Dedicated debouncer IC...

[John Larkin]

On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 18:17:32 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 16:26, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 12:43:51 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 12:06, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 11:24:05 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

snip

Engineering time is very valuable, and there are lots of
noncritical jobs where cut-n-paste makes perfect sense. For
instance, a bunch of my small instruments run off our standard
24V wall wart and use two buck regulators to make +12-14V and
-16-20V. That\'s generally an LMR23630 running at 2 MHz and an
AOZ1282CI respectively. (The AOZ runs off the 23630\'s output
so we can have more negative headroom.) They\'re reasonably
cheap, work well, and we know how to keep the EMI low enough
for use in small form factor ultrasensitive instruments. So
power and EMI are solved problems for the most part.

Nothing wrong with cutting and pasting chunks of a schematic,
but you\'ve got to be careful about things like mixing 0603s and
0805s accidentally, or net names, or part library changes. Just
check.

My cut-and-paste is done with scissors and rubber cement. The
ref des get redone at BOM compilation time--I number the parts as I
enter them into the BOM, which reduces the number of blunders that
have to be caught later.

We physically resequence the ref desigs in a standard pattern, to
make manufacturing and QC happy, and back-annotate the schematic.

We enter our MAX stock number as a part attribute on each part on
the schematic, so PADS can generate the BOM in our format. I wrote a
program that cross-checks each part type and value against the part
in stock, which catches a lot of errors.

Simon did one of those for us as well, and our parts DB is in SQLite to
make it easy to back up. I generate a paper schematic and CSV BOM using
our database\'s master list, then somebody lays the board out (Simon for
our internal stuff, vendors for customer stuff).

Some of our boards have a thousand parts.

We haven\'t gone beyond 250 or so, which is still a lot.

The net names are a genuine issue, true.

When I cut and paste in LT Spice, and things get really crazy, I
look for shorts. It just replicates the net names.

Yup. So does Diptrace.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Current versions of PADS Logic don\'t seem to allow assigning a net
name to a wire without an explicit, visible offpage connector.
Anything without that gets an automatic name like $$$45678 or
something, and they change when you copy and paste, so they don\'t
short.

I recently wanted to force a net name without needing an offpage, so I
did offpages

-------->> NAME NAME <<-----------

to an otherwise local net.

 

[Ricketty C]

On Thursday, August 13, 2020 at 10:49:32 AM UTC-4, Jan Panteltje wrote:

On a sunny day (Thu, 13 Aug 2020 04:37:21 -0700 (PDT)) it happened Ricketty C
gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote in
91a0d592-c204-46c0-8c7f-8a18350d382do@googlegroups.com>:

I\'m typing on a keyboard with two broken keys. I have a new keyboard but taking a laptop apart is not always so simple.

Laptops suck!

Laptops are great,
for one thing those have a build in battery backup for if the mains fails.

Laptops are great at the things they do well. They suck at other things. It\'s great they have a built in UPS. But it doesn\'t hold up as long as my UPS keeps the Internet up.

I\'d like to buy a new laptop, this is a hot boat anchor. But the newer keyboards are shrinking the arrow keys out of existence in the name of beauty. No laptop maker wants their keyboard to have an *irregular* shape! It has to fit within a neat, pretty rectangle.

Even the \"gaming\" laptops are squeezing the arrow and other cursor keys in their quest for \"look\" while ignoring \"feel\".

A previous laptop (Toshiba perhaps) had a nice keyboard and actually had buttons on the touchpad so I used that. Since then they build the buttons into the touchpad so my thumb resting on the buttons prevents the pad from working! So I brought my mouse out of retirement.

Screw the dolts who design laptops and screw those who buy them mindlessly.... because they\'re \"pretty\".

--

Rick C.

-- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 2020-08-13 19:06, John Larkin wrote:

On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 18:17:32 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 16:26, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 12:43:51 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 12:06, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 11:24:05 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

snip

Engineering time is very valuable, and there are lots of
noncritical jobs where cut-n-paste makes perfect sense. For
instance, a bunch of my small instruments run off our standard
24V wall wart and use two buck regulators to make +12-14V and
-16-20V. That\'s generally an LMR23630 running at 2 MHz and an
AOZ1282CI respectively. (The AOZ runs off the 23630\'s output
so we can have more negative headroom.) They\'re reasonably
cheap, work well, and we know how to keep the EMI low enough
for use in small form factor ultrasensitive instruments. So
power and EMI are solved problems for the most part.

Nothing wrong with cutting and pasting chunks of a schematic,
but you\'ve got to be careful about things like mixing 0603s and
0805s accidentally, or net names, or part library changes. Just
check.

My cut-and-paste is done with scissors and rubber cement. The
ref des get redone at BOM compilation time--I number the parts as I
enter them into the BOM, which reduces the number of blunders that
have to be caught later.

We physically resequence the ref desigs in a standard pattern, to
make manufacturing and QC happy, and back-annotate the schematic.

We enter our MAX stock number as a part attribute on each part on
the schematic, so PADS can generate the BOM in our format. I wrote a
program that cross-checks each part type and value against the part
in stock, which catches a lot of errors.

Simon did one of those for us as well, and our parts DB is in SQLite to
make it easy to back up. I generate a paper schematic and CSV BOM using
our database\'s master list, then somebody lays the board out (Simon for
our internal stuff, vendors for customer stuff).

Some of our boards have a thousand parts.

We haven\'t gone beyond 250 or so, which is still a lot.

The net names are a genuine issue, true.

When I cut and paste in LT Spice, and things get really crazy, I
look for shorts. It just replicates the net names.

Yup. So does Diptrace.

Current versions of PADS Logic don\'t seem to allow assigning a net
name to a wire without an explicit, visible offpage connector.
Anything without that gets an automatic name like $$$45678 or
something, and they change when you copy and paste, so they don\'t
short.

I recently wanted to force a net name without needing an offpage, so I
did offpages

-------->> NAME NAME <<-----------

to an otherwise local net.

Our gizmos tend to have a lot of things connected in non-cascade
fashion, so we do that on individual pages quite a lot.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs


--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[John Larkin]

On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 20:31:55 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 19:06, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 18:17:32 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 16:26, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 12:43:51 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 12:06, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 11:24:05 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

snip

Engineering time is very valuable, and there are lots of
noncritical jobs where cut-n-paste makes perfect sense. For
instance, a bunch of my small instruments run off our standard
24V wall wart and use two buck regulators to make +12-14V and
-16-20V. That\'s generally an LMR23630 running at 2 MHz and an
AOZ1282CI respectively. (The AOZ runs off the 23630\'s output
so we can have more negative headroom.) They\'re reasonably
cheap, work well, and we know how to keep the EMI low enough
for use in small form factor ultrasensitive instruments. So
power and EMI are solved problems for the most part.

Nothing wrong with cutting and pasting chunks of a schematic,
but you\'ve got to be careful about things like mixing 0603s and
0805s accidentally, or net names, or part library changes. Just
check.

My cut-and-paste is done with scissors and rubber cement. The
ref des get redone at BOM compilation time--I number the parts as I
enter them into the BOM, which reduces the number of blunders that
have to be caught later.

We physically resequence the ref desigs in a standard pattern, to
make manufacturing and QC happy, and back-annotate the schematic.

We enter our MAX stock number as a part attribute on each part on
the schematic, so PADS can generate the BOM in our format. I wrote a
program that cross-checks each part type and value against the part
in stock, which catches a lot of errors.

Simon did one of those for us as well, and our parts DB is in SQLite to
make it easy to back up. I generate a paper schematic and CSV BOM using
our database\'s master list, then somebody lays the board out (Simon for
our internal stuff, vendors for customer stuff).

Some of our boards have a thousand parts.

We haven\'t gone beyond 250 or so, which is still a lot.

The net names are a genuine issue, true.

When I cut and paste in LT Spice, and things get really crazy, I
look for shorts. It just replicates the net names.

Yup. So does Diptrace.

Current versions of PADS Logic don\'t seem to allow assigning a net
name to a wire without an explicit, visible offpage connector.
Anything without that gets an automatic name like $$$45678 or
something, and they change when you copy and paste, so they don\'t
short.

I recently wanted to force a net name without needing an offpage, so I
did offpages

-------->> NAME NAME <<-----------

to an otherwise local net.

Our gizmos tend to have a lot of things connected in non-cascade
fashion, so we do that on individual pages quite a lot.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I tried hanging a single offpage onto the net to force the name, but
PADS exported that to the board as $$$98765 or something.

I ultimately wanted to connect the net to an inner layer guard pour,
but I couldn\'t assign that the $$$ name, so I couldn\'t make the
connection. Grrrrr.

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 2020-08-13 20:45, John Larkin wrote:

On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 20:31:55 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 19:06, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 18:17:32 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 16:26, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 12:43:51 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 12:06, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 11:24:05 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

snip

Engineering time is very valuable, and there are lots of
noncritical jobs where cut-n-paste makes perfect sense. For
instance, a bunch of my small instruments run off our standard
24V wall wart and use two buck regulators to make +12-14V and
-16-20V. That\'s generally an LMR23630 running at 2 MHz and an
AOZ1282CI respectively. (The AOZ runs off the 23630\'s output
so we can have more negative headroom.) They\'re reasonably
cheap, work well, and we know how to keep the EMI low enough
for use in small form factor ultrasensitive instruments. So
power and EMI are solved problems for the most part.

Nothing wrong with cutting and pasting chunks of a schematic,
but you\'ve got to be careful about things like mixing 0603s and
0805s accidentally, or net names, or part library changes. Just
check.

My cut-and-paste is done with scissors and rubber cement. The
ref des get redone at BOM compilation time--I number the parts as I
enter them into the BOM, which reduces the number of blunders that
have to be caught later.

We physically resequence the ref desigs in a standard pattern, to
make manufacturing and QC happy, and back-annotate the schematic.

We enter our MAX stock number as a part attribute on each part on
the schematic, so PADS can generate the BOM in our format. I wrote a
program that cross-checks each part type and value against the part
in stock, which catches a lot of errors.

Simon did one of those for us as well, and our parts DB is in SQLite to
make it easy to back up. I generate a paper schematic and CSV BOM using
our database\'s master list, then somebody lays the board out (Simon for
our internal stuff, vendors for customer stuff).

Some of our boards have a thousand parts.

We haven\'t gone beyond 250 or so, which is still a lot.

The net names are a genuine issue, true.

When I cut and paste in LT Spice, and things get really crazy, I
look for shorts. It just replicates the net names.

Yup. So does Diptrace.

Current versions of PADS Logic don\'t seem to allow assigning a net
name to a wire without an explicit, visible offpage connector.
Anything without that gets an automatic name like $$$45678 or
something, and they change when you copy and paste, so they don\'t
short.

I recently wanted to force a net name without needing an offpage, so I
did offpages

-------->> NAME NAME <<-----------

to an otherwise local net.

Our gizmos tend to have a lot of things connected in non-cascade
fashion, so we do that on individual pages quite a lot.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I tried hanging a single offpage onto the net to force the name, but
PADS exported that to the board as $$$98765 or something.

I ultimately wanted to connect the net to an inner layer guard pour,
but I couldn\'t assign that the $$$ name, so I couldn\'t make the
connection. Grrrrr.

Well, maybe you could use the usual trick for isolating high-current
return paths on connectors: put a 0 ohm jumper to ground, so you can
rename the net.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[server]

On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 21:05:14 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 20:45, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 20:31:55 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 19:06, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 18:17:32 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 16:26, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 12:43:51 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 12:06, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 11:24:05 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

snip

Engineering time is very valuable, and there are lots of
noncritical jobs where cut-n-paste makes perfect sense. For
instance, a bunch of my small instruments run off our standard
24V wall wart and use two buck regulators to make +12-14V and
-16-20V. That\'s generally an LMR23630 running at 2 MHz and an
AOZ1282CI respectively. (The AOZ runs off the 23630\'s output
so we can have more negative headroom.) They\'re reasonably
cheap, work well, and we know how to keep the EMI low enough
for use in small form factor ultrasensitive instruments. So
power and EMI are solved problems for the most part.

Nothing wrong with cutting and pasting chunks of a schematic,
but you\'ve got to be careful about things like mixing 0603s and
0805s accidentally, or net names, or part library changes. Just
check.

My cut-and-paste is done with scissors and rubber cement. The
ref des get redone at BOM compilation time--I number the parts as I
enter them into the BOM, which reduces the number of blunders that
have to be caught later.

We physically resequence the ref desigs in a standard pattern, to
make manufacturing and QC happy, and back-annotate the schematic.

We enter our MAX stock number as a part attribute on each part on
the schematic, so PADS can generate the BOM in our format. I wrote a
program that cross-checks each part type and value against the part
in stock, which catches a lot of errors.

Simon did one of those for us as well, and our parts DB is in SQLite to
make it easy to back up. I generate a paper schematic and CSV BOM using
our database\'s master list, then somebody lays the board out (Simon for
our internal stuff, vendors for customer stuff).

Some of our boards have a thousand parts.

We haven\'t gone beyond 250 or so, which is still a lot.

The net names are a genuine issue, true.

When I cut and paste in LT Spice, and things get really crazy, I
look for shorts. It just replicates the net names.

Yup. So does Diptrace.

Current versions of PADS Logic don\'t seem to allow assigning a net
name to a wire without an explicit, visible offpage connector.
Anything without that gets an automatic name like $$$45678 or
something, and they change when you copy and paste, so they don\'t
short.

I recently wanted to force a net name without needing an offpage, so I
did offpages

-------->> NAME NAME <<-----------

to an otherwise local net.

Our gizmos tend to have a lot of things connected in non-cascade
fashion, so we do that on individual pages quite a lot.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I tried hanging a single offpage onto the net to force the name, but
PADS exported that to the board as $$$98765 or something.

I ultimately wanted to connect the net to an inner layer guard pour,
but I couldn\'t assign that the $$$ name, so I couldn\'t make the
connection. Grrrrr.


Well, maybe you could use the usual trick for isolating high-current
return paths on connectors: put a 0 ohm jumper to ground, so you can
rename the net.

Usual? I just invented that! Big ground loop.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

LT Spice lets you hang multiple net names on a wire, and has a jumper
that lets you change names. But the behavior is kind of goofy.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 2020-08-13 22:53, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 21:05:14 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 20:45, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 20:31:55 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 19:06, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 18:17:32 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 16:26, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 12:43:51 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 12:06, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 11:24:05 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

snip

Engineering time is very valuable, and there are lots of
noncritical jobs where cut-n-paste makes perfect sense. For
instance, a bunch of my small instruments run off our standard
24V wall wart and use two buck regulators to make +12-14V and
-16-20V. That\'s generally an LMR23630 running at 2 MHz and an
AOZ1282CI respectively. (The AOZ runs off the 23630\'s output
so we can have more negative headroom.) They\'re reasonably
cheap, work well, and we know how to keep the EMI low enough
for use in small form factor ultrasensitive instruments. So
power and EMI are solved problems for the most part.

Nothing wrong with cutting and pasting chunks of a schematic,
but you\'ve got to be careful about things like mixing 0603s and
0805s accidentally, or net names, or part library changes. Just
check.

My cut-and-paste is done with scissors and rubber cement. The
ref des get redone at BOM compilation time--I number the parts as I
enter them into the BOM, which reduces the number of blunders that
have to be caught later.

We physically resequence the ref desigs in a standard pattern, to
make manufacturing and QC happy, and back-annotate the schematic.

We enter our MAX stock number as a part attribute on each part on
the schematic, so PADS can generate the BOM in our format. I wrote a
program that cross-checks each part type and value against the part
in stock, which catches a lot of errors.

Simon did one of those for us as well, and our parts DB is in SQLite to
make it easy to back up. I generate a paper schematic and CSV BOM using
our database\'s master list, then somebody lays the board out (Simon for
our internal stuff, vendors for customer stuff).

Some of our boards have a thousand parts.

We haven\'t gone beyond 250 or so, which is still a lot.

The net names are a genuine issue, true.

When I cut and paste in LT Spice, and things get really crazy, I
look for shorts. It just replicates the net names.

Yup. So does Diptrace.

Current versions of PADS Logic don\'t seem to allow assigning a net
name to a wire without an explicit, visible offpage connector.
Anything without that gets an automatic name like $$$45678 or
something, and they change when you copy and paste, so they don\'t
short.

I recently wanted to force a net name without needing an offpage, so I
did offpages

-------->> NAME NAME <<-----------

to an otherwise local net.

Our gizmos tend to have a lot of things connected in non-cascade
fashion, so we do that on individual pages quite a lot.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I tried hanging a single offpage onto the net to force the name, but
PADS exported that to the board as $$$98765 or something.

I ultimately wanted to connect the net to an inner layer guard pour,
but I couldn\'t assign that the $$$ name, so I couldn\'t make the
connection. Grrrrr.


Well, maybe you could use the usual trick for isolating high-current
return paths on connectors: put a 0 ohm jumper to ground, so you can
rename the net.

Usual? I just invented that! Big ground loop.

Well, that\'s one of those \"a man\'s gotta do what a man\'s gotta do\"
things.

LT Spice lets you hang multiple net names on a wire, and has a jumper
that lets you change names. But the behavior is kind of goofy.

Never used it. But then most of my simulations are fairly small like
yours--just the bits I\'m not sure about.

BTW we\'ve just had a small lidar gig come in that gives me the
opportunity to do some mildly Larkinesque things to generate N sampling
edges (one for each of N T/Hs on the same wire) spaced by 1 ns +- 50 ps,
with the option to go to 500 ps spacing instead.

I suggested using a fast ramp driving N 20-cent LVDS line receivers
single-ended, with their other inputs controlled by nice cheap quad or
octal serial DACs, with a calibration step to take out timing errors due
to offsets and hysteresis.

The customer suggested using a digital delay generator instead. I didn\'t
have the heart to tell him....

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (Thu, 13 Aug 2020 16:47:07 -0700 (PDT)) it happened Ricketty C
<gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote in
<6163772f-8f60-49a5-9535-942f8535f82do@googlegroups.com>:

On Thursday, August 13, 2020 at 10:49:32 AM UTC-4, Jan Panteltje wrote:
On a sunny day (Thu, 13 Aug 2020 04:37:21 -0700 (PDT)) it happened Ricketty
C
gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote in
91a0d592-c204-46c0-8c7f-8a18350d382do@googlegroups.com>:

I\'m typing on a keyboard with two broken keys. I have a new keyboard but
taking a laptop apart is not always so simple.

Laptops suck!

Laptops are great,
for one thing those have a build in battery backup for if the mains fails.

Laptops
are great at the things they do well. They suck at other things. It\'s
great they have a built in UPS. But it doesn\'t hold up as long as my UPS
keeps the Internet up.

I\'d like to buy a new laptop, this is a hot boat anchor. But the newer keyboards
are shrinking the arrow keys out of existence in the name of beauty.
No laptop maker wants their keyboard to have an *irregular* shape! It has
to fit within a neat, pretty rectangle.

Even the \"gaming\" laptops are squeezing the arrow and other cursor keys in their
quest for \"look\" while ignoring \"feel\".

A previous laptop (Toshiba perhaps) had a nice keyboard and actually had buttons
on the touchpad so I used that. Since then they build the buttons into
the touchpad so my thumb resting on the buttons prevents the pad from working!
So I brought my mouse out of retirement.

Screw the dolts who design laptops and screw those who buy them mindlessly...
because they\'re \"pretty\".

http://panteltje.com/pub/samsung_laptop_IXIMG_0517.PNG
shows your posting.
The text is disappearing from the buttons...
For the rest it is OK, using it with mouse normaly, not with the rub-pad.
There is a raspberry with a RTL_SDR stick just visible behind it.

 

[Pimpom]

On 8/14/2020 5:17 AM, Ricketty C wrote:

Screw the dolts who design laptops and screw those who buy them mindlessly... because they\'re \"pretty\".

I use a laptop only when I don\'t have access to my desktop.

 

[Ricketty C]

On Friday, August 14, 2020 at 4:06:42 AM UTC-4, Jan Panteltje wrote:

On a sunny day (Thu, 13 Aug 2020 16:47:07 -0700 (PDT)) it happened Ricketty C
gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote in
6163772f-8f60-49a5-9535-942f8535f82do@googlegroups.com>:

On Thursday, August 13, 2020 at 10:49:32 AM UTC-4, Jan Panteltje wrote:
On a sunny day (Thu, 13 Aug 2020 04:37:21 -0700 (PDT)) it happened Ricketty
C
gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote in
91a0d592-c204-46c0-8c7f-8a18350d382do@googlegroups.com>:

I\'m typing on a keyboard with two broken keys. I have a new keyboard but
taking a laptop apart is not always so simple.

Laptops suck!

Laptops are great,
for one thing those have a build in battery backup for if the mains fails.

Laptops
are great at the things they do well. They suck at other things. It\'s
great they have a built in UPS. But it doesn\'t hold up as long as my UPS
keeps the Internet up.

I\'d like to buy a new laptop, this is a hot boat anchor. But the newer keyboards
are shrinking the arrow keys out of existence in the name of beauty.
No laptop maker wants their keyboard to have an *irregular* shape! It has
to fit within a neat, pretty rectangle.

Even the \"gaming\" laptops are squeezing the arrow and other cursor keys in their
quest for \"look\" while ignoring \"feel\".

A previous laptop (Toshiba perhaps) had a nice keyboard and actually had buttons
on the touchpad so I used that. Since then they build the buttons into
the touchpad so my thumb resting on the buttons prevents the pad from working!
So I brought my mouse out of retirement.

Screw the dolts who design laptops and screw those who buy them mindlessly...
because they\'re \"pretty\".

http://panteltje.com/pub/samsung_laptop_IXIMG_0517.PNG
shows your posting.
The text is disappearing from the buttons...
For the rest it is OK, using it with mouse normaly, not with the rub-pad.
There is a raspberry with a RTL_SDR stick just visible behind it.

Was there a point to showing us this??? Are you just showing us that your keys are wearing?

--

Rick C.

-+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[server]

On Fri, 14 Aug 2020 13:59:00 +0530, Pimpom <nobody@nowhere.com> wrote:

On 8/14/2020 5:17 AM, Ricketty C wrote:

Screw the dolts who design laptops and screw those who buy them mindlessly... because they\'re \"pretty\".

I use a laptop only when I don\'t have access to my desktop.

They are handy on a test bench, when you have to talk to a product
being tested.

I have a couple of old \"netbooks\", which were tiny laptops. They fit
on a workbench even better.

I have a big Vaio, with maybe 8-hour battery life, that I carry around
in case my main PCs should break at home or in the cabin. I can take
it to a coffee shop in case my Internet goes down too. Sometimes
squirrels eat the cables.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bwtcy32zlwrq0h5/Cable_Chewed.jpg?raw=1





--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[John S]

On 8/14/2020 11:14 AM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Fri, 14 Aug 2020 13:59:00 +0530, Pimpom <nobody@nowhere.com> wrote:

On 8/14/2020 5:17 AM, Ricketty C wrote:

Screw the dolts who design laptops and screw those who buy them mindlessly... because they\'re \"pretty\".

I use a laptop only when I don\'t have access to my desktop.

They are handy on a test bench, when you have to talk to a product
being tested.

I have a couple of old \"netbooks\", which were tiny laptops. They fit
on a workbench even better.

I have a big Vaio, with maybe 8-hour battery life, that I carry around
in case my main PCs should break at home or in the cabin. I can take
it to a coffee shop in case my Internet goes down too. Sometimes
squirrels eat the cables.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bwtcy32zlwrq0h5/Cable_Chewed.jpg?raw=1

I hate squirrels. They are rodents and as such are considered vermin.
They serve no purpose in the city. They may serve as food for other
wildlife in the country. They also plant trees where you don\'t want them.

But good to eat.

 

[server]

On Fri, 14 Aug 2020 11:30:43 -0500, John S <Sophi.2@invalid.org>
wrote:

On 8/14/2020 11:14 AM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Fri, 14 Aug 2020 13:59:00 +0530, Pimpom <nobody@nowhere.com> wrote:

On 8/14/2020 5:17 AM, Ricketty C wrote:

Screw the dolts who design laptops and screw those who buy them mindlessly... because they\'re \"pretty\".

I use a laptop only when I don\'t have access to my desktop.

They are handy on a test bench, when you have to talk to a product
being tested.

I have a couple of old \"netbooks\", which were tiny laptops. They fit
on a workbench even better.

I have a big Vaio, with maybe 8-hour battery life, that I carry around
in case my main PCs should break at home or in the cabin. I can take
it to a coffee shop in case my Internet goes down too. Sometimes
squirrels eat the cables.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bwtcy32zlwrq0h5/Cable_Chewed.jpg?raw=1

I hate squirrels. They are rodents and as such are considered vermin.
They serve no purpose in the city. They may serve as food for other
wildlife in the country. They also plant trees where you don\'t want them.

But good to eat.

They are outrageously cute. I have determined by extensive experiment
that they prefer Fritos to Cheetos. At least they don\'t grow when
planted.





--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 2020-08-14 12:59, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Fri, 14 Aug 2020 11:30:43 -0500, John S <Sophi.2@invalid.org
wrote:

On 8/14/2020 11:14 AM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Fri, 14 Aug 2020 13:59:00 +0530, Pimpom <nobody@nowhere.com> wrote:

On 8/14/2020 5:17 AM, Ricketty C wrote:

Screw the dolts who design laptops and screw those who buy them mindlessly... because they\'re \"pretty\".

I use a laptop only when I don\'t have access to my desktop.

They are handy on a test bench, when you have to talk to a product
being tested.

I have a couple of old \"netbooks\", which were tiny laptops. They fit
on a workbench even better.

I have a big Vaio, with maybe 8-hour battery life, that I carry around
in case my main PCs should break at home or in the cabin. I can take
it to a coffee shop in case my Internet goes down too. Sometimes
squirrels eat the cables.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bwtcy32zlwrq0h5/Cable_Chewed.jpg?raw=1

I hate squirrels. They are rodents and as such are considered vermin.
They serve no purpose in the city. They may serve as food for other
wildlife in the country. They also plant trees where you don\'t want them.

But good to eat.

They are outrageously cute. I have determined by extensive experiment
that they prefer Fritos to Cheetos. At least they don\'t grow when
planted.

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFZFjoX2cGg>

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[John Larkin]

On Fri, 14 Aug 2020 00:48:47 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 22:53, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 21:05:14 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 20:45, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 20:31:55 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 19:06, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 18:17:32 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 16:26, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 12:43:51 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 12:06, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 11:24:05 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

snip

Engineering time is very valuable, and there are lots of
noncritical jobs where cut-n-paste makes perfect sense. For
instance, a bunch of my small instruments run off our standard
24V wall wart and use two buck regulators to make +12-14V and
-16-20V. That\'s generally an LMR23630 running at 2 MHz and an
AOZ1282CI respectively. (The AOZ runs off the 23630\'s output
so we can have more negative headroom.) They\'re reasonably
cheap, work well, and we know how to keep the EMI low enough
for use in small form factor ultrasensitive instruments. So
power and EMI are solved problems for the most part.

Nothing wrong with cutting and pasting chunks of a schematic,
but you\'ve got to be careful about things like mixing 0603s and
0805s accidentally, or net names, or part library changes. Just
check.

My cut-and-paste is done with scissors and rubber cement. The
ref des get redone at BOM compilation time--I number the parts as I
enter them into the BOM, which reduces the number of blunders that
have to be caught later.

We physically resequence the ref desigs in a standard pattern, to
make manufacturing and QC happy, and back-annotate the schematic.

We enter our MAX stock number as a part attribute on each part on
the schematic, so PADS can generate the BOM in our format. I wrote a
program that cross-checks each part type and value against the part
in stock, which catches a lot of errors.

Simon did one of those for us as well, and our parts DB is in SQLite to
make it easy to back up. I generate a paper schematic and CSV BOM using
our database\'s master list, then somebody lays the board out (Simon for
our internal stuff, vendors for customer stuff).

Some of our boards have a thousand parts.

We haven\'t gone beyond 250 or so, which is still a lot.

The net names are a genuine issue, true.

When I cut and paste in LT Spice, and things get really crazy, I
look for shorts. It just replicates the net names.

Yup. So does Diptrace.

Current versions of PADS Logic don\'t seem to allow assigning a net
name to a wire without an explicit, visible offpage connector.
Anything without that gets an automatic name like $$$45678 or
something, and they change when you copy and paste, so they don\'t
short.

I recently wanted to force a net name without needing an offpage, so I
did offpages

-------->> NAME NAME <<-----------

to an otherwise local net.

Our gizmos tend to have a lot of things connected in non-cascade
fashion, so we do that on individual pages quite a lot.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I tried hanging a single offpage onto the net to force the name, but
PADS exported that to the board as $$$98765 or something.

I ultimately wanted to connect the net to an inner layer guard pour,
but I couldn\'t assign that the $$$ name, so I couldn\'t make the
connection. Grrrrr.


Well, maybe you could use the usual trick for isolating high-current
return paths on connectors: put a 0 ohm jumper to ground, so you can
rename the net.

Usual? I just invented that! Big ground loop.

Well, that\'s one of those \"a man\'s gotta do what a man\'s gotta do\"
things.

LT Spice lets you hang multiple net names on a wire, and has a jumper
that lets you change names. But the behavior is kind of goofy.

Never used it. But then most of my simulations are fairly small like
yours--just the bits I\'m not sure about.

BTW we\'ve just had a small lidar gig come in that gives me the
opportunity to do some mildly Larkinesque things to generate N sampling
edges (one for each of N T/Hs on the same wire) spaced by 1 ns +- 50 ps,
with the option to go to 500 ps spacing instead.

I suggested using a fast ramp driving N 20-cent LVDS line receivers
single-ended, with their other inputs controlled by nice cheap quad or
octal serial DACs, with a calibration step to take out timing errors due
to offsets and hysteresis.

Do any of the LVDS line receivers have hysteresis? I could use some.

The customer suggested using a digital delay generator instead. I didn\'t
have the heart to tell him....

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Do it, do it! I\'ll sell him one.

My new tiny 45-volt pulse generator works, but has a lot of jitter.
The switching supplies are an inch or so from the timing ramps. Gotta
fix that somehow.

 

[John Larkin]

On Fri, 14 Aug 2020 13:06:00 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-14 12:59, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Fri, 14 Aug 2020 11:30:43 -0500, John S <Sophi.2@invalid.org
wrote:

On 8/14/2020 11:14 AM, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Fri, 14 Aug 2020 13:59:00 +0530, Pimpom <nobody@nowhere.com> wrote:

On 8/14/2020 5:17 AM, Ricketty C wrote:

Screw the dolts who design laptops and screw those who buy them mindlessly... because they\'re \"pretty\".

I use a laptop only when I don\'t have access to my desktop.

They are handy on a test bench, when you have to talk to a product
being tested.

I have a couple of old \"netbooks\", which were tiny laptops. They fit
on a workbench even better.

I have a big Vaio, with maybe 8-hour battery life, that I carry around
in case my main PCs should break at home or in the cabin. I can take
it to a coffee shop in case my Internet goes down too. Sometimes
squirrels eat the cables.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bwtcy32zlwrq0h5/Cable_Chewed.jpg?raw=1

I hate squirrels. They are rodents and as such are considered vermin.
They serve no purpose in the city. They may serve as food for other
wildlife in the country. They also plant trees where you don\'t want them.

But good to eat.

They are outrageously cute. I have determined by extensive experiment
that they prefer Fritos to Cheetos. At least they don\'t grow when
planted.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFZFjoX2cGg

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Rodent abuse.

 

[John Larkin]

On Fri, 14 Aug 2020 10:46:43 -0700, John Larkin
<jlarkin@highland_atwork_technology.com> wrote:

On Fri, 14 Aug 2020 00:48:47 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 22:53, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 21:05:14 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 20:45, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 20:31:55 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 19:06, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 18:17:32 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 16:26, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 12:43:51 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 12:06, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 11:24:05 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

snip

Engineering time is very valuable, and there are lots of
noncritical jobs where cut-n-paste makes perfect sense. For
instance, a bunch of my small instruments run off our standard
24V wall wart and use two buck regulators to make +12-14V and
-16-20V. That\'s generally an LMR23630 running at 2 MHz and an
AOZ1282CI respectively. (The AOZ runs off the 23630\'s output
so we can have more negative headroom.) They\'re reasonably
cheap, work well, and we know how to keep the EMI low enough
for use in small form factor ultrasensitive instruments. So
power and EMI are solved problems for the most part.

Nothing wrong with cutting and pasting chunks of a schematic,
but you\'ve got to be careful about things like mixing 0603s and
0805s accidentally, or net names, or part library changes. Just
check.

My cut-and-paste is done with scissors and rubber cement. The
ref des get redone at BOM compilation time--I number the parts as I
enter them into the BOM, which reduces the number of blunders that
have to be caught later.

We physically resequence the ref desigs in a standard pattern, to
make manufacturing and QC happy, and back-annotate the schematic.

We enter our MAX stock number as a part attribute on each part on
the schematic, so PADS can generate the BOM in our format. I wrote a
program that cross-checks each part type and value against the part
in stock, which catches a lot of errors.

Simon did one of those for us as well, and our parts DB is in SQLite to
make it easy to back up. I generate a paper schematic and CSV BOM using
our database\'s master list, then somebody lays the board out (Simon for
our internal stuff, vendors for customer stuff).

Some of our boards have a thousand parts.

We haven\'t gone beyond 250 or so, which is still a lot.

The net names are a genuine issue, true.

When I cut and paste in LT Spice, and things get really crazy, I
look for shorts. It just replicates the net names.

Yup. So does Diptrace.

Current versions of PADS Logic don\'t seem to allow assigning a net
name to a wire without an explicit, visible offpage connector.
Anything without that gets an automatic name like $$$45678 or
something, and they change when you copy and paste, so they don\'t
short.

I recently wanted to force a net name without needing an offpage, so I
did offpages

-------->> NAME NAME <<-----------

to an otherwise local net.

Our gizmos tend to have a lot of things connected in non-cascade
fashion, so we do that on individual pages quite a lot.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I tried hanging a single offpage onto the net to force the name, but
PADS exported that to the board as $$$98765 or something.

I ultimately wanted to connect the net to an inner layer guard pour,
but I couldn\'t assign that the $$$ name, so I couldn\'t make the
connection. Grrrrr.


Well, maybe you could use the usual trick for isolating high-current
return paths on connectors: put a 0 ohm jumper to ground, so you can
rename the net.

Usual? I just invented that! Big ground loop.

Well, that\'s one of those \"a man\'s gotta do what a man\'s gotta do\"
things.

LT Spice lets you hang multiple net names on a wire, and has a jumper
that lets you change names. But the behavior is kind of goofy.

Never used it. But then most of my simulations are fairly small like
yours--just the bits I\'m not sure about.

BTW we\'ve just had a small lidar gig come in that gives me the
opportunity to do some mildly Larkinesque things to generate N sampling
edges (one for each of N T/Hs on the same wire) spaced by 1 ns +- 50 ps,
with the option to go to 500 ps spacing instead.

I suggested using a fast ramp driving N 20-cent LVDS line receivers
single-ended, with their other inputs controlled by nice cheap quad or
octal serial DACs, with a calibration step to take out timing errors due
to offsets and hysteresis.

Do any of the LVDS line receivers have hysteresis? I could use some.


The customer suggested using a digital delay generator instead. I didn\'t
have the heart to tell him....

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Do it, do it! I\'ll sell him one.

My new tiny 45-volt pulse generator works, but has a lot of jitter.
The switching supplies are an inch or so from the timing ramps. Gotta
fix that somehow.

Good news. It\'s not switcher noise getting into my ramps. The +10v
regulator, an LP2980-ADJ feeds the ramp RCs [1], and it\'s oscillating.
I used a tantalum cap on the output, like they said.

That will be much easier to fix than moving the switchers.

[1] Linearity isn\'t everything.

 

[Michael Terrell]

On Friday, August 14, 2020 at 12:14:46 PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:.

They are handy on a test bench, when you have to talk to a product
being tested.

I have a couple of old \"netbooks\", which were tiny laptops. They fit
on a workbench even better.

I have a big Vaio, with maybe 8-hour battery life, that I carry around
in case my main PCs should break at home or in the cabin. I can take
it to a coffee shop in case my Internet goes down too. Sometimes
squirrels eat the cables.

I had one bite into a 7200 volt power line. It took out about a 12 block area in downtown Eustis Florida for over an hour. It had chewed through a thick silicon rubber boot over the transformer\'s terminal. It bridged that one phase, to ground. I found pieces of fur new the door of my shop, which was about 100 feet away. It sounded like one of those fuses packed with gunpowder, to blow away any plasma when it opened. No second offense, for that varmint!

 

[Don Y]

On 8/14/2020 4:46 PM, Michael Terrell wrote:

I had one bite into a 7200 volt power line. It took out about a 12 block
area in downtown Eustis Florida for over an hour. It had chewed through a
thick silicon rubber boot over the transformer\'s terminal. It bridged that
one phase, to ground. I found pieces of fur new the door of my shop, which
was about 100 feet away. It sounded like one of those fuses packed with
gunpowder, to blow away any plasma when it opened. No second offense, for
that varmint!

We tend to have microbursts with some regularity, here.

On one occasion, I was visiting a facility that had set up several
of those \"portable canopies\" (like a tall tent, but with no sides)
outdoors.

A microburst came through and lifted several of them high into
the air. One ended up settling in the high tension wires a block
or two away. It was quite impressive to watch the sparks flying!

And, made me wonder how (if?) anyone could plan for some
number of that sort of event \"per year\". Or, if it is just
such a fluke that they don\'t even consider it!

I.e., I\'m sure they plan on some number of (rare) lightning
strikes per year. But, \"flying canopies\"???

(those lines are REALLY high off the ground!)

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 2020-08-14 13:46, John Larkin wrote:

On Fri, 14 Aug 2020 00:48:47 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 22:53, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 21:05:14 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 20:45, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 20:31:55 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 19:06, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 18:17:32 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 16:26, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 12:43:51 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-08-13 12:06, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 13 Aug 2020 11:24:05 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

snip

Engineering time is very valuable, and there are lots of
noncritical jobs where cut-n-paste makes perfect sense. For
instance, a bunch of my small instruments run off our standard
24V wall wart and use two buck regulators to make +12-14V and
-16-20V. That\'s generally an LMR23630 running at 2 MHz and an
AOZ1282CI respectively. (The AOZ runs off the 23630\'s output
so we can have more negative headroom.) They\'re reasonably
cheap, work well, and we know how to keep the EMI low enough
for use in small form factor ultrasensitive instruments. So
power and EMI are solved problems for the most part.

Nothing wrong with cutting and pasting chunks of a schematic,
but you\'ve got to be careful about things like mixing 0603s and
0805s accidentally, or net names, or part library changes. Just
check.

My cut-and-paste is done with scissors and rubber cement. The
ref des get redone at BOM compilation time--I number the parts as I
enter them into the BOM, which reduces the number of blunders that
have to be caught later.

We physically resequence the ref desigs in a standard pattern, to
make manufacturing and QC happy, and back-annotate the schematic.

We enter our MAX stock number as a part attribute on each part on
the schematic, so PADS can generate the BOM in our format. I wrote a
program that cross-checks each part type and value against the part
in stock, which catches a lot of errors.

Simon did one of those for us as well, and our parts DB is in SQLite to
make it easy to back up. I generate a paper schematic and CSV BOM using
our database\'s master list, then somebody lays the board out (Simon for
our internal stuff, vendors for customer stuff).

Some of our boards have a thousand parts.

We haven\'t gone beyond 250 or so, which is still a lot.

The net names are a genuine issue, true.

When I cut and paste in LT Spice, and things get really crazy, I
look for shorts. It just replicates the net names.

Yup. So does Diptrace.

Current versions of PADS Logic don\'t seem to allow assigning a net
name to a wire without an explicit, visible offpage connector.
Anything without that gets an automatic name like $$$45678 or
something, and they change when you copy and paste, so they don\'t
short.

I recently wanted to force a net name without needing an offpage, so I
did offpages

-------->> NAME NAME <<-----------

to an otherwise local net.

Our gizmos tend to have a lot of things connected in non-cascade
fashion, so we do that on individual pages quite a lot.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I tried hanging a single offpage onto the net to force the name, but
PADS exported that to the board as $$$98765 or something.

I ultimately wanted to connect the net to an inner layer guard pour,
but I couldn\'t assign that the $$$ name, so I couldn\'t make the
connection. Grrrrr.


Well, maybe you could use the usual trick for isolating high-current
return paths on connectors: put a 0 ohm jumper to ground, so you can
rename the net.

Usual? I just invented that! Big ground loop.

Well, that\'s one of those \"a man\'s gotta do what a man\'s gotta do\"
things.

LT Spice lets you hang multiple net names on a wire, and has a jumper
that lets you change names. But the behavior is kind of goofy.

Never used it. But then most of my simulations are fairly small like
yours--just the bits I\'m not sure about.

BTW we\'ve just had a small lidar gig come in that gives me the
opportunity to do some mildly Larkinesque things to generate N sampling
edges (one for each of N T/Hs on the same wire) spaced by 1 ns +- 50 ps,
with the option to go to 500 ps spacing instead.

I suggested using a fast ramp driving N 20-cent LVDS line receivers
single-ended, with their other inputs controlled by nice cheap quad or
octal serial DACs, with a calibration step to take out timing errors due
to offsets and hysteresis.

Do any of the LVDS line receivers have hysteresis? I could use some.

TI makes some, e.g.

SN65LVDS34DR Texas Instruments IC RECEIVER 0/2 8SOIC 8,140 - Immediate
10,001 - Factory Stock $1.00980 @ qty 1000

More expensive than my fave FIN1002, but has 50 mV hysteresis.

The customer suggested using a digital delay generator instead. I didn\'t
have the heart to tell him....


Do it, do it! I\'ll sell him one.

This gizmo is a bathymetric lidar for the Navy--he got a Phase 1 SBIR,
which is far from lush, especially split two ways. We\'re going to use
our existing shiny MPPC/SiPM detector module, goosed up a little for
more bandwidth. I need more than four timing channels, or I\'d just use
my nice P400. I could probably use a few matched cables and drive
multiple drops per cable, with delay loops for the short delays and the
P400 for the longer ones. (Can\'t go into more detail for NDA reasons.)

What we\'re getting out of it in this phase is some interesting
technology and a few bucks to do a bit of prototyping and get some
boards made.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com