Re: Today, I had the misfortune

Sell? Only once.

Load you up with advertising crap... all the time. So I just delete the address until when I need it again ;-)

...Jim Thompson

Heh - me too. In my case it was a EE1050 (IIRC) base kit, then a pair of add-on kits (EE1051/2? can't remember). This was around '67-'69. The transistors were silicon, though (BC148 etc, IIRC). One or two of them had a very cool heatsink - the transistors were mounted on square bases with four holes, and the heatsink was a piece of folded aluminium that looked (to my young mind) like some kind of space radar...

I had huge fun with those kits. And, like Joerg, it's the reason I have this career, for better or worse ;).

Just googled: found a bunch of links, including:

Steve

Hello Steve,

Then you must be younger than I am. Mine contained two AC127 and there was one steel heat sink in the kit that could be slipped onto one of them by bending it open a bit. It snugged back on like a spring and looked like it gave the AC127 wings. Like with aircraft you could select "high wing" or "low wing". I preferred low wing.

There was an AF126 with very fragile wires. Had to be treated like a jewel because it cost >$3 at the TV repair places. This was my opening crescendo into the world of RF. You could (almost) get it into the VHF range. But then I discovered that tubes from the UHF tuners of discarded TV sets were the bettter deal, a.k.a. free. Of course, these needed a very different voltage level on the plates...

This was the one I had:

At the top of the picture below you can see what the springboard of my EE20 looked like. Each experiment had a template that went under the springs so you could see where which part was to go:

I wonder if Europe still has those 4.5V batteries. Back in them good old days they were the best deal in terms of Watt-Hours versus Deutschmarks. But they were also notorious for nasty leaks.

Wahay! Finally! ;)

With the EE-1050 etc, the transistors were premounted - the BC148 etc had very short pins...

Yes, I see your transistors. The template idea was carried through to the later kits.

Heh - they were (are?) excellent for lighting up bulbs with no wiring - one could just wedge a bulb between the two prongs...

Steve

In the UK they were known as 'flat' batteries - not because they held little energy but because they were physically flat and suitable for slim torches.

Steve was right about the spring contacts though, many a battery was sacrificed because little care was taken in keeping them separate and after a few minutes of touching they really were flat! I think their part# was 1216 or maybe 1219.

-- Graham W

Hello Graham, Hello Steve,

That's what the "fancy" kits had in my days, made by Kosmos. I never warmed up to that idea because I wanted to work with "real" parts. Shortly thereafter, I believe at the crisp age of about 10, I scraped all my allowance money and bought a solder iron and some solder. In hindsight a rather dangerous thing, no grounded plug and all. The solder was more for plumbing work but what did I know? I guess my parents where unaware of this exercise and how dangerous it could be but in the end it helped me in learing how to solder. Don't blame my parents, I hadn't told them about the solder iron purchase.

The really nasty surprise came when you did that but didn't discover it until weeks or months later. By then many of these had oozed all over the place.

The EE1050 etc used a battery holder containing regular 1.5V batteries (AA types, I think). Six of them, so 9V total.

Steve

I had the opposite experience. I grew up with ungrounded soldering irons, with tips that were isolated from both hot and neutral (they had to be, with no polarizing plug, I guess). Thus I had the expectation that I could solder live AC and DC wiring inside my radios with no problems at all (as long as I was holding the solder by the plastic reel. That ought to place the time pretty well: before grounded plugs, but shortly after solder stopped coming on metal reels.)

THEN I bought my first Weller with a grounded tip and made a circuit between AC hot and the soldering iron tip via about 6" of solder, and wowee-kablamoo, 6 inches of solder turned into a bright blue spark and disappeared into vapor that I probably inhaled when I decided to start breathing again (maybe a minute later). There went that bad habit!

Tim.

Hello Steve,

IIRC the EE20 instructions or a note inside the German version stated another battery that could be used. A lantern battery but those were so outrageously expensive that nobody used them even in lanterns.

That decidedly puts your Philips kit into the "new age" category :-)

Amen!

Yes!

Yes!

I just got off the phone with a very nice guy at NXP. Actually it was very hard to get him /on/ the phone in the first place. All I need are some jellybean parts that are sold only by the 3000pc-reel by European distributors. So I wanted some samples. As I'm working at the University in Hamburg, the first number I tried was the Hamburg sales office. Tried 5 times and never even got a ringtone. Next was Frankfurt. Got someone on the phone, but whenever she tried to get me through to someone we were disconnected (I tried this 3 times, each time got a different switchboard person who failed in the same manner). OK, Munich. Very friendly people told me that the person in charge for people "like me" (academics) was on vacation but back next week.

So I talked to him. He's going to get me samples, no problem. I asked him why the standard distributors aren't carrying these parts in small quantity, and why getting sample was so hard. Boy did I open up a can of worms. Essentially he told me all that you wrote in this post, including naming American mfgrs that are doing it the right way. I asked him how NXP expected to get designed-in when it was so hard to get your hand on their products. He said he didn't know. I asked him to maybe raise the point with someone in charge. He said he'd long stopped doing that. I said that the people making $$$ purchase decisions were at one point little engineers, scientists or hobbyists. He said he knew. Since we had agreed on pretty much everything it seemed we might as well end the conversation, which we did.

I'd love seeing that happen to someone at NXP or INfineon.

The stuff that I want is actually in stock at DigiKey. Nothing exotic. But ordering at DK from a German government office is a big hassle because they don't have a German sales office. The easiest method is going through my private credit card and getting reimbursed after a lot of red-taping. Besides, DK is generally more expensive than European distributors so it doesn't make sense to place a large order which, among some DK-only parts, contains stuff that could have been purchased locally.

Well, I always wanted to try out their BF862 and the PMBFJ620 dual (hoping to replace those expensive TO78 parts). The 620's datasheet is complete crap of course. Just a few "typical values" curves that look like someone had jotted them down in a few seconds using log-log paper and a ruler. And nothing, not even a hint, as to what kind of matching I might expect. But cheap (if you want a 3000 reel).

I can give you the extension of someone in Munich who is good at listening ;-)

--Daniel

Great Rant. But when you have designed a product and think it's all over that's not the end - what about those long lead times; let alone the MOQ? It's a nightmare in electronic manufacturing.

Regards

Hello Daniel,

Good to hear that from someone who actually lives and engineers in Europe. Many Europeans counter that I am just whining about it but they never sat on this side of the pond trying to get an Infineon part (I won't try that again for a while...).

I had one rep tell me flat out that they do not send sample to consultants, period. Huh? Even if I pay? Nope. Well, in newsgroup speak I plonked the part and went to the (American) competitor.

What they don't realize is that some day you'll be in industry, making big $ decisions about which parts will be purchased. Back whan I was in academia I must say that Philips (it was still Valvo back then) was one of the best in terms of support. They gave me all the data books and samples I wanted, and pronto. Once I had a meeting with them, I believe at the Burchardstrasse plant in Hamburg. They put me up in a very nice Hotel (Reichshof?). I found friendly and competent people in a well run plant. The result of all this support was that my design-in rate for Philips parts was around 30%. Then the bottom fell out. Now it's, uhm, close to zero. So I was not surprised at all when they threw in the towel and auctioned off their semi biz.

This is sad. I strongly feel that nothing short of a major personnel change at the executive level can truly help companies like that.

It's not going to. Unless major shareholders wake up and question corporate governance like what currently happens at some US automakers (which have similar problems) nothing is going to change IMHO.

But that would only make sense if this person can move and shake things and, most of all, can initiate high-level personnel changes if needed. I have stopped writing to corporate management about lacking marketing efficiency because they don't listen. For me the solution is to move on to their competitors.

Old rule around here: If it ain't in stock at Digikey plus several reels at Arrow, it ain't going to be designed in unless there is a very compelling reason why it absolutely has to be this part.

Keep them purchasers happy :-)

Yes, I have a similar rule (involving Farnell and, at a pinch, RS [1]). Except when I have to break my rule and buy e.g. H8 processors...

Steve

Needed a totch last year while traveling, and bought one that takes these flat batteries. And batteries to go with it. The cheapest set in the shop. The batteries proudly mentioned 'zinc-saline' as their composition.

As for the attery with the white cat on it: the brand 'witte kat' went to Varta, and not it seems Varta is getting rid of battery production altogether. But the battery I bought was of a different brand.

Thomas

Tim Shoppa wrote: (snip)

(snip)

ROTFLMAO! You reminded me of the surprise that was sprung on me when I brushed the HV inside an oscilloscope. That was in 1969. To this very day I plant my free hand in a pocket ... or, if I'm really-really intimidated, in the back waistband of my trousers.

"wowee-kablamoo" Gotta remember that.

I was leaning over the front of a 14" monitor to reach the mains socket on the lower back panel. When I plugged in the mains, a spark from the front of the screen shot out hit me in the gonads!

When the owner came to pick up his machinery after an upgrade, I complained to him that he should have switched off before bringing it over whereupon he commented that my efforts were rewarded by a curious checksum fault that had magically got fixed.

He would normally leave all the kit switched on and kill the mains to his workstation by flicking a master switch. Flicking this on next time with all kit taking a power surge, the computer threw a fault during the POST showing there was a checksum error !

Without the monitor taking start-up power at the same instant, the computer was able to complete its POST without error.

brushed

All together now: And, of course, being boob-type, Rich survived. ;-D

Cheers! Rich