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The most important changes in electronic design over the past 25 years?

R

Robert Macy

   Let me know when they replace the repair bench. :)

I thought the repair bench HAD been replaced - no exchangeable parts
inside. Throwaway menatality.

Have you see the minimum replaceable size of an automobile system
block? We're talking scratch a bumper and replace the front end.
 
J

Joerg

George said:
Grin... do I have any choice?

I went to a local maker-place for electronics night.
I brought my Rigol scope and DMM.
Everyone else there took out their lap tops,
and started tapping keys.

I'm thinking I should bring my soldering iron next time,
I've got a few 'kit' projects I can work on. :^)

And you do have a choice. Those who train their analog skills will be
almost guaranteed to have work throughout their life. There is stuff
that simply cannot be digitized and I find there are less and less
people available in the world to deal with it.

Try a fiberoptics receiver. Or try to cram an EMC job into a micro
controller. It can't be done.

To say if more bluntly, I've met quite a few software and uC guys
looking for work. None of the (seasoned) analog guys I met was struggling.
 
J

Joerg

Tim said:
I need to publicize my analog skills more!

No matter how fast the digital stuff gets, it'll never be fast enough for
the fastest analog signals.

And no matter how versatile the digital stuff gets, you still need to get
your measurements into digital-land cleanly, and you still need to apply
power to some physical transducer when it's time for the digital stuff to
act on the world.

Sometimes analog just wins on cost and size. One example I had was a
measurement setup. Insanely expensive high-speed ADCs had been
considered but nothing was good enough in terms of ENOB and dynamic
range. I suggested to do this analog. "So what do we need then?" ...
"Oh, not much. Caps, inductors, resistors, transistors, some RF
transformers, and a directional coupler we'd have to make" ... "A WHAT?"
 
B

Bill Sloman

   Lead bearing solder works great on "I were there electronic wolves',
though. ;-)

Do you have any evidence to support this claim? Though it is going to
look as if it has worked, at least for a for a while.
 
J

Jamie

Bill said:
We had Racal-Redac software for digitally generating printed circuit
artwork at EMI Central Research back on 1978, which is almost 35 years
ago. It wasn't user friendly, and the draftsmen that drove it needed a
refresher course if they'd been doing something else for more than a
week, but it was a relatively quick way of generating artwork for
digital circuits, if too clunky for analog layouts.

It was probably the Racal-Redac MAXI PCB package which was introduced
around then, but I never actually saw it in operation though - IIRR -
we did check out one of the layouts it produced for us before sending
it out to get turned into a board.

Oh great, there goes the neighborhood!

Jamie
 
B

brent

This place sometimes reminds me of a grade school playground.  It was
always fun to gang up on someone who dared to be a bit different, wasn't it?

Bill, in his own words, said he was quitting SED for the foreseeable
future. That is what the ghost reference was about and all the follow
on comments. I am only explaining this to you so that perhaps you
will use your brain before jumping to wrong conclusions that are based
on your own prejudices.

http://groups.google.com/group/sci....en&lnk=gst&q=not+a+new+years#b47f7e8f304b7b6b
 
G

Gib Bogle

Bill, in his own words, said he was quitting SED for the foreseeable
future. That is what the ghost reference was about and all the follow
on comments. I am only explaining this to you so that perhaps you
will use your brain before jumping to wrong conclusions that are based
on your own prejudices.

http://groups.google.com/group/sci....en&lnk=gst&q=not+a+new+years#b47f7e8f304b7b6b

I missed that, you are correct. But I've seen many previous posts of a
similar nature. My original comment stands. This place is a lot like a
grade school playground. "My dad can beat your dad!"
 
T

Tauno Voipio

I need to publicize my analog skills more!

No matter how fast the digital stuff gets, it'll never be fast enough for
the fastest analog signals.

And no matter how versatile the digital stuff gets, you still need to get
your measurements into digital-land cleanly, and you still need to apply
power to some physical transducer when it's time for the digital stuff to
act on the world.

'All digital circuits are, at the end, made of analog components',
Don Vonada, chief engineer at Digital Equipment Corporation,
about 40 years ago.
 
B

brent

I missed that, you are correct.  But I've seen many previous posts of a
similar nature.  My original comment stands.  This place is a lot like a
grade school playground.  "My dad can beat your dad!"

This place is a lot like a school yard, there are lots of kids you do
not care for and you find a few you like. Smart kids ignore the ones
they do not care for and enjoy the experience anyhow.

Then when the smart kids get older they go to their class reunions and
realize that most the kids they did not like were actually pretty
decent.

The difference between this and school is you can leave. You can go
find a moderated forum where they kick off abusive people. They also
kick off people who do off topic. Then you start to realize that they
kick off all sorts of people for all sorts of reasons. Then you may/
or may not realize that you like un-moderated forums better.
 
J

Joerg

Tim said:
I'm writing a book chapter at the moment on system design, and I realized
that there is only one firm recommendation that I can make about when a
system should implement its brains in digital-land as opposed to analog-
land (or, for that matter, mechanical-land).

The guiding light? Overall system cost. How to get there? The
collected wisdom of the team.

Sometimes that even means that while the _absolute optimum_ given the
technology available on the day you decide may be to go down a particular
path, the best bet _on that day_, _with that team_ may be different,
because with the people that _you_ have available _right then_, the "we
can do it and understand it" may trump "this is universally best".

Of course, sometimes leaning too heavily on the team's current skill set
means that you're either letting your company's designs get stale, or
that you're building products that try to solve problems with a golden
hammer that are better solved with a rock and a string.

It can also mean roaring down the path at full tilt, full of gusto and
exitement, only to discover way too late in the game that it was the
wrong path. Seen it many times. One company that I warned about it in a
friendly manner didn't listen, decided they don't need any consulting
help. Long story short, this company is no more.
 
G

Gib Bogle

This place is a lot like a school yard, there are lots of kids you do
not care for and you find a few you like. Smart kids ignore the ones
they do not care for and enjoy the experience anyhow.

Then when the smart kids get older they go to their class reunions and
realize that most the kids they did not like were actually pretty
decent.

The difference between this and school is you can leave. You can go
find a moderated forum where they kick off abusive people. They also
kick off people who do off topic. Then you start to realize that they
kick off all sorts of people for all sorts of reasons. Then you may/
or may not realize that you like un-moderated forums better.


I agree with all that. There is a level of childishness here that I
don't find on the other newsgroups I frequent.
 
R

Robert Macy

Flicking through modern text books for undergraduate students, I find
it startling that little seems to have changed in the way of
electronic design. Can anyone think of obvious examples?

Regards, Larry.

two categories of improvement:
1. parts to work with
2. functions of those parts

the contributions in the first category enabled what we all 'see' in
the second category.

Electronics became smaller, cheaper, lower power, faster, and
INCREDIBLY complex! Enabling a plethora of functions to come into
existance...GPS everywhere, wireless widgets, awesome display screens,
expansion of the internet, USB memory sticks, power scavenging, etc
etc. But the major impact [to me] has been the shift towards software
becoming the dominating factor of how those basic components became
utilized. For example, whole companies have come into existance that
provide only aps and software. Just as the industry moved away from
providing a solution that EXACTLY fits the problem to providing a
solution that is a 'slight' overkill with digital solution, we are now
starting to provide WAAAYYY overkill by having WHOLE systems become
the basic building block!

Can you imagine trying to print a data sheet for a whole system? It's
like a data sheet for a micro, only more so.

With the advent of all these advancements, The list of 'new' things
becomes long:
video phones, digital TV, true artificial intelligence as part of the
user interface, humanoid robots, etc etc


To me, the most monumental changes have been the advent of 'extremes'
to make new components -- low temperature SQUIDS, gravity free crystal
growth, etc; the acceptance of carbon composites; and exploration into
nano, where ALL the rules of physics I was familiar with seem to have
changed -- tunneling electrons [pure magic!]

Just how much improvement in basic components? longer battery life,
higher energy density in inductors and capacitors, stronger materials
has occurred since 80's? Seems like sometimes slow, but the synergy of
ALL the small changes has been awesome.
 
G

Gib Bogle

Which are?

Mostly uk.d-i-y and comp.lang.fortran I have to say that there is a lot
of childish behaviour on another one, rec.sport.rugby.union
 
G

Gib Bogle

Which are?

BTW I do see that there is a great deal of really good and useful stuff
on the ng. It's just that there are a few people who seem intent on
constantly proving their technical superiority. There are also some
Neanderthal political attitudes on display. Is there a correlation?
Perhaps
 
T

Tauno Voipio

...and all analog values are quantized. ;-)

Yep - and as such they behave like Schrödinger's cat. If you know
where they are, you do not know when.
 
J

Jamie

Gib said:
This place sometimes reminds me of a grade school playground. It was
always fun to gang up on someone who dared to be a bit different, wasn't
it?

I wouldn't know about that, I was too big of a brute and didn't have
anything to prove, nor did any one bother me. My problem was, the little
shit heads (little man disease) always trying to get me to bail them out
of their problems they started.

And you? it seems like you have first hand knowledge..

Jamie
 
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