Viewers Guide to the USENET sci.electronics newsgroups. [June 17, 1997]This
FAQ is a tourist's guide to the various electronics newsgroups.For more
detailed information on the electronics field, try the official(as close as
it gets around here) sci.electronics.repair FAQ athttp://
www.repairfaq.org/
courtesy of Filip "I'll buy a vowel"Gieszczykiewicz , Sam Goldwasser and a
cast of thousands.Some Comments and Q&A.Some things to remember. These
newsgroups are worldwide in coverage.That means that criticizing someone's
English, making nationalisticremarks, personal insults, and criticizing
another poster's intelligenceare invitations to pointless flame wars. And
the computer equipment that will be used to read these messages isanything
but uniform. Any extensions that your computer has to supportvarious
character sets will not always be reliably transmitted ordisplayed at the
other end. So avoid fancy superscript characters,degrees temperature, greek
letters, and line drawing characters like theIBM PC extended character set.
There are newer standards for indicatingthe character interpetation to be
used with a posting, but there's noguarentee that the person on the other end
is up to date. For the similarreasons, note the discussion on posting
software and graphics in thefollowing Q&A section.You should also consider
where a poster is when they request the closestsource for some product or
information. Not everybody has a Radio Shackin the nearest shopping mall. A
common problem is that the toll free800 numbers common in North America are
not easily or cheaply accessiblefrom the rest of the world. Look closely at
the orginators domain addressto see if they can affordably contact your
recommended source.Keep in mind that various systems and standards are
different aroundthe world. Household power voltages and frequencies are
different,and the techniques and regulations to deal with wiring are
differentenough to cause safety problems if you try to use the wrong
one.Video systems (orginally tied to the power line frequency) are alsowidely
different around the world. Different scan rates and encodingsystems make
things incompatible. More recent innovations are evenmore diverse. For
example, stereo audio on television transmissionsin the UK, Scandinavian
countries, and other parts of Europe is aalmost CD quality digital
transmission, while in the US, the MTS systemis a variation on the analog
subcarrier system used for FM stereo.Not only are the systems different, so
is the jargon used to describethem. What might be a Ground Fault Interrupter
in North America, wouldbe a Residual Current Circuit Breaker across the
Atlantic. And what waswritten as 4.7 k ohms, might by (from the requirements
of the schematicdrafting standards) be given as 4k7 ohms.Q. "Someone has to
give me an answer!"A. Nope, sorry. Everybody here (except a few salesmen)
is doing it for their own purposes, and no question is guarenteed to get an
answer. Getting obnoxious about it, or repeating the question across every
possible newsgroup, or over and over again won't win any friends and marks
you as the archetypical "newbie".Q. "What is crossposting, and is it
bad?"A. Crossposting is where many discussion group names are included in
the "Newsgroups" header of a posting. This causes them to be distributed to
each of those newsgroups when they are received and processed at a news
server. (Note that Usenet is not like the World Wide Web. In contrast to
the Web, postings are distributed worldwide to thousands of seperate
computer systems, so sending just one message instead of many is
beneficial.) Like many feature of Usenet news, it can be abused. For
example, Posting to large numbers of groups at once, or posting to groups
that have incompatible discussion topics as a form of harassment. This has
gained it a bad reputation that the dogmatic have converted into legendary
restrictions. Try to limit posting to the one newsgroup whose topic matches
your subject. If it does seem to overlap a couple of newsgroups' topics,
crosspost if you must. You should avoid (at all cost) multiple postings,
(also know as SPAM). This is where you send a seperate posting to multiple
newsgroups. This causes several bad things. It creates that much more
data that each news server system has to process. It starts a seperate
disconnected discussion thread in each newsgroup. And it causes for anyone
who reads many of the newsgroups to see the posting repeated for each group.
Any competent newsreader software will only show a crossposted message to
the reader once, but has no way of dealing with SPAM. (Yes, there is a lot
of incompetent software out there.)Q. Are advertisements restricted to ONLY
misc.industry.electronics.marketplace?A. That's the idea.Q. Why can't I
advertise my [stereo/computer/...] for sale in
misc.industry.electronics.marketplace?A. For the main reason the group is
for an audience that isn't interested in buying them. (Note the word
'Industry' in the newsgroup name. If you can buy it at the nearest
shopping mall, it doesn't belong here). And the second good reason is there
are already well established groups for those purposes. Try the
misc.forsale.computers groups, rec.audio.marketplace, rec.video, or
rec.radio.swapQ. Can I post executable binary programs to these groups?A.
No. These are text discussion groups. The amount of resources needed to
transmit a program is much greater than the normal posting. Many small
sites and individuals use an automatic forwarding system that sends all of
the traffic in a newsgroup to them. But often, with a cost determined by the
amount of data, or the duration of a phone call (in places where phone use
is billed by time). So posting large amounts of data imposes a direct
monetary penalty on other users. They don't like it. For that and other
reasons, there a automatic canceling daemon system run by Richard Depew that
will erase postings that meet this software's criteria (size and non-text
content, and crossposting between text discussion groups and binary posting
newsgroups) at all the sites around the world that are set up to accept this
software's cancel messages. For more information, read the
news.admin.net-abuse.usenet newsgroup. Beyond that, every program needs a
specific combination of computer and operating system, so ANY program will
not be useful to a large number of the groups readers. The alternatives are
1) to set up your own FTP archive or Web page that allows any interested
person with a direct Internet connection to get their own copy. (And those
without direct connection may have access to systems that will give them
access through email.) 2) To get a public archive to put your files onto
their system. 3) To post the data to one of the comp.binaries (if the
moderator will accept it) or alt.binaries newsgroups, or 4) to offer to
email the data to persons who request it.Q. Can I post graphics images to
these groups.A. Again, this can take a lot of resources and the diversity
of formats means that no matter what format you choose, someone will not
be able to read it, (even if they are interested). And substituting your
graphics scanner for a little thought and writing effort will not win you any
friends. So think before you do. If it is really relevant, use a format
that is common, compressed, and encoded so that it can travel over the net
in the form of text. If you can't get the file to smaller than about 30
thousand characters after UUencoding or Mime encoding, I'd suggest that you
set your files in an archive as discussed above. Also if it's of long term
interest, or very specialized interest, no matter what its size. A net
posting will only be around for a short time, and putting your work in an
acessable archive will make it more widely available. Posting files that
are already archived somewhere is a waste of resources. Just include a
reference to their location. File formats that have some supporters are 1)
Portable Document Format (.pdf) that have been created with a limited
character set so the various network conversions don't corrupt their
content. Either through using the 7 bit character conversion in the
creation software or by UUencoding or Mime encoding the file. 2) Postscript
files that have been compressed with gzip or zip and UU or Mime encoded. 3)
GIF files that have been encoded. 4) .bmp or .pcx files that have been
compressed and encoded. (Do not waste your time posting uncompressed .bmp
files. The Bincanceler will eat them.) There has been periodic discussions
of some file format produced by CAD software, but no one format seems to
have wide support. The same applies to various word processor document file
formats. "Everybody" doesn't have the software that you run. And some would
rather never have to buy it.Q. What's the difference between
sci.electronic.components, .design, and .equipment?A. The split here is
set up on levels of complexity. In this field of technology, people look
for solutions to problems along these levels. Someone who is looking for a
box that solves their problems is working at a higher level of detail than
someone who is designing a module (circuit board) and that second person is
working at a higher level than someone looking for a prebuilt integrated
circuit that they need to purchase. The proposed components group is for
questions dealing with individual parts. Someone working on this level is
looking for a specific function or source or identification for an
electronic component. Postings requesting the identification of an
integrated circuit are a large portion of the current traffic. The design
group is for persons combining components into circuits. Discussion on
design solutions and techniques. The equipment group is for persons looking
for already available solutions to their problems. In other words, if
someone is looking for a solution to their problem, and wants to buy
something with a warranty, and that has a salesman and tech support along
with it, .equipment is the place to ask for advice. (This is not the place
to suggest that the person can go down to Radio Shack and get a 555 and wire
up a circuit.)Q. What's left for sci.electronics.misc?A. Gossip, history,
trivia, manufacturing, systems, standards, announcements ...Charters and
description lines.sci.electronics Circuits, theory, electrons and
discussions. This is now a bogus group. On January 2, 1996, it was
superseded by sci.electronics.misc as part of the reorganization vote
carried out two months earlier. Expect that access may be turned off or
aliased to the new group, and that propagation from system to system will be
unreliable.sci.electronics.basics Elementary questions about electronics.
"A forum for discussion of electronics where there is no such thing as a
stupid question. Beginners questions. Discussion of electronics education.
Requests for other sources of information."sci.electronics.cad Schematic
drafting, printed circuit layout, simulation. "sci.electronics.cad is an
unmoderated group for the discussion of Computer Aided Design software (and
systems) for use in designing electronic circuits and assemblies. Topics
can include Schematic "Capture" software, Printed Circuit Board layout
software, introductory and educational use of circuit simulation software
such as Spice, obtaining simulation descriptions (Spice models) for
electronic components, and any other computer software that relates to
designing electronic circuits at the printed circuit board
level."sci.electronics.components Integrated circuits, resistors, capacitors.
"Discussions of electronics at the component level. The use, limitations,
and identification of resistors, capacitors, integrated circuits,
connectors, enclosures, ... and so on. Locations and contact information for
Manufacturers, Distributors, and other sources for supply and technical
information."sci.electronics.design Electronic circuit design. "Discussions
relevant to the design of electronics circuits."sci.electronics.equipment
Test, lab, & industrial electronic products. "Discussion of the application
and internal operation and relative merits of test equipment, laboratory
equipment, and industrial equipment. This is not a forsale group.
Buying/selling is supposed to occur in the relocated
misc.industry.electronics.marketplace group. (Discussions on the relative
merits of various consumer electronics equipment are better held in the
groups in the rec hierarchy devoted to those topics.)"sci.electronics.misc
General discussions of the field of electronics. "General discussions on
the topic of electronics. (Discussions on the relative merits of various
consumer electronics equipment are better held in the groups in the rec
hierarchy devoted to those topics.)"sci.electronics.repair Fixing
electronic equipment. "sci.electronics.repair is an unmoderated group for
the discussion of repairing electronic equipment. Topics to include:
Requests for assistance, Where to obtain servicing information and parts,
Techniques for diagnosis and repair, and Annecdotes about success, failures
and problems with equipment
manufacturers."misc.industry.electronics.marketplace Electronics products &
services. "Advertisement and discussion for the buying, selling, and
bartering of electronic components (integrated circuits, resistor,
capacitors, etc.), electronics test equipment, electronics laboratory
equipment, electronics industrial equipment, and services used for the
production of electronics. NO CONSUMER ELECTRONICS - NO AUDIO, VIDEO, or
HOME COMPUTERS."Other groups of
interestalt.binaries.schematics.electronicalt.engineering.electricalsci.engr.e
lectrical.compliancesci.engr.electrical.sys-protectionrec.video.*rec.audio.*mi
sc.forsale.*rec.radio.*Mark Zenier
[email protected] [email protected]
