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PicDude | 1 Sep 2006 01:45

Re: [EE]Eagle and larger PCB's

I've done larger boards with Eagle professional, but I can't compare with 
PCAD/Tango as I have not used them.  The only other package I am familiar 
with is Mentor, but had not used it extensively (in college).  Eagle is 
relatively "light" compared with some of the other professional packages, but 
the only thing I've needed is trace impedance calculations.  There are 
"ULPs" (user language programs), that let you write scripts to do things that 
are not built into the program though.

Size wise, I regularly do boards that are about 8" x 13", and I've previously 
done boards up to 12" x 14" (merging several circuits to be built as one 
panel by a boardhouse).  From memory, I'd say there were up to about 600 
components, including about a dozen microcontrollers and a few other IC's.

Eagle has a free edition, which has all the same features, but only limited by 
physical size and number of layers.  You should use it to verify it has the 
functionality you need, then fork out the $$ for the professional version.  
IMHO, it was relatively easy to learn.  I expect you'll have to create 
library parts for many of your components, so be prepared to spend some time 
to get your circuits converted.

Cheers,
-Neil.

On Thursday 31 August 2006 09:19, Mark E. Skeels wrote:
> (Oops. forgot the tag; it's been a while since I posted here...)
>
>
> Hi, folks,
>
> I've been using PCAD/TangoPCB for years. Recently I had occasion to lay
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David VanHorn | 1 Sep 2006 01:00

Re: [OT] Comcast, and my blood pressure..

>
>
> First of all, the actions of the technician as presented were
> inappropriate
> and far out of scale to the "problem" that he was presented with.
> "Threatening" your wife is not acceptiable, and should be followed up
> on.  Period.

It was, and I'm satisfied with their resolution.

They cannot forbid you from running wires from one property to another. It
> does not matter what kind of wire it is.  That being said, you also have
> to
> follow safty codes (which a wire running across the grass is a pretty bad
> violation of iirc).  They CAN bring suit against you for theft of service
> if
> they so choose, and try to prove that you were sharing service across
> properties. Please note, this DOES include wireless.

Interestingly, the last three people I talked to, including the supervisor,
told me that wireless is ok.  I'm taking them at their word.

Does that give the tech the legal right to chop up a wire he *knew* was in
> active participation in theft of service?  I don't know.  IANAL.

He didn't know that, he assumed it.  As you know, the router can be
configured NOT to pass that traffic, but he didn't ask, didn't call his
supervisor, which he should, he took it on himself to vandalize my
equipment.
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David VanHorn | 1 Sep 2006 01:01

Re: [OT] Comcast, and my blood pressure..

>
> I should mention that the comcast charges for the additional TVs
> are small and perhaps zero; they were low enough (including
> installation) that we made the conscious decision to be "honest"
> about the extra outlets rather than string our own cable around
> the house.  It was a technical rather than a moral decision...

Far better for them to do it, even at a loss, with their quad shield RG-6,
than have everyone using radio shack "radiax" and duct tape.
:)
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David VanHorn | 1 Sep 2006 01:06

Re: [OT] On Nuclear power

>
> The "requirement" that nuke waste sites be "labeled" in such a
> way that hypothetical devolved civilizations 10000 years from
> now would be able to tell that they're dangerous is one that I
> find particularly objectionable...

It's largely political, but understandable, given the nature of the threat.
Kids have been hurt, finding radioactive capsuled from scrapped medical
equipment, very high level sources.  It would be bad if our decendants dug
into it and used it as religious ornaments or some such.. Mostly it's based
on the idea that a collapse is inevitable over that span, and they might not
be able to tell the hazard.

 I prefer to think of future
> humans as mining the waste sites for valuable radioactives used
> to power their spacecraft, and we don't treat ANY other environmental
> modifications with concern as to how they might impact future
> non-civilizations...

I suspect they will be mining our dumps for all kinds of things, and maybe
rather thankful to us for concentrating it so nicely for them.
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Xiaofan Chen | 1 Sep 2006 01:40
Picon

[EE] Philips Semi is now NXP

What a name? New XP?

http://www.nxp.com/profile/

Very interesting data:
Net sales: € 4.77 billion in 2005
Sales by region:
35% Greater China
31% Rest of Asia
25% Europe
9% North America

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David Minkler | 1 Sep 2006 02:20

Re: [OT] On Nuclear power

David VanHorn wrote:
<snip>

>I suspect they will be mining our dumps for all kinds of things, and maybe
>rather thankful to us for concentrating it so nicely for them.
>
... and it won't be 10000 years from now.

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Howard Winter | 1 Sep 2006 02:20
Picon
Picon

Re: [PIC] PIC16F88 too small

Bill,

On Tue, 29 Aug 2006 21:54:41 -0700, William "Chops" Westfield wrote:

> 
> On Aug 29, 2006, at 9:38 AM, Tamas Rudnai wrote:
> 
> > for example if you have English text with 28 letters you can
> > store it in 5 bits.
> 
> And of course there is a standard 5-bit code that handles most
> numerics and punctuation as well ("Baudot"), as well as semi-standard
> mechanisms for 6 "symbol" characters in 32bits ("Radix50"); stuff
> from the days when mainframes had a whole megabyte of core and
> space mattered.

Errr - when I got my first job on a mainframe (1974) Baudot was already ancient (it was used on teleprinters
long before computers) - and that 
mainframe had 96k of memory!  After a couple of years it was upgraded to 320k - megabytes were only a dream on
commercial computers  :-)

Cheers,

Howard Winter
St.Albans, England

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peter green | 1 Sep 2006 02:46

RE: [OT] On Car use


> It is not guaranteed that moving several
> tons of metal through rush hour stop and go every day just to move one
> person means a high quality of life -- for that person or the ones around
> that person.
while i don't have a car myself yet i certainly see it as a very desirable
way of getting arround even compared to good public transport.

if travelling by car and suddenly you wan't to take say a couple of PCs and
monitors with you or maybe a couple of small but heavy rackmount servers
to/from a colocation facility its no issue, doing it by public transport
would be a major pita.

the same goes for shopping, you can bring far more in one car trip where you
use a supermarket trolly to load the car (or if walking round a shopping
centre going back to the car to drop stuff off when you have as much as you
can carry before resuming shopping) and park it near the house to unload
than you can if you have to carry it all with you in one go (pretty much a
requirement for taking stuff with you on public transport)

also unless you live work and do everything you wan't to do really near the
city centre public transport often puts severe restrictions on when you can
travel, for example here (somewhere in the uk i won't say exactly where) we
now have a bus service every 15 minuites monday to saturday daytime which is
just fine. However if you wan't to travel on sundays or public holidays or
in the evenings then its down to an hourly service which means any trip
needs carefull planning. Connection issues make using infrequent
evening/sunday/public holiday services even worse if you aren't simply
travvelling in and out of the center of town.
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Carey Fisher | 1 Sep 2006 02:50

Re: [OT] On Nuclear power

Herbert Graf wrote:
>  Wind is a WONDERFUL choice, but
> it just doesn't work everywhere, and worse it's not a constant source of
> power.
>
> TTYL
>
>   
I wonder...  if you extract energy from the wind, then the wind contains 
less energy, doesn't blow as hard/far.  What are the unintended 
consequences of extracting energy from the wind?  Change in weather 
patterns causing famine?  Is it really a "WONDERFUL" choice or is it 
just another choice with attendent negative consequences?
-- 

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David VanHorn | 1 Sep 2006 03:05

Re: [OT] On Nuclear power

>
>
> I wonder...  if you extract energy from the wind, then the wind contains
> less energy, doesn't blow as hard/far.  What are the unintended
> consequences of extracting energy from the wind?  Change in weather
> patterns causing famine?  Is it really a "WONDERFUL" choice or is it
> just another choice with attendent negative consequences?

Extracting as much energy as a few trees might..
Out of an airstream that might be a mile high.
The most a given mill can extract is something like 30% of the available
energy within it's swept area.
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Gmane