Why is electronics so complicated?

Or designing them in.

I don't know if I believe Larkin's numbers. He's got the right idea, IMO, but no one is perfect.

What else did he break? ;-)

I meant that you can say that because you're the boss. I'd never admit as much. ;-)

On a sunny day (Wed, 29 Dec 2010 16:10:36 -0600) it happened " snipped-for-privacy@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz" wrote in :

Sorry, wrong syntax, try this: we == YOU && I;

Hope this helps :-)

p

And

, h . f

Yep, and tempco. Chips or boards, there is a lot of work involved in delivering a robust, manufacturable product. Especially in chips, there is little emphasis in manufacturability on the university level. Get one chip to work, write the paper, and you are done. Engineers that need to deal with returned product have a different attitude regarding design.

No, AlwaysWrong Jr., it's not.

You? No, you're helpless.

-- snip --

While we're on this subject, why don't women (and men, for that matter) come with instruction manuals?

Why don't my elected officials pay their own way, so I don't have to pay taxes?

For that matter, why doesn't God just rain manna down from heaven, so none of us has to do anything?

Why do I have to learn to read?

Why, if China attacks the US, will my sons get drafted?

Why isn't electricity free?

Why do my joints ache in the winter (and summer).

Etc.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Do you need to implement control loops in software?
"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" was written for you.
See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html

[snip]

'Cause you're old ;-)

I presently have a sudden-onset case of arthritis in my right big toe joint :-(

I could barely walk until the therapist used some kind of TENS-like electrical device to infuse a steroid into the joint.

Looks like I'll survive it! ...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

| 1962 | I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

OK, Keith, here's one for you...

If you provide a synthesizer with a solid reference clock, but no RF clock input -- because when you first power on your board, the VCO's frequency adjustment input is near 0V and your particular VCO doesn't output a darned thing until this input is closer to 500mV --, what would you expect the synthesizer to do?

A) Start charge pumping like mad so as to raise the VCO adjustment pin's voltage, which will get the VCO going and eventually lock B) Sit there, dead as a doorknob, doing nothing at all.

I can tell you than a National Semi LMX2485E does (B), which I find rather, umm... surprising!

The data sheet does say the minimum RF input frequency is 50MHz (although it's known that the part will work at lower frequencies than that if you keep the slew rate of the signal up).

So whaddaya say: Bug in my circuit/brain, or not-a-bug-but-really-pretty-wacky on Nat Semi's part?

:-)

---Joel

He will, just as soon as we discover the correct way of praying for it.

See above.

Sylvia.

It's obviously got AC-coupling.

No toggling provides no edge for the PFD.

Remember another recent thread here regarding missing edges ?:-)

What's the voltage tuning range of your VCO?

Seems dangerous to me to be using a VCO that quits at some control voltage ???

What happens during an undershoot? ...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.

Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.

Jamie

Hi Jim,

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

I can believe that. My boss suggested that some of the fancy anti-backlash and spur suppression logic they use could also all be tied to an RF input edge so, no edges, no workee.

There are plenty of reference clock edges though! -- If you look at the generic state diagrams of how a PFD is supposed to operate, there's the "source current" state and "rising edge of reference" clock just keeps re-enterting it forever...

Why yes, yes I do, now that you mention it. :-)

Nominally 0.5-4.5V, it says.

Although I can't do so right now, this does make me rather more tempted to get rid of that VCO as well, instead purchasing or designing one that just sits down at some low frequency with 0V on Vtune rather than ceasing oscillation.

The data sheet doesn't mention that it behaves that way... but invoking Keith's Law again, since a 0V Vtune is outside of the 0.5-4.5V tuning range the data sheet claims, it's debatable whether such a VCO design is outright buggy or just, um, "documented in a less-than-ideal manner."

In my case, happily there's an op-amp inbetween the synthesizer's charge pump output/loop filter and Vtune, so I've hacked it to provide an offset voltage of ~0.5V, hence insuring the VCO will always be oscillating.

---Joel

Bullshit. Light blue was chosen, and then adopted by nearly all the makers because it renders the stripes the most readable. It also shows heat damage by discoloration better.

There are NO other reasons.

Blue is NOT "for metal film"

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book which said just that.

He says the sooner you get started, the better your chances of getting to the top tier. The "hacker" ethos, broadly applied.

Chips were NEVER "silk screen printed". Not ever... not once.

Any ink you ever saw on a chip was stamped there by a rubber impression device either rolling wheel or flat stamp.

It was not so much about cost as it was about permanence.

Initially, they began using unique injection mold dies which declared which shift or production line the chip was made on.

Currently, they can encode far more data onto a chip surface, and know that it will always be there, unless the chip itself is abraded.

Is there anything that you post here that does not make you look like an adolescent dork?

Yes, I spent a fair bit more than that, in fact. And yes, someone came out to investigate us in detail and her testimony was provided to the court, at the time. The investigator said I was fit and that my wife was not. a very painful and hurtful time for her that still causes her pain when reminded about it. The investigator simply was a dead pan, unimaginative stiff who was facing a stand-up comedian (my wife) and they didn't get along. Nothing more or less. But the court took her report and ordered me to be the solo guardian.

My daughter is now 25 and I went through guardianship work 8 years ago. I now have to maintain it, each year, by also filing long papers with a county judge updating them about all the significant things during the year and asking that I be retained for the next year. It will go like that each year until I either give up, or die, or have her taken from me.

And by the way, it is only the beginning of lessons ahead.

There are services available for children under 18. Sometimes for children under 21. But the entire world changes for adults 21 years old and over -- almost everything disappears and the supports becomes almost frighteningly poor. There are strange games one must play, as well. SSI, medicaid, etc.

If you need an attorney, it's almost impossible to find any for adults. By definition, adult disabled are indigent and there is no money available for an attorney to make a life. Unless they work for the state or county offices or the federal gov't. So no one in private practice, when you need one, with any practical experience. You can pay for some attorney to learn all this stuff, of course. But it will cost you a lot more, then. (This all comes from long experience talking with legislators in the senate and house in my state, plus talking with the director of the DRO which is a federally funded watchdog program that is present in each state of the union, plus my making phone calls 8-5, for two weeks solid, calling (literally) the mothers of attorneys when they asked me to do so.

Finding a private practice attorney with 1990 ADA experience, or with the 2008 modification to the 1990 ADA, is like finding hens' teeth. They don't exist.

Most states would prefer that they simply disappeared from the world never to be seen or heard from again. And in fact, that's about what happens. Two statewide long term study reports, one released from Minnesota in 2007 and one from here in Oregon in January of 2008, both concluded that -- after abstracting away medically associated causes and leaving only "affectable quality of care" reasons, that the median life span was 25 years less than the US population at large.

You are only at the beginning of the ride, Jim. I wish you the best here. And I mean it with all my heart.

Well, I have to say that had it NOT been for two of them here I would have been forced to give up Athena. But other gov't parties have also been quite a bane, as well. But I don't believe Athena would be in a better situation than she is right now, were I to have to depend entirely upon my ability to handle her situation alone or had to depend upon private grants. The support we get from gov't sources makes the difference between whether or not she is with someone who loves her, or not. And it is being done for less than half of the marketplace price (we went through crisis procedures here where a multi-county regional and state group attempts to find private placement for her and the best price they could find from private business was more than $15k/month to care for her.) So taxpayers are getting a fair deal on all fronts, for now. If we died tomorrow, the costs would more than double the very next day and for poorer health and safety and a much worse quality of life, as well.

It took relationships with politicians here, plus their aides, built over years of time, plus as well the active support of county workers whom I dearly owe for their help and support when it counted. I've been lucky. Many are not.

So I've got very mixed feelings. I've spent a year and a half commuting to our capital city, in meetings with top state staff positions (the head of the Department of Education, the head of the Department of Health Services, the state attorney general, the head of the bureau of labor, etc.) and I know just how terrible and mean and despicable gov'ts can be. I used to think like "pollyanna" about my beloved state. No longer. I know better, now. There is a lot that is bad here, and a terrible lack of courage and imagination in gov't workers that is frightening at times. But there is good, too. Especially down closer to the trenches where most of us live.

Jon

I'd hire them too if I needed cheap labor to man handle some outdated space junk too.

werra would be east german, so it's still commie, but with with upto 1949 german technology.

products,

it's a fact too. leftovers from the soviet union really aren't good at much other than running botnets, financial fraud and digging stuff out of the ground, sometimes followed by crude refining steps.

true. however, communist places tended to have nearly all bad products.

it seems.

I think you might be confusing lead, coal pollution and adulterated food products with engineers.

I've seen it done, in a factory. But there is no paste and screeding, it's blasted through. All it made was a faint hiss, and then another for cleaning the screen.

[...]

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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