On 6/8/2010 10:44 PM, K6LHA wrote:
On Jun 7, 7:26�pm, Jeffrey wrote:
On 6/7/2010 4:49 PM, K6LHA wrote:

Speaking of PICs, you see the nifty test equipment in the recent QST
magazines using one of those to do all the "ugly" stuff?

Please explain what "ugly stuff" is.

Okies... The one I was thinking about, it started out as a simple
amps and volts meter for monitoring battery supplies for portable
equipment. But after they added the processor and a nice LCD display
it turned into a watt hour meter, watt meter and data recorder.

Now I do have a couple of 4-terminal Simpson watt meters in the
"oh boy" box, but there's something kind of neat about doing all
of what used to be done the hard way with discreet components and
mechanical hardware (chart recorders and such) with an IC.

Jeff-1.0
wa6fwi

On 6/7/2010 5:49 PM, K6LHA wrote:
On Jun 6, 4:08�am, John wr
ote:
On 6/5/2010 7:15 PM, K6LHA wrote:

Slight correction. �I'm playing with Microchip's PIC one-pack
ag
e
micros right now, using their free program editor-compiler. �
Go
t the
development hardware package because IC lead length spacings got too
small with modst SMDs. �For many years AADE and Neil Heckt ha
ve
been
making and selling their one-chip frequency counters up in the Puget
Sound area and many hams have installed those in older receivers and
transceivers. �Neil has a great little workshop instrument in
h
is L/C
meter also using a PIC chip.

Not really a correction Len.. We are speaking of two different places
on
the development train.. You are starting with ready made hardware and
developing applications or products from that hardware.

I'm talking aout making new hardware.

A PIC microcontroller is just an IC. It is a "tabula rasa" that can
be programmed to do anything wanted (within certain limitations). A
vacuum tube is "ready made hardware" that is made using very
specialized machinery and test equipment. So is a transistor. So is
a resistor. So are most capacitors.

I don't see any dividing line there in buying/taking/scrounging
components to build a larger system of electronics for any specific
purpose. If the "hardware" needs software to make it work in a
specific way, then that does not make it somehow worse/better/not-
applicable. At least not to me.

I, for one, am not going out to mine copper ore to smelt and
eventually make into wire to hook up things. Or make alloys that are
resistive to make resistors or delaminate mica so that I can somehow
silver it to make silver-mica capacitors good for RF.

I had started out as an illustrator. That is an artist who draws/
paints/inks things as they really are. Much later I had formal
classes (Art Center School of Design, now in Pasadena, CA) which
taught that "old masters" how to make their own oil paint. Making
paint is not what I consider "art" but that's what all those old oil
painters had to do. If I want to do some painting now I can go into a
Michaels and buy already-to-go oil paint, or caesin or chalk or
several other items to make an image on my choice of surfaces. I am
an illustrator, not a paint maker.

At the same time I would browse the Allied catalog (Allied then
headquartered in Chicago, IL) for "radio parts" to make things
electronic. I don't disparage those (limited) components nor do I
separate the "hardware" from the (then) "software" that was really
just a schematic/wiring diagram. Today I could (if I had access to an
expensive program) make a mask for a PCB and its drill guide just from
a schematic diagram. I've done that for work...as well as making PCB
masks "the old fashioned way" using tracing paper (for two-sided
boards) and wetware.

Today's programmable microcontroller, whether from Microchip or
Altera, is a wonderful additional component to our modern cornucopia
of fascinating electronic components. WE can do all sorts of things
with those components in ways never thought of back in olden times.

Me, I'm going to keep my nice K&E Duplex Decitrig slide rule (from
high school) as a memento of when "design" meant to 3-decimal-places
tops or having to look in tables of logarithms (and do by-hand
interpolation) to get 5 decimal places. With my HP-35 I suddenly had
10 decimal place accuracy and I could do equations never before
possible without expensive mainframe computer time...all contained in
bulk space of that K&E slide rule.

I've built three frequency counters using old digital logic. With one
PIC the size of one DIP, I can make a single frequency counter that
operates up to 30 MHz and includes the circuit (but not the crystal)
for the reference frequency oscillator. It will drive a small LCD
panel directly and the power demand is so slight the PIC doesn't even
get warm. If worst came to worst, I could program that PIC by hand,
byte by byte, using toggle switches (one per bit). But, the worst is
not here so I use free software to do the programming.

73, Len K6LHA


I think we are now on the same page.

I do agree one cqn still adapt existing hardware, including some new
exciting stuff, to do new jobs,, And perhaps a new piece of hardware can
be thus developed (For example if an application uses say 25% of a PIC
chip's abilities, and the application becomes "popular" then the company
making the chip may may a x.25 version (25% of the original) that is
less expensive (or perhaps it's the original verison with a failure
somewhere in the other 75% which makes it "Free to produce")


But .. To play around at the component level in today's VLSI world.. You
need a clean room, lasers and things to control them.

On Jun 9, 6:16�am, John Davis wrote:
On 6/7/2010 5:49 PM, K6LHA wrote:

I think we are now on the same page.

We aren't even at the same bookshelf.

I'm not endorsing Microchip. They are very busy making new PICs of
all kinds and lots of other IC types. Also making lots of good
technical information on how to use them.

To use those, especially for the task of generating the control word
for an Analog Devices single-chip frequency synthesizer (serial or
parallel word, a choice) for any stable frequency from near-DC to 60
MHz, takes a DIFFERENT route than copying analog circuitry out of a
1960s QST project.

For example, Instruction Sets. I've got five different micro
instruction sets running around in my head from past microprocessor
adventures and Microchip has this RISC or Reduced Instruction Set
which is mostly different than any of the other five. Add to that at
least two dialects of Fortran and six more dialects of Basic, yet the
procedural creation of this software is the SAME as what I was doing
back in 1972. One needs to CONCENTRATE on the Instruction Set being
used and, hopefully, the source code editor will trap any typos or
wrong syntax. It becomes harder and harder as the semiconductors get
smaller and smaller. It is like trying to translate something while
riding a bus along a pot-holed street with lots of nosy riders. It
can be done but it takes CONCENTRATION.

But .. To play around at the component level in today's VLSI world.. You
need a clean room, lasers and things to control them.

NO. A "foundry" is NOT needed. Not even if you are only doing
digital stuff.

"VLSI" is just more of the same of "LSI" and that was just more than
medium-scale integrated. Ever try a "STATE MACHINE" project? One
could do that using an EPROM. The essential part of an Apple ][+
floppy disk controller used one and Wozniak did his all by hisself.
Fascinating.

How about a Logarithmic Detector such as Analog Devices makes (several
models available but they don't hand out "samples" readily now).
Analog thing, just a chain of successive-detection blocks inside,
designed so that the summation of their outputs has a logarithmic
function of the input. Can make a very high dynamic range spectrum
analyzer.

If you think you NEED foundry facilities, then read Hans Camenzind's
small book on "Designing Analog Chips," a wonderful look into the
basic guts of doing just that, complete with all the specialized info
on junctions and hanging them together. He writes very well. He made
IC masks from the start, cutting Rubylith by hand. Designed the most-
sold IC of the analog kind, the 555.

73, Len K6LHA