I was referring to the Burning Amp Festival held in Petaluma, CA a couple of weeks ago. Saturday there were two build sessions, one for a small amplifier designed by Nelson Pass and one for a small set of loudspeakers. Sunday was devoted to several informative seminars. I really enjoyed it. If you google on Burning Amp 2024 you'll find a lot of information on it.
I sure did have a lot more hair back then!
That MOSFET amp article is available on my website at cordellaudio.com.
Cheers,
Bob
Hi Bob,
I attended one Burning Amp way back. I would love to attend more.
Hi Mark,
Thanks. Up here, RPI was Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Toronto. The stereo receiver we built was referred to as the "rippy" radio.
I attended one Burning Amp way back. I would love to attend more.
Hi Mark,
Thanks. Up here, RPI was Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Toronto. The stereo receiver we built was referred to as the "rippy" radio.
I've never seen that many women... my current team is all male. Which, to be honest, is very common. Only in software (not firmware) do we see women engineers. And a few in Physics... I've seen them in bio and chem... when was the last time you saw a lady engineer in the lab holding on to a logic analyzer, scope or a JTAG probe?
Not that I'd mind, but you can't wish things otherwise... it is what it is.
.. In the fall of 2016, more than 1,000 women enrolled in Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's undergraduate engineering programs for the first time in its history. These women represented 30 percent of the student body in engineering at the university, and 32 percent of the university's total gender composition. Shekhar Garde, Rensselaer's dean of engineering, claims he wants to increase the female composition of the institute to 50 percent before 2030
Not that I'd mind, but you can't wish things otherwise... it is what it is.
.. In the fall of 2016, more than 1,000 women enrolled in Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's undergraduate engineering programs for the first time in its history. These women represented 30 percent of the student body in engineering at the university, and 32 percent of the university's total gender composition. Shekhar Garde, Rensselaer's dean of engineering, claims he wants to increase the female composition of the institute to 50 percent before 2030
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I feel bad remembering the time an attractive woman engineer wanted to use the logic analyzer that I had. She insisted she could handle it, but it was heavy, maybe 50lb, and I think she hurt herself to prove how strong she was. I used logic analyzers a lot, but that was on DIP and PLC chips. I'm not sure how they probe today's GHz devices.
Hmmm.. Those Logic Analyzers really got big.... BIG....
Most of the work I see nowadays is done with emulators, RTL and a JTAG.
No way are you gonna lift a Palladium... And most analyzers nowdays are computer based anyhow... to the point where a USB-C interface to a pod makes the most sense. And if you put a board with an ARM SoC running Android ( or some version of Linux ) you pretty much lower the weight of the design.
Think of the Lauterbach TRACE32 footprint... a small pod that attaches to the UUT and then connects to your PC via the network. We have those in the lab and I can reach them clear across the country ( current the lab is in Ohio and I'm in the West Coast ). I set up a lab once here for the developers in SIngapore...
Light weight...
Think about current scopes... with their flat displays, they are light and shallow and I can pick two of them and carry across the office without breaking a sweat. And even so, a remote USB-C pod makes more sense.... why buy the User Interface when you already have a PC?
I've always wonder why there aren't more women in our field. Could it be women are more social and our work is... ahem... rather anti-social?
Not much empathy for a logic circuit or a computer... except when I want to throw them out the window...
Most of the work I see nowadays is done with emulators, RTL and a JTAG.
No way are you gonna lift a Palladium... And most analyzers nowdays are computer based anyhow... to the point where a USB-C interface to a pod makes the most sense. And if you put a board with an ARM SoC running Android ( or some version of Linux ) you pretty much lower the weight of the design.
Think of the Lauterbach TRACE32 footprint... a small pod that attaches to the UUT and then connects to your PC via the network. We have those in the lab and I can reach them clear across the country ( current the lab is in Ohio and I'm in the West Coast ). I set up a lab once here for the developers in SIngapore...
Light weight...
Think about current scopes... with their flat displays, they are light and shallow and I can pick two of them and carry across the office without breaking a sweat. And even so, a remote USB-C pod makes more sense.... why buy the User Interface when you already have a PC?
I've always wonder why there aren't more women in our field. Could it be women are more social and our work is... ahem... rather anti-social?
Not much empathy for a logic circuit or a computer... except when I want to throw them out the window...
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Before I retired, I was doing hardware QA and we tested some ~million-dollar scopes that were pretty big and ran on Kilowatt power supplies. I always felt the need for such things was a bit insane, but the customers were institutions with a lot of money and politics involved.
Because PC envinronment is very fragile and transitory, you are always at risk of being 1 update/upgrade away from bricking your test equipment (and it will happen when it matters most!).
Furthermore you need to be able to take the test equipment to where its needed, so a single unit with a carrying handle makes sense.
Most modern test equipment works both standalone and under remote access, which is the best of both worlds.
We talk of "driving" a 'scope or whatever, and its a good analogy, control of a physical 'scope is burnt into muscle memory. PC's don't have lots of knobs on them laid out in a familiar pattern.
And even USB C will become obsolete before a quality piece of testgear stops working.
Do one thing well and don't rely on third-party equipment...
Hmm... well, I've used a lot of PC based test equipment... had no issues at all.
The trick is to configure the machine so it won't accept non stop upgrades. Or just run Linux and disable the automatic upgrades.
By "most" test equipment... you are likely not including the stuff that we used in my side of the field.... JTAGs, FPGAs, Emulators... most of them run on Ethernet and TCP/IP.
... and the quality piece of test gear will go out of calibration before USB-C expires.
Without that Cal Sticker, the QA inspector will kick it out of the lab.
The trick is to configure the machine so it won't accept non stop upgrades. Or just run Linux and disable the automatic upgrades.
By "most" test equipment... you are likely not including the stuff that we used in my side of the field.... JTAGs, FPGAs, Emulators... most of them run on Ethernet and TCP/IP.
... and the quality piece of test gear will go out of calibration before USB-C expires.
Without that Cal Sticker, the QA inspector will kick it out of the lab.
Prof. Aaron Lanterman at Georgia Tech continues the tradition of analog design in areas that get many students interested. He hasn't published a book, but he has put many of his course lectures on Youtube. I've met him a couple of times at activities related to music synthesizers. He knew Prof. Leach before he died, and refers to Leach's website in at least one of his videos.
https://www.youtube.com/@Lantertronics
On the other hand, I recall some piece of test equipment that booted and ran on some version of Windows, maybe 95. I forget if it was Tek or HP, and if it was an oscilloscope or a logic analyzer, but there it was.
Our bench oscilloscopes (Teledyne/Le Croy) still run on Windows XP. As long as they're isolated from the outside world, they work fine.
Love the LeCroys but the boot up with Windoze took 'half a day', well.. a couple or more minutes I recall, the earlier models running some RTOS or whatever were up in 10-15 seconds or so, like the 93xx series from mid 90's, what a formidable workhorse (and still is!), most people are so indoctrinated into Tek so I happily got to use the LeCroy's whenever such was lying around.
One of mine uses Win XP so have been thinking whether the boot up could be sped up by changing the HD with SSD, however, I ought to clone the disc anyway just in case.
One of mine uses Win XP so have been thinking whether the boot up could be sped up by changing the HD with SSD, however, I ought to clone the disc anyway just in case.
The point is, in the good old days you would turn the instrument on. The firmware would start things up and it was ready to go. Then came Windows CE and other windows based operating systems. Instruments then took forever to boot and be ready for use. My new Keysight meters take forever for no good reason, the scope takes an eternity. The instrument is now an application and I have to say that I've had more connectivity issues with new stuff than ever before.
Thank goodness some are returning to Linux, but I don't think we will see good quality firmware until a return to specific operating systems for the instrument.
The OS based instruments only became popular because it reduced cost to generate code for the instrument. Overall quality is far lower now, patches galore. We didn't often need to patch test equipment.
Today I have EEPROM programmers that are useless, and a few other instruments. Try and run an Audio Precision System 1 on a new computer. It ain't easy folks. I think additional control through a PC is a good idea, but total control? Bad idea because support is very limited.
I just had to replace a perfectly fine video doorbell, worked perfectly and it wasn't a cheap one. Why? Alexa dropped support. A management decision and my hardware was junk just like that. No warning, no troubleshooting help and no offer to replace with new with a discount. I had to prove the case. EZVIZ in case you're wondering.
When you buy test equipment, you have the right to use it until it ends life normally. You also should have the right to repair it. With the cost of test equipment, allowing it to die due to software support is criminal. Turfing a good piece of gear because they can't calibrate it to certify it? Okay, you just contributed to inflation because any cost borne by a company must be passed on to their customer base. If it is your government, those are your tax dollars at work.
Thank goodness some are returning to Linux, but I don't think we will see good quality firmware until a return to specific operating systems for the instrument.
The OS based instruments only became popular because it reduced cost to generate code for the instrument. Overall quality is far lower now, patches galore. We didn't often need to patch test equipment.
Today I have EEPROM programmers that are useless, and a few other instruments. Try and run an Audio Precision System 1 on a new computer. It ain't easy folks. I think additional control through a PC is a good idea, but total control? Bad idea because support is very limited.
I just had to replace a perfectly fine video doorbell, worked perfectly and it wasn't a cheap one. Why? Alexa dropped support. A management decision and my hardware was junk just like that. No warning, no troubleshooting help and no offer to replace with new with a discount. I had to prove the case. EZVIZ in case you're wondering.
When you buy test equipment, you have the right to use it until it ends life normally. You also should have the right to repair it. With the cost of test equipment, allowing it to die due to software support is criminal. Turfing a good piece of gear because they can't calibrate it to certify it? Okay, you just contributed to inflation because any cost borne by a company must be passed on to their customer base. If it is your government, those are your tax dollars at work.
Thanks for bringing that to my attention. That is great news. That website looks really good; thanks for the link.
Cheers,
Bob
I have an HP/Agilent Infineon 54845 and it may be what you are referring to. It was circa 2000, and it ran Windows 98. It was a heavy tank. 4 channels with real knobs, just like an analog scope interface - very user-friendly. Four channels, with sampling at 4 GHz and analog bandwidth up to 1.5 GHz. It still runs just fine. The knobs are rotary encoders.
Cheers,
Bob
So its a dedicated computer tied to that piece of test-equipment, ie your test equipment is now in two boxes rather than one, defeating the original object.