Why is electronics so complicated?

That's because you're the boss. ;-)

[snip]

Jon, A caution I just encountered. I don't know whether it applies in your state or not: Here in AZ, when my autistic grandson (soon) turns

18, his parents must apply for guardianship and pay about $2K in INVESTIGATION and attorney fees to prove they are fit to continue as guardians :-(

We need to start killing off government workers. ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.

On a sunny day (Wed, 29 Dec 2010 13:40:02 -0600) it happened " snipped-for-privacy@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz" wrote in :

for(he = an_idiot; he < sane; he++) { printf("Huh?\n"); } Hope this helps :-)

On a sunny day (Wed, 29 Dec 2010 13:18:57 -0600) it happened Vladimir Vassilevsky wrote in :

No it is not. There is for example a question of methods and algorithms.

At least we can agree that you're illiterate.

Ah, but did the software specifically tell you not to do that? The OpAmp spec certainly did, in no uncertain terms.

...and I would expect any software to burst into flames anytime after the system boots. ;-)

That's nice. At least he is up-front in admitting that he designs buggy software. ;-) Programmers are like auto mechanics. You pay them to screw it up and then again to fix it, if you're lucky.

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

I don't suppose you'd give back all the social security money I'm figuring your grandson has received to date and will receive in the future in return for waiving that $2k fee? :-)

I have some sympathy for the state here -- you don't want people just to be able to walk up to a court house, claim their now-18-year-old kid is autistic, and you'd like a guardianship, please. Even if it's clear that the kid has always been autistic, it's rather important that the state be absolutely sure the kid can't provide for himself before handing the reigns of guardianship over to *anyone*. Hence I'd like to think that everyone would agree that a certain amount of investigation is necessary, it's just a question of how much and whether the parents of the taxpayers are going to pay for it... :-(

---Joel

Sure, why would anyone want that when Digikey presently lists 142,656 op amps :-)

Eric Marlow

So, how much would it cost to manufacture a "talking" op amp? Pug it into your circuit, enter your preferred specs in a dedicated program, and it spits out a suitable part number and resistor values. How many could you sell?

Eric Marlow

I suppose one could ask before hiring him just what his percentage of time billed was for regular work vs. bug-fixing -- since he's charging it differently, he'd probably be able to figure it out pretty quickly!

No doubt the average programmer spends at least half their time fixing bugs? I bet Larkin wouldn't hire anyone who spent more than 10% of their time doing so...

I thought the idea was to go to a second mechanic and let them have a whack at it -- repeat until out of money or it's fixed? :-)

(I once bought a Dodge Dakota from a friend that had had a rough-running-at-idle engine for *years*, during which time he'd taken it to 2 or 3 different mechanics, none of whom were able to fix it -- although certainly charging him money each time to try. I got lucky and the first mechanic -- who was just a small, indepedent shop kinda out in the country -- was able to fix it for good. Luck was smiling on me that day...)

---Joel

On a sunny day (Wed, 29 Dec 2010 13:56:49 -0600) it happened " snipped-for-privacy@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz" wrote in :

There is such a thing as the 'royal we', for example the queen in the Netherlands sometimes talks like this "We ... have decided". But I think you have just ordinary red blood, so that is a first sign that you need some tutoring on language. Then, after, you can grab the beauty of the C language from the above example, by going through that loop as often as required.

Hope this helps :-)

while(we_are_waiting) {kwr(executes_for_loop);}

What social security money would that be? I don't know if he'll qualify for any benefits once he becomes of-age.

You know not of what you talk. He's been going to a school for the handicapped for 18 years, paid for by school taxes. ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Or maybe because I've been doing it since I was a kid.

No, really, you could have a shoe box with two transistor types, a diode, a 2N7000, and an assortment of 1/4 watt resistors and a half-dozen different caps, and a few LEDs, and do all sorts of electronics. OK, an opamp and an HC schmitt might be nice, too. For the passives, buy some sample kits from Mouser or Digikey.

Test equipment: power supply, DVM, Rigol scope, maybe a function generator. Less junk than you'd need to maintain a car or a house.

There's no need for all the other stuff in the Digikey catalog until you're ready for it.

Sure, it would take years to get good at any big chunk of electronics. But that's like anything else these days: cooking, lawyering, flying, programming, whatever.

John

There's some quote along the lines of, "When trying to solve a problem, the beginner seems many options whereas the experienced man sees few" that kinda applies to all this: Yes, there are a bazillion "jelly bean" op-amps that in many caes compete on little more than being a penny cheaper than the next guy or having a slightly smaller package or different pin-out, but when it comes to "interesting" (more challenging) designs, the parts that can really delivered the requisite performance are sometimes rather few.

There is something to be said for trying to do interesting things with jellybean parts, though -- having an all-in-one part that does exactly what you need can be both more expensive and rather riskier supply-wise than designing to cheaper/more common parts.

As for talking op-amps... DigiKey and the vendors' web sites will generally do the sort of parametric searchs you're probaby after here.

---Joel

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Sorry, my mistake... I meant "Supplemental Security Income" (SSI); the program is only *administered* by the Social Secutiy Administration.

Understood, it's just that guardianship is a Big Deal -- you're handing over control of someone's life to someone else, effectively -- so I'm not surprised the government wants to see some iron-clad proof that this is required, and hopefully you'd agree that's a good thing (you sure wouldn't want, e.g., your own kids being able to obtain a guardianship over you unless it was 100% clear you could no longer care for yourself, right?).

What's really needed is some sort of inexpensive/streamlined process to deal with this. It sounds ilke the kind of thing one of your state senators could work on?

---Joel

...Jim Thompson Total horseshit.

The pay has nothing whatsoever to do with the toughness --> or

I doubt that's the reason.

commies have never demonstrated the ability to make anything that wasn't large bulky and stupid, and that may even include "off the shelf" (as if a place with bread lines has stock of anything to being with) components.

Now count how many different ones there are. I'll bet there aren't more than

47, 552 of them. ;-)

On a sunny day (Wed, 29 Dec 2010 21:21:20 +0000 (UTC)) it happened Cydrome Leader wrote in :

LOL That is why NASA has to hire them to get to the spaced-out station.

I remember little portable Russian TVs, 'Rigonda' in the seventies. Nice and small, all transistor, easy serviceable, in the UK, but the UK forced them to put in a large bulky UK made UHF tuner. I was told that hat was the condition for them to sell in the UK... I had a good 'commie' flip mirror 35 mm camera too, for very little money, 'Werra' IIRC. Put a good lens on it, beautiful. Things did break down over time though, but same with ipod, pad, Philips TVs. It is a pity media always make people in US think the Russians had inferior products, it simply is not true, everybody had some bad products. Why the scare of the missiles, and the missile treaties? And then there is China, now putting out more engineers than the US ever did it seems.