only. 
The good news is that nothing is compulsory.
The bad news is that everything is prohibited.
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk

No, the power transformer *MUST* be a toroid.

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kensmith@rahul.net   forging knowledge

Has anybody ever been murdered by an atheist? :)

I read in sci.electronics.design that Terry Given wrote (in ) about 'Question for Win Hill/ Athlon64', on Mon, 3 Jan 2005:

Was it accepted, though?

--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only. 
The good news is that nothing is compulsory.
The bad news is that everything is prohibited.
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk

I must admit many of my analogue design knowledge is rather rusty too.

However the thing that has stuck is an intuitive memory of how components behave and if I don't know something then I will have an idea of what I need to find out and be able to swot up on it promptly.

... know less after university than we knew before?

My colleague interviews people and a typical question is "how would you write a program to count the number of set bits in an integer value?" and many candidates haven't a clue.

Well it does get harder and slower to learn as one ages.

If you can do the job promptly in language X then fair enough.

Though if they can't see how ladder logic works that is a worry!

On the other hand, my mate wrote a load of test scripts and his boss wanted him to re-write them in TCL for no other reason than that it was his favourite language. My mate had to argue very hard indeed to point out what a waste of time it would be.

Hmm, I'm not keen on learning Verilog after learning VHDL. It's annoying that everything seems to polarize into two antagonistic camps: protestants/Catholics, Arabs/Jews, big/little endian, Verilog/VHDL, C/Pascal... :-)

At least engineers and scientists don't murder each other on engineering differences.

Thank God I'm an atheist!

It used to be that a degree certified that you had a particular level of knowledge and ability. Employers knew that this would sift potential employees.

Now that academia is ranked as per the qualifications they award, they have cheated by making the exams easier. Where I got an MSc, most of us worked hard and well to understand the course and pass the exams. What annoyed me was that the really useless people passed too. People who couldn't even speak/read conversational English, or understand rudimentary computing.

Perhaps there should be industry-qualified exams. That way you have to convince professional engineers you are fit to be in their rank, rather than some bureaucrat who will rubber stamp your degree just to make his establishment improve their statistics.

It ticks me off that companies are having to do this ranking and sifting which the university system is paid to do but are not actually doing.

It ticks me off that someone might do a decent lot of work at one university only to find the degree is worth very little because they grant them to people who don't.

It used to be that a 2.2 was a decent degree, and even a 3rd didn't rule you out if you had a plausible excuse. Most universities could be considered 'respectable'.

Nowadays job ads frequently state that you must have 2.1 or higher from a 'respected' university.

We in the UK have a couple of independent exam boards to make ratings uniform and independent of schools. Is it not the same in the US?

You must meet some real pointy-haired applicants...

Got any stories about the dumbest applicants you've interviewed?

[snip]

Just in the State of Arizona we have HUNDREDS of local school boards. LOCAL control of schools is common throughout the USA.

The only things tying the country together are the College Entrance Exams... SAT and ACT.

Not really. Just some that are so nerdy/geeky that they're recluses.

I've been doing this for around 20 years, and can only recall one really dumb one...

A girl showed up in her cheerleader uniform, chewing on bubble gum ;-) She didn't even have a clue as to what MIT was all about... just that someone told her she should apply.

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Or 65535 decimal. You didn't say what "codes" you were using. ;-)

Twenty years ago I taught as an adjunct professor at a "local" (I've move since) four-year college. The course I generally taught was an "introduction" to microprocessors, where we used PeeCees and MASM for lab assignments throughout the semester. I was rather surprised when I found that 80% of my class couldn't convert from binary to decimal by hand and perhaps 5% could write an algorithm so the computer would do it (thinking as a binary machine, rather than "decimal" human).

During one memorable "review session" before an exam, I got sucked into the discussion of the difference between "add" and "or". They both use the same operator symbol, so they must be the same.

I've heard of ladder logic in traffic controls, but have never seen it. I somehow don't think it would help with what I do, any more than Greek. ;-)

I studied to learn the material and so I could play. My GPA showed it.

--
  Keith

ROTFLMAO!

Cheers Terry

Graham Downs, of NZ band The Verlaines, submitted one of his albums for his doctoral thesis in music at Canterbury university. Most unusual.

Cheers Terry

Back when I used to build motor controllers, we hired a PhD to replace the last PhD, doing field-oriented motor control simulations. The first guy used to read the paper a lot, as his simulations were extremely lengthy. The new guy convinced the boss to spend about $100,000 on some fancy D-space hardware, to allow simulink to actually run real IGBTs and motors, as the simulations were way too slow. I was working out my notice (read as: doing bugger all) before heading the the US, and had recently finished a masters paper in motor control, so I looked into the simulation code.

I made myself very unpopular by writing a report clearly detailing why the $100,000 was a total waste of money. Turns out the simulation built a 4x4 matrix of expressions, and inverted it EVERY time step. Inverting the matrix by hand, then calculating the resultant terms each time step reduced the simulation time by an order of magnitude. Taking it further, only 4 of the 16 terms in the inverse matrix changed each time step, the other 12 could be pre-computed. All up the modified simulation ran 40 times faster, at a total cost of 2 hours of my time - 5hr simulations now took about 8 minutes.

Needless to say the PHB spent the $100,000. It then took 2 guys about 6 months before they got the damn thing working. In the immortal words of Forrest Gumps mom: "Stupid is as stupid does"

Cheers Terry

ROTFLMAO! Well said.

Cheers Terry

Its cheaper that way. Shame about the quality (or lack thereof) of graduates though.

Cheers Terry

ROTFLMAO!

For optimum audio quality, the Mithril caps need terminals made from unobtanium, or at least expensivium. Jim's (hopefully patented) rolling pin technique is great for removing oxygen from PCBs, but the rolling pin must likewise be unobtanium.

Cheers Frodo

Ah! "It would look good on your resume." She must have gone to a prep school that specializes in making third-rate people look second-rate. When a first-rate, self-motivated person gets into such a school, it can be a frustrating experience.

If you're a Gilbert and Sullivan fan, you'll recognize what I've been muttering a parody of:

"I am a perfect specimen of prep-school mediocrity, I only finish courses if my grade's no lower than a B, I live a life of things that all will look good on my resumeeee... I am a perfect specimen of prep-school mediocrity!"

I stand corrected. And annoyed.

John

OK, I've gotten my computer running again, wheew! and will try to find the time to evaluate these six interesting 2n7000 spice models.

--
 Thanks,
    - Win

Thanks, Win, I appreciate the help... if there's anyone here with "hands-on" you're "the-man" ;-)

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Bingo!