Zener diode below-threshold reverse current

ack up the thread - and the information was just as much to hand for you as it was for me.

Google groups doesn't give me any kind of privileged access to my own posts . I could have found any of your posts just as easily.

tion that you couldn't, and found it difficult to understand why you hadn't been able to do it for yourself.

I was more interested in posting a comic exaggeration. The original Luddite s broke up machinery and burnt it, whereas the people who don't like Google Groups merely shun the service. It may be an insult, but it's too divorced from historical reality to have any force.

The utility of waiting a couple of hours for information that you could hav e found for yourself in less than a minute has to be questionable. It looks more like procrastination than simple idleness.

ng that any human being with a working brain should have found easy.

You didn't do the work yourself, and waited hours for the answer. That may have been "wouldn't" because you were procrastinating, but I was being char itable.

ote:

r back up the thread - and the information was just as much to hand for you as it was for me.

sts. I could have found any of your posts just as easily.

In what context? What I posted was clearly identified as copied out of the post I'd made on the 31st August 2016.

rmation that you couldn't, and found it difficult to understand why you had n't been able to do it for yourself.

It was about as supportive as this context gets.

If life has beaten me up, it has done it with velvet-covered clubs. I may n ot be exactly where I want to be, but where I am is very comfortable. A pai d job would be nice, but I've adapted to not having had one since 2003, and found other ways to fill my time. This isn't one of the more constructive ones, but it keeps me amused.

That was the joke.

ve any force.

Not exactly. Insults only have force if they worry the person insulted. Pol iteness reflects local conventions, and an intrinsically inoffensive commen t delivered in a distainful manner may count as an insult in some cultures, There's not a lot of culture around here, and most of the people who post here have learned not to expect flowery language or elaborate beating aroun d the bush.

have found for yourself in less than a minute has to be questionable.

but

Wasting my time, as well as your own, and presenting yourself as a dumb new bie in the process. I've taken care to paint you as incompetent for needing the help - I've had quite enough junior engineers trying to get me to do t heir jobs for them not to know the ploy, and I've had just as much practice in making them unlikely to try it a second time.

thing that any human being with a working brain should have found easy.

ay have been "wouldn't" because you were procrastinating, but I was being c haritable.

Finding the url that you couldn't, or wouldn't, and hadn't.

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far back up the thread - and the information was just as much to hand for you as it was for me.

posts. I could have found any of your posts just as easily.

he post I'd made on the 31st August 2016.

Having it "fresh in my mind" didn't make a blind bit of difference to track ing up the thread to where it had to be. You could have done exactly the sa me job just as quickly.

nformation that you couldn't, and found it difficult to understand why you hadn't been able to do it for yourself.

It wasn't a positive endorsement, but the element of comic exaggeration min imises any pain it might have inflicted.

I wouldn't know. I can't detect any persistent sore spots.

ble.

Win has written a popular test-book - which wouldn't have happened if he ha dn't teamed up with Paul Horowitz. Jim Thompson has been producing more or less adequate integrated circuit designs for long enough that lawyers think that they can get away with trusting his opinions - my areas of expertise don't generate as much litigation. John Larkin runs a multi-million dollar business, but Donald Trump runs as multi-billion dollar business. Narcissis m pays - or sounds as if it does if you listen the narcissist reporting on their own success.

I'm comfortable.

I do spend some if it job-hunting, and a bit more as a committee member for the NSW branch of the IEEE. I'm certainly specifically unpleasant from tim e to time, but I have also said nice things about people - even you (though not often).

There is a book half-written on my hard disk. I took away my weekly reports for 1988-1991 project and have been through them with a view to turning th em into a book. The first 18 months of the project were full of office poli tics, lies and mistakes, and that's easy to write up. The next eighteen mon ths was tedious bug-hunting and bug fixing, which finally gave us pretty mu ch the machine I'd promised back in 1988, but by then the market for it had shrunk to the point that it wouldn't have paid to put it into production. We might have got the machine I'd have preferred to have had built complete d a little faster - particularly if the early development hadn't been wreck ed by skipping design reviews - not my choice, not that I could get my head far enough above water to complain while it was going on.

Writing up the whole process and making it interesting does seem to be beyo nd me. I was hoping that by leaving it sit for a year or so I might get a b etter perspective on the project as a whole, but my current feeling that I' d be better off writing up the first eighteen months as "One way to wreck a project".

ce.

Explaining jokes is a waste of time.

have any force.

That's what I said. The insult is all in the reactions of the insulted.

cultures,

What counts as "distainful" depends on the culture of the person who feels distained.

That would be a non sequitur.

t's

ld have found for yourself in less than a minute has to be questionable.

ck,

newbie in the process. I've taken care to paint you as incompetent for need ing the help - I've had quite enough junior engineers trying to get me to d o their jobs for them not to know the ploy, and I've had just as much pract ice in making them unlikely to try it a second time.

You help the dumb newbie, rather than leaving them stuck, but you do try to motivate them to do better in future. It does happen to be one of the sci. electronic.design local conventions. I got told off for not conforming to i t back in 1997, and I do see it as sensible.

omething that any human being with a working brain should have found easy.

t may have been "wouldn't" because you were procrastinating, but I was bein g charitable.

Because you could have done it in about a minute, and you had to wait hours before I did it for you. Clearly, you didn't actually want the information , and wanted to have an excuse for sitting on your hands.

It's not as if you have done anything with the information you asked for - or if you have it didn't give you the answer you wanted.

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minimises any pain it might have inflicted.

I think you miss the point. Because the insult was exaggerated to a comical degree it was primarily comedy rather than insult.

hadn't teamed up with Paul Horowitz. Jim Thompson has been producing more or less adequate integrated circuit designs for long enough that lawyers th ink that they can get away with trusting his opinions - my areas of experti se don't generate as much litigation. John Larkin runs a multi-million doll ar business, but Donald Trump runs as multi-billion dollar business. Narcis sism pays - or sounds as if it does if you listen the narcissist reporting on their own success.

I don't think that pointing out that Win Hill's textbook wouldn't exist - o r be as good as it is - without Paul Horowitz, actually denigrates Win Hill .

It does emphasise that there's a lot of fortunate juxtaposition in every su ccessful career

I don't recall exalting any of the failures I was involved in, and while if I'd had more influence on the way the work was done they might not have be en failed the way they did, most high-tech projects do fail.

for the NSW branch of the IEEE. I'm certainly specifically unpleasant from time to time, but I have also said nice things about people - even you (tho ugh not often).

rts for 1988-1991 project and have been through them with a view to turning them into a book. The first 18 months of the project were full of office p olitics, lies and mistakes, and that's easy to write up. The next eighteen months was tedious bug-hunting and bug fixing, which finally gave us pretty much the machine I'd promised back in 1988, but by then the market for it had shrunk to the point that it wouldn't have paid to put it into productio n. We might have got the machine I'd have preferred to have had built compl eted a little faster - particularly if the early development hadn't been wr ecked by skipping design reviews - not my choice, not that I could get my h ead far enough above water to complain while it was going on.

eyond me. I was hoping that by leaving it sit for a year or so I might get a better perspective on the project as a whole, but my current feeling that I'd be better off writing up the first eighteen months as "One way to wrec k a project".

I'd see it more as exhibiting ironic detachment. It's taken twenty-odd year s for detachment to be accessible.

Particularly then. I'm of the opinion that there is a joke in there, but no t every observer is equipped to perceive every possible joke.

to have any force.

al

of

d.

The perceived insult has been produced by the person whom the insultee imag ines to have insulted them, but it wasn't an insult until the insultee took it that way. Some insults are more intentional than others, and others are incidental products of some completely different intention.

You are insulted to the extent that you wish to feel insulted. Misconstruin g intentional insults is an excellent way of undermining people who make th em, and failing to see potential insults as insults is a useful diplomatic skill.

ve

me cultures,

ls distained.

There are cultures where it isn't distainful, and we aren't talking about a nything that even that unambiguous.

The complete Oxford lists both disdain and distain without referring to one as a variant of the other. "Disdain" gets more column inches. My internal lexicon may have been biassed by reading the wrong books.

post

If you say so. Some of my posts don't get any follow-ups, others do.

, it's

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could have found for yourself in less than a minute has to be questionable.

s, by

mb newbie in the process. I've taken care to paint you as incompetent for n eeding the help - I've had quite enough junior engineers trying to get me t o do their jobs for them not to know the ploy, and I've had just as much pr actice in making them unlikely to try it a second time.

to motivate them to do better in future. It does happen to be one of the s ci.electronic.design local conventions. I got told off for not conforming t o it back in 1997, and I do see it as sensible.

The convention.

You presented yourself as dumb, I pointed out that you were being dumb.

Your "trap" has made you look stupid.

Cultivate some other harmless misapprehension?

urs before I did it for you.

In other words you were going into pointless posturing.

You aren't going to build the circuit, so your spent time making an inconse quential decision.

Not using it at all means that you were frivolously wasting my time. If you ask for help, there is an implication that you actually need the help.

Since my consistent take on the OP's original request was that he hadn't th ought enough about what he was asking for, the crispy edges that you imagin e to be implied by his request for a square wave are just one more aspect o f a poorly thought-out question.

Real square waves always have finite 10% to 90% transition times. If you ne ed the transition to occur within some finite time, you have to specify tha t time. The OP didn't. Specifying a 100kHz frequency implicitly sets the lo wer limit at lower than 5usec, and "square wave" may shave a microsecond or two off that, but 10uA and 5V left precious little room for anything faste r.

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on minimises any pain it might have inflicted.

cal degree it was primarily comedy rather than insult.

The insult was incidental to comedy. Find a non-insulting way of saying tha t you didn't know enough to track back up the thread to find an earlier pos t.

Not so much an insult as a reprimand, though this forum isn't one that real ly accommodates reprimands. You were performing at less than your potential , so the local convention was to jeer at you, rather than recommend remedia l training in googling.

I'd prefer not to. I could see why people thought him funny, but I didn't s hare their enthusiasm.

ing

is

he hadn't teamed up with Paul Horowitz. Jim Thompson has been producing mo re or less adequate integrated circuit designs for long enough that lawyers think that they can get away with trusting his opinions - my areas of expe rtise don't generate as much litigation. John Larkin runs a multi-million d ollar business, but Donald Trump runs as multi-billion dollar business. Nar cissism pays - or sounds as if it does if you listen the narcissist reporti ng on their own success.

- or be as good as it is - without Paul Horowitz, actually denigrates Win H ill.

It's been spelled out often enough. Horowitz was teaching electronics to ph ysicists in a course at Harvard, and needed a text-book. He got together wi th Winfield Hill to put something together. The product is aimed at very br ight students, which does limit its market as a student text, but it's prov ed very handy for bright students who graduated and needed something better than the text-books they'd been taught from.

I do tend to support my opinions with references to better known authoritie s. Jim Thompson never does, and John Larkin irritates me by offering links to blatant denialist propaganda web sites. You don't seem to know enough to realise quite how much ammunition I can and do muster, let alone its calib re.

The weak point of you POS simulation was that it specified a 500mH inductor with zero parallel capacitance, and the biggest off-the-shelf inductor I c ould find was 120mH with self-resonant frequency appreciably below 100kHz.

The next part down the series, at 56mH, could be made to work. That's a lot less inductance.

There's also a question about how many LTC1441 micro-power comparators woul d actually be fast enough to run at 100kHz.

At least my BFR92-based astable would have worked, and didn't depend on a n on-existent and probably impracticable component.