devices of unecessary complexity

Bbbut, why, maam, don't you want your calculator to shave your face while you do the budget?

Cool. Lots of bowing and scraping, eh?

Prophetic!

Good old R. Crumb. Keep on Truckin'!

But only when we're there troubleshooting them, right? BTDT.

Generally, the last week I own a car, after I've decided to get rid of it, the car runs better thanr years - - -

The motor was sized for low-speed torque.

I had an entire rack of C-band sat equipment start flashing failure alarms. The idiot manager had just walked into the room seconds before it started. I was in the next room when I lost video on the channel I was checking. He was screaming, Get in here! as I came around the corner. I looked at the dozens of alarm lights and said, I don't have time for this crap. I gently rapped the rack with my knuckles, and everything returned to normal. His jaw dropped. Is that how you fix this stuff? I told him, No. I've told you that the equipment doesn't like you, now stay out of the head end.

You never did TV repair, did you? You et six blocks from the service location when the dispatcher calls and tells you it was canceled because it started working.

You've lead a very sheltered life. :)

You can buy 'as marked' but they are only that value at a specific temperature and they aren't cheap. Considering that the first standard was 50%, .01% is a 5000% improvement. I've bought reels of .o1% on Ebay for well under one cent per part.

I like my Tek 2465A scopes. The newer HO spectrum analyzers could print the screen, but the setup was six menus deep and it only worked with a couple HP printers. Engineers would come to the production floor to ask us to set one up for them.

Larry Jaques on Tue, 23 Sep 2014

Naw. You bake the wood, catch the 'gas' which contains various volatile compounds, which then gets used as a fuel gas. "Is simple" - and a chance to use those might welding skills (obMetalworking) And when the wood is done - you have charcoal to fire up the next batch.

-- pyotr filipivich "With Age comes Wisdom. Although more often, Age travels alone."

"Jim Wilkins" on Tue, 23 Sep 2014 09:51:23

-0400 typed in rec.crafts.metalworking the following:

Errg. There is that constant conflict between the testors who are making sure it works as advertised, and those who are trying to get the thing out the door. Have a friend who delayed release of product - twice - because they pressed the space bar in the midst of the back up. "Oops!".

-- pyotr filipivich "With Age comes Wisdom. Although more often, Age travels alone."

Larry Jaques on Tue, 23 Sep 2014

Ummm, no. Sorry, but I don't know enough about TIG welding to be able to laugh at the right places. B-)

Use a solar power to heat the steam. Even better - cause there is no coal involved.

Or you could make your own nuclear power plant. No carbon emissions at all!

-- pyotr filipivich "With Age comes Wisdom. Although more often, Age travels alone."

"Michael A. Terrell" on Tue, 23 Sep 2014

But I find that a lot of machines hate it when you anthropomorphize them.

-- pyotr filipivich "With Age comes Wisdom. Although more often, Age travels alone."

Larry Jaques on Tue, 23 Sep 2014

All depends. Sometimes, the machines need to know that they are in the presences of One Who Knows.

-- pyotr filipivich "With Age comes Wisdom. Although more often, Age travels alone."

"Michael A. Terrell" on Tue, 23 Sep 2014

It is okay to talk to the aircraft. It is okay for them to talk back. But, do not start arguing with them - that is a bad sign.

"true Story" - Capt Schiebe gets on his tanker, and checks the log "repaired bullet damage". Asks what was the meaning of this - the are in Eastern Washington. Well, seems that one of the ramp rats [pulling guard duty] got into an argument with one of the planes and it said something and he shoot. "But it wasn't our aircraft- we were just an innocent bystanders!"

-- pyotr filipivich "With Age comes Wisdom. Although more often, Age travels alone."

I bought Tek until they 'lost the process" around 2000. The HP Infinium was a good substitute, and it had an Internet browser so as a sight gag I could leave it hooked to a prototype circuit but displaying weather radar.

I also wrote a screen saver for it that imitated a PPI air search radar screen with occasional bogies flying by, and one with the Matrix waterfall of random characters.

I can learn to use LeCroy, Phillips or Hitachi but not really to like them.

I couldn't pass up the 1 GSa HP digital storage scope for $300 at auction. The down side was that the company being mostly liquidated was my employer.

-jsw

GM solved its problem by changing from analog op amps and comparators to digital microcontrollers in the ABS module. I heard that the analog ABS design had come from someone who created it in his garage and then dropped dead before he had properly documented it.

The bigger accuracy issue in building high-precision automated test equipment, where I used the 0.01% resistors, was actually capacitance.

While dual-slope A/D converters may automatically compensate for temperature drift, the storage caps in the input Sample-and-Holds don't. They matter because they are very small to track fast and the FET that isolates the cap from the signal to maintain a steady voltage during the conversion also couples unwanted charge into the cap from the voltage swing on its gate. We could couple a trimmed compensating charge switched by the gate control into the sample cap but the tempcos weren't matched since the compensating cap was a small patch on the circuit board.

The larger capacitance error source was dielectric absorption, when a polar capacitor dielectric acts slightly like a chemical battery and takes a short while to fully charge or discharge after the voltage changes. When you have only 5mS to set up and make a measurement it becomes a serious concern. We had to have W.L.Gore make custom Teflon-wrapped reed relays to cut the dielectric absorption in the relay matrix that configures each test down so it didn't degrade accuracy.

-jsw

When I was working QA at a manpack radio mfgr, we got a new HP LCR meter. I was amazed at how much capacitance and/or inductance were added to leads during tests just by getting near them or touching them. I can't imagine designing a multilayer PCB, with all those stray waves invading other spaces. Ditto ATE.

Layered directly on the board, or soldered on?

I'll bet that was fun to figure out, even without the cycle-time constraint.

Teflon sheds electrons? Or is it just a good insulator? (Or are those the same question? ;)