Old-fart electronics quiz

[Paul Burridge]

A system for remembering the color code for resistors. Look at the first
letter of each word, Black, Brown, Red, Orange etc..

A typical example of american culture, a combination of bad taste, violence
and foul language.

Oh dear. A Liberal bigot.
Who gives a damn? The thing *works* as an aide memoire and that's all
that matters. No one *has* to use it; no one who does is likely to
need to recite it over aloud, either, thereby upsetting narrow-minded
wankers like you.

Add some misdirected patriotism, megalomania and paranoia and you have the
typical american participator in usenet newsgroups.

A sweeping generalisation reminiscent of *both* extremes of the
political spectrum...

 

[Fred Bloggs]

Oh dear. A Liberal bigot.
Who gives a damn? The thing *works* as an aide memoire and that's all
that matters. No one *has* to use it; no one who does is likely to
need to recite it over aloud, either, thereby upsetting narrow-minded
wankers like you.

Ahh- well you have not been told the rest of the rhyme which is : Get
Some Now for the tolerance band- Gold Silver No Color...

 

[Fred Bloggs]

Being productive ?

;-)

Al

In one of his latest seminar videos, he states that "there is a lot of
GARBAGE on the net" ( or something along those lines), and he is not
going to get into it.

 

[Jan Panteltje]

Topic of this particular trivia quiz was "general, pre-microprocessor
electronics" when posted verbatim to sci.electronics in 1988 -- the
newsgroup was then several years away from fractioning into its current
seven subgroups. (Answers appeared a month later.) This quiz also
circulated to some undergrad EE students at a respected school and it was
hard to find any who could answer even one question completely, unremarkable
because subject matter is not taught in nor prerequisite to contemporary EE
training but reflects practical practice, some of it well obsolete in 1988.
Obsolete but not unworthwhile and besides, as Jim W'ms would say, cool. (I
feel certain that students of Tom Lee, at least, would do well with this
quiz.) It provoked exchanges among constructive sci.electronics regulars in
1988 -- of those, I espy none today but Bob Myers KC0EW -- Bob, please be
so gracious as to email if you see this, your postings are prominent in my
archives, along with those of D. Tutelman, B. Niland, R. D. Pierce and his
analectic Anecdotes; Scott Dorsey despite remarks on transistors in
<[email protected]>, 1987; several constructive audio contributors
including Francis Vaughan of Adelaide U. who with others kindly archived my
online notes "Oversampling for the curious, the furious, and the damned"
(accessible now by direct Google search or at, for instance,
http://members.chello.nl/~m.heijligers/DAChtml/Digital Theory/hauser.txt),
and finally Norm Strong, whom you'd all best be nice to, and not just
because he knows many different ways to blow things up should the need
arise, of course for entertainment purposes only -- Just Like This Quiz.


1. Assuming that you are acquainted with the "cascode" configuration, do
you know where the term came from?

Nope.

[Note! My 1988 answers had this wrong, reflecting a popular myth of which I
was later disabused, but a myth that also made it into the current revision
of a venerable analog-IC text, despite my efforts by sending the accurate
reference to those revising the text, upon their request to me at the time
for historical information. Enough About That.]

2. What is a reflex amplifier?

One gain stage that amplifies two separated frequency ranges,
typically RF/IF and audio.

3. What is the basic principle of a superhet receiver? Of a regenerative
receiver? Difference between a mixer and a converter (in RF)?

Yawn. Same?

4. Who developed the op amp, and when?

Dunno, but it's basicly in the MIT RadLab books.

[2004 Note: Question 4 preceded George Rostky's excellent recent historical
articles in the trade press, which I recommend, and which themselves have
now achieved misquotation elsewhere. That and plagiarism may be today's
"sincerest form of flattery."]

5. What is the "purple plague?"

Gold-aluminum embrittlement.

6. What is a class-C amplifier and where is it typically used?

Low conduction cycle; tuned RF power stage.

7. Can you describe a tunnel diode? A unijunction transistor? An SCS?
(What is the basic principle of each and what are they used for?)

TD: Esaki super-abrupt junction; has forward conduction peak. Sort of
a negative-voltage zener.

UJT: one rectifying contact on a slab, ohmic contacts on the ends.

SCS. Silicon-controlled switch. Obsolete. Sort of a GTO?

8. Traditional op-amp ICs were made whenever possible to run on +- 15
volts. Why that voltage?

Donno. Sounds interesting.

9. What do the following acronyms stand for: PDP, VAX, ASCII, EBCDIC, PRV,
BFO, RTTY, CW, VSB, VOR, Conelrad?

Programmed Data Processor. Virtual Address Extension. American
standard code for info interchange; extended binary code mumble
mumble; peak reverse volts; beat freq osc, radio teletype, vistigial
sideband, vhf omni ranging, some civil defense signalling mumble.

10. What was revolutionary about the 741 op amp?

Internal comp; no latchup; no diff mode zenering; decent current
limiting; lots of popcorn noise.

11. Can you specifically describe the US semiconductor products known by
the following terms:

1N34 point contact radar diode

CK722 cheap Raytheon PNP, nice blue/purple can

2N107 cheaper Ge NPN

2N2222 generic NPN silicon, oscillates whenever it can

2N3055 universal TO-3 NPN power gadget
uA703 crappy opamp

uA709 slightly less crappy opamp, external comp

SUHL Sylvania Universal High-Level Logic

Utilogic, Signetics weird hybrid logic, useless except for the Unibus
receiver

COSMOS RCA's name for 4000 series

Intel 1101 early DRAM

Intel 1702 early EPROM

12. Identify the following trademarks: Nixie, Pixie, Numitron?

Neon numeric display, unknown, ugly RCA incandescent numeric display

13. What is a thyratron? A magic-eye tube? A compactron?

Hot filament gas triode/tetrode, a glass SCR. Hydrogen are still used.

Vee-shaped fluorescent display, tuning indicator

Lots of toobs in one toob.

14. What magnitudes of voltages are required for operating the following
devices: Neon bulb, Xenon flashtube, Geiger-Mueller tube, Esaki diode.

80, 500, 800, 0.15

15. What IF frequencies are traditional in the US for AM broadcast, FM
broadcast, TV sound, TV picture?

455K, 10.7M, 4.5M, 45M. Not sure about the last one.

[2004 aside, for any who haven't heard this: European engineers have
quipped for decades that TV signal format acronyms stood in the US for
"Never The Same Color" and in France for "Système Envelloper Contre les
AMéricains."]

16. What is a Hartley oscillator? A Colpitts oscillator? A Pierce
oscillator? A Wien-bridge oscillator? A blocking oscillator?

Tapped L; tapped C; plate-grid LC net; RC-CR phasing network; thingie
with pulse transformer feedback (relaxation oscillator, makes pulses,
can make freq dividers, oscillators, one-shots, very cool.)

17. Quick, without calculation: What voltage corresponds to zero dBm in a
600-ohm circuit?

around a volt, 0.7 maybe

18. What is an Eccles-Jordan circuit? A polyflop? A switch-tail ring
counter? A Johnson counter? An AC-coupled flip-flop?

flipflop; 1-hot flipflop; shift register eating its own tail,
backwards; shift register counter; just what it says.

19. In the context of filters, what, formally, does "biquad" mean? (1988
note: Most engineers get this wrong.)

Informally, a pair of cascaded integrators etc.

20. What does it mean when a resistor is marked with bands
red-yellow-green-silver? A capacitor with "104K?"

2.4M 10%; 0.1 uf

21. If an aluminum electrolytic capacitor is rated for "working voltage" of
10 volts, in what range of voltages is it designed to operate?

-1 to +10

22. Roughly compare ceramic, polystyrene, and polycarbonate capacitors.

too obvious

23. What is a "2 1/2 D" core memory plane? (You could not open a computer
trade magazine in, say, 1968 without seeing incessant references to them.)

you save from having full x-y drivers by adding a fourth inhibit
winding.

24. What is a couplate? A micromodule? Difference between thin-film and
thick-film hybrid circuits?

Sounds obscene; little welded cordwood thing, impossible to fix;
screened/fired versus vacuum deposit.



For you:

Selsyn

Some magnetically coupled sort of rotor, 2 of these would turn together,
never used these..
(used in antenne rotor IIRC).

Wobulator

Sweep oscillator + scope / detector to adjust tuned ciruits IF amps, etc..
made one, sine wave sweep, slow, sawthooth sweep no no.
You had to sweep slow to get a good curve.. think sone ran an mains frequency.

Iconoscope

First (for all I know) camera picture, vacuum thing with target electrode,
electron beam scanned at an angle.
later orthicon, image orthicon, vidicon, plumbicon,
and guess what, semiconductors came, and everything became lot simpler.
The old iconoscope was 'wobbled' the thing was actually mechanically moved to
prevent burn in.
Burn I problems in cameras only whent away with the arrival of CCD.

 

[Jerry Avins]

What is this mnemonic designed to help you remember?

That black stands for zero, brown for one, red for two, and so on.
How did I go wrong getting that across?

Jerry

 

[Jerry Avins]

A system for remembering the color code for resistors. Look at the first
letter of each word, Black, Brown, Red, Orange etc..

A typical example of american culture, a combination of bad taste, violence
and foul language.




And bad spelling on top of that.

Add some misdirected patriotism, megalomania and paranoia and you have the
typical american participator in usenet newsgroups.

Thinking that a trivial fact about someone (skin color, religion, zodiac
sign, nationality, etc.) defines his character is the sine qua non of
bigotry. You seem to suffer from that affliction: you have my sympathy.

I've been reading color codes for well over 50 years. and I never before
ran across that culturally obscene mnemonic. I don't remember the
standard U.S. Army one because it's been a long time since I needed one.
If it comes to me, I will post it. (Those who are impatient can look in
the ARRL handbook.)

Jerry

 

[Rick Lyons]

(snipped)

A system for remembering the color code for resistors. Look at the first
letter of each word, Black, Brown, Red, Orange etc..

A typical example of american culture, a combination of bad taste, violence
and foul language.


And bad spelling on top of that.

Add some misdirected patriotism, megalomania and paranoia and you have the
typical american participator in usenet newsgroups.

Yep, it's pretty tacky. I wouldn't
teach that to a budding electrical engineer.

Hey wait a minute! Didn't that mnemonic
originate in one of the Scandinavian
countrys? Maybe Iceland?

[-Rick-]

 

[Jim Thompson]

[snip]

Add some misdirected patriotism, megalomania and paranoia and you have the
typical american participator in usenet newsgroups.

I suppose the only patriotism that is *not* misdirected is yours?

I didn't know that Euro-weenieism had spread to Sweden, but it looks
like it has.

I missed your post initially because I see that I had kill-filed you
many months ago.

GFY!

...Jim Thompson

 

[JeffM]

Does anyone actually know what else NTSC stands for?

National Television System Committee
Peter Bennett

National Television Standards Committee

 

[Fred Bloggs]

I've been reading color codes for well over 50 years. and I never before
ran across that culturally obscene mnemonic.

The mnemonic is usually taught to 18yo's for whom obscenity is a
delight, and it is also one of the more dilute obscenities to which they
will be exposed, and by institutionalized authority figures.

 

[Mark Fergerson]

John Larkin wrote:

For you:

Uni-shot

Single-shot FF?

Ignitron

Big rectifier toob.

Distributed amplifier (I'm designing one now!)

Paul Burridge's latest nightmare. No wait, that's a
distributed oscillator.

Slideback voltmeter

Tuner for an electronic slide trombone?

Amplitron

Toob analog of low geared transmission.

Selsyn

Electrical analog of a car's propeller shaft.

Wobulator

Device for measuring Genome's stride?

Iconoscope

Device for finding religious paraphenalia in the dark?

Boff diode

Device to keep British scientists out of a building? No,
that'd be a Boffin diode.

Rochelle salt

What you get after adding 100 megatons of HCl to New Jersey?

Rhumbatron (hint: buncher/catcher)

Yeah, we know it's a RADAR toob, but it sounds like it
has musical connotations.

Lighthouse tube, acorn tube, pencil tube

Oh, the temptation. Oh, all right; "miniature" toobs.

Lecher wires

Mechanical microwave "frequency gauge" so to speak.

Magamp

Magnetic Amplifier.

Swinging choke

Does AC _and_ DC?

Super-regenerator

"Rushbox".

Great fun. Thanks.

Mark L. Fergerson

 

[JeffM]

Esaki super-abrupt junction; has forward conduction peak.
Sort of a negative-voltage zener

~Negative-resistance zener
^^^^^^^^^^

Obsolete. Sort of a GTO?

Yup, but with a 4th terminal (2nd gate) for turnoff

plate-grid LC net Crystal-controlled

just what it says

Astable multivibrator

0.1 uf

and K means 10%

 

[Jim Thompson]

Topic of this particular trivia quiz was "general, pre-microprocessor
electronics" when posted verbatim to sci.electronics in 1988 -- the
newsgroup was then several years away from fractioning into its current
seven subgroups. (Answers appeared a month later.) This quiz also
circulated to some undergrad EE students at a respected school and it was
hard to find any who could answer even one question completely, unremarkable
because subject matter is not taught in nor prerequisite to contemporary EE
training but reflects practical practice, some of it well obsolete in 1988.
Obsolete but not unworthwhile and besides, as Jim W'ms would say, cool.

[snip]

You missed "spot wobbler".

...Jim Thompson

 

[R.Lewis]

Topic of this particular trivia quiz was "general, pre-microprocessor
electronics" when posted verbatim to sci.electronics in 1988 -- the
newsgroup was then several years away from fractioning into its current
seven subgroups. (Answers appeared a month later.) This quiz also
circulated to some undergrad EE students at a respected school and it was
hard to find any who could answer even one question completely, unremarkable
because subject matter is not taught in nor prerequisite to contemporary EE
training but reflects practical practice, some of it well obsolete in 1988.
Obsolete but not unworthwhile and besides, as Jim W'ms would say, cool.

[snip]

You missed "spot wobbler".

...Jim Thompson

Ah the famous spot wobbler - I had almost forgotten.
Did a spot wobbling TV ever manage to display anything recognisable for more
than 24hrs without re-adjustment of the wobbler.

 

[Jim Thompson]

On Sun, 18 Jan 2004 17:32:24 -0000, "R.Lewis" <h.lewis-not this

Topic of this particular trivia quiz was "general, pre-microprocessor
electronics" when posted verbatim to sci.electronics in 1988 -- the
newsgroup was then several years away from fractioning into its current
seven subgroups. (Answers appeared a month later.) This quiz also
circulated to some undergrad EE students at a respected school and it was
hard to find any who could answer even one question completely, unremarkable
because subject matter is not taught in nor prerequisite to contemporary EE
training but reflects practical practice, some of it well obsolete in 1988.
Obsolete but not unworthwhile and besides, as Jim W'ms would say, cool.

[snip]

You missed "spot wobbler".

...Jim Thompson

Ah the famous spot wobbler - I had almost forgotten.
Did a spot wobbling TV ever manage to display anything recognisable for more
than 24hrs without re-adjustment of the wobbler.

I don't remember if there was ever a commercial realization, but I
wouldn't think it would be difficult, it'd just be a percentage of
vertical.

...Jim Thompson

 

[Jerry Avins]

The mnemonic is usually taught to 18yo's for whom obscenity is a
delight, and it is also one of the more dilute obscenities to which they
will be exposed, and by institutionalized authority figures.

Sure. One generations SNAFU in the next's FUBAR. Those are linguistic
obscenities; who cares? Institutionalizing attitudes that encourage even
a small minority (like some Air Force cadets in the news) to think that
rape is an entitlement, or at least excuse it by saying "she wanted it"
is what I call obscene. The words aren't, but the notions are. We have
plenty of politicians whose words would raise no eyebrows in church who
are obscene to the core in the sense I meant it. Some churchmen, too.

Jerry

 

[Roger Johansson]

Yep, it's pretty tacky. I wouldn't
teach that to a budding electrical engineer.

Hey wait a minute! Didn't that mnemonic
originate in one of the Scandinavian
countrys? Maybe Iceland?

That seems very unlikely, considering that they speak icelandic in Iceland.

And they have no need to talk about sex, sex organs and violence all the
time, or the possible willingness of girls.

By the way, if somebody learns enough of this color code to have any use
for it there is no need to learn any sentence to remember it.
I learned by sorting surplus resistors, looking up the colors a few times
until I knew them.

This color code is printed on the spine of the most known component catalog
in northern Europe, the ELFA catalog, and has been for many years, so we
only have to glance at the book shelf above the work bench if we want to
check our memory.

 

[Jim Weir]

->1. Assuming that you are acquainted with the "cascode" configuration, do
->you know where the term came from?

A variant of the word "cascade".

->
->[Note! My 1988 answers had this wrong, reflecting a popular myth of which I
->was later disabused, but a myth that also made it into the current revision
->of a venerable analog-IC text, despite my efforts by sending the accurate
->reference to those revising the text, upon their request to me at the time
->for historical information. Enough About That.]
->
->2. What is a reflex amplifier?

Needs more to the question.

->
->3. What is the basic principle of a superhet receiver?

Mixing together of two frequencies to produce a lower fixed frequency (IF) which
provides the majority of the gain and selectivity.

Of a regenerative
->receiver?

Tuned to the edge of oscillation; the gain goes up tremendously in this
configuration. No IF.

Difference between a mixer and a converter (in RF)?

Very subtle differences, not enough to worry about.


->
->4. Who developed the op amp, and when?
->
->[2004 Note: Question 4 preceded George Rostky's excellent recent historical
->articles in the trade press, which I recommend, and which themselves have
->now achieved misquotation elsewhere. That and plagiarism may be today's
->"sincerest form of flattery."]

Bob Widlar, sometime in the early 1960s.


->
->5. What is the "purple plague?"

Aluminum-silicon compound that forms at high current density junctions...like an
aluminum wire bonded to a silicon transistor. Most prevalent at RF.

->
->6. What is a class-C amplifier and where is it typically used?

Conduction for less than 180d of the driving signal. High efficiency RF power
amplifier.

->
->7. Can you describe a tunnel diode? A unijunction transistor? An SCS?
->(What is the basic principle of each and what are they used for?)

Tunnel diode...hyperthin junction area...relies on the negative resistance
portion of the curve for either amplification or oscillation.

UJT...silicon device with a very predictable and repeatable trigger voltage.

Silicon Controlled Switch...old name for the SCR.


->
->8. Traditional op-amp ICs were made whenever possible to run on +- 15
->volts. Why that voltage?

Good Question.

->
->9. What do the following acronyms stand for: PDP, VAX, ASCII, EBCDIC, PRV,
->BFO, RTTY, CW, VSB, VOR, Conelrad?

PRV...peak reverse voltage BFO...beat frequency oscillator RTTY...radio
teletype CW...continuous wave (morse code) VSB...vestigial sideband
VOR...very high frequency omnidirectional range Conelrad...control of
electromagnetic radiation


->
->10. What was revolutionary about the 741 op amp?

No compensation required.

->
->11. Can you specifically describe the US semiconductor products known by
->the following terms: 1N34, CK722, 2N107, 2N998, 2N1304, 2N2222, 2N3055,
->U222, uL900, uL958, uA703, uA709, SN7300 series, SUHL, CCSL, HTL, ECCSL,
->Utilogic, COSMOS, Intel 1101, Intel 1702.

1N34...germanium diode CK722...first popularly available transistor (Raytheon)
2N2222...most popular low frequency low power NPN transistor ever made
2N3055...workhorse TO-3 power NPN COSMOS...RCA's trademark for CMOS.




->
->12. Identify the following trademarks: Nixie, Pixie, Numitron?

By manufacturer or by usage?

->
->13. What is a thyratron? A magic-eye tube? A compactron?

Thyratron...the vacuum tube equivalent of an SCR Magiceye...CRT with green
phosphor; the angle of the "eye" was controlled by grid bias Compactron...last
gasp of the vacuum tube...several tubes in one envelope

->
->14. What magnitudes of voltages are required for operating the following
->devices: Neon bulb, Xenon flashtube, Geiger-Mueller tube, Esaki diode.

neon...75 volts Xenon...300 volts on flash, 5000 volts on trigger Geiger
tube...1000 volts Esaki (tunnel) diode...knee was on the order of a volt or
so.

->
->15. What IF frequencies are traditional in the US for AM broadcast, FM
->broadcast, TV sound, TV picture?

AM...455kHz. FM...10.7MHz. TV audio...4.5MHz. TV pix...45 MHz.


->
->[2004 aside, for any who haven't heard this: European engineers have
->quipped for decades that TV signal format acronyms stood in the US for
->"Never The Same Color" and in France for "Système Envelloper Contre les
->AMéricains."]

Never TWICE the Same Color

->
->16. What is a Hartley oscillator? A Colpitts oscillator? A Pierce
->oscillator? A Wien-bridge oscillator? A blocking oscillator?

Hartley...tapped coil Colpitts...tapped capacitor Hard to define the rest
without drawing a picture.


->
->17. Quick, without calculation: What voltage corresponds to zero dBm in a
->600-ohm circuit?

About three quarters of a volt.

->
->18. What is an Eccles-Jordan circuit? A polyflop? A switch-tail ring
->counter? A Johnson counter? An AC-coupled flip-flop?
->
->19. In the context of filters, what, formally, does "biquad" mean? (1988
->note: Most engineers get this wrong.)
->
->20. What does it mean when a resistor is marked with bands
->red-yellow-green-silver? A capacitor with "104K?"

2.4megohms, +/- 10% 100000pf (100nf) +/-10%

->
->21. If an aluminum electrolytic capacitor is rated for "working voltage" of
->10 volts, in what range of voltages is it designed to operate?

From roughly half the rated working voltage to 20% above the working voltage.

->
->22. Roughly compare ceramic, polystyrene, and polycarbonate capacitors.

In construction? Usage? Formulate question better.

->
->23. What is a "2 1/2 D" core memory plane? (You could not open a computer
->trade magazine in, say, 1968 without seeing incessant references to them.)
->
->24. What is a couplate? A micromodule? Difference between thin-film and
->thick-film hybrid circuits?
->
->
->[1988 questions 25 and 26 concerned memory of the Ovonic Devices publicity
->and business acronyms and were pretty far afield even in 1988; omitted now.]
->
->
->Registered trademarks mentioned herein are identified indirectly by context,
->for clarity and because this is a trivia quiz.
->
->Copyright 1988, 2004 by Max W. Hauser. All rights reserved. Past shameless
->exploitations of author's 1979 MIT "Bag of Tricks" notes and other
->engineering writings do not preclude copyright enforcement for this or other
->work.
->

 

[Ian Bell]

Stefan Heinzmann wrote:
[...]

Copulate dunno.

Lest you get the wrong impression: That was a typo. ;-)

Cheers
Stefan

So were my last two kids ;-)

Ian

 

[Active8]

I read in sci.electronics.design that Active8 <mTHISREMOVEcolasono@earth


That was Issue 2, after someone reached for their attorney. What was
Issue 1?

That's trivia I'm not aware of. Interesting.