Severall questions

K

Kari Laine

Guest
Hi,

I bought reflow soldering station from USA. I don't know why it did not
occur to me that the voltage over there is 130V. Now I bought an
transformer from 250 to 130. But the output does not include ground.
I wonder whether it affects in what direction I put the plug in now when
the ground lead is not enforcing it. There must a pump inside the reflow
station. I am worried it would turn in the wrong direction.
Any advice?

I have been studying FPGA's and bought pluto3 from http://www.knjn.com/
.. Could you recommend bigger and cheaper source for FPGA boards. I am
totally out of touch with the pricing and features.

Also have downloaded the OpenSPARC source - lot of code. I was wondering
how much slower FPGA implementation of processor is compared to native
chip? I have seen somewhere 20%. I was wondering if a computer is
implemented with processor in FPGA it can be updated on the field just
with software - am I correct? Why it has not been done?
Could a PC chipset be implemented with FPGA? What are the limitations of
FPGA? Any info welcomed.

Is there a computer based on IBM Cell processors? Something in the range
$2000-2500. It would be nice if there was a computer to which you can
add cards which contain more Cell processors. Any idea why IBM has not
made such? Linux is already ported to Cell so there would be an
operating system.

Best Regards
Kari

--
PIC - ARM - Microcontrollers - I2C - SPI
Keypads - USB-RS232 - USB-I2C - Accessories
http://www.byvac.com
I am just a happy customer
 
"Kari Laine" <klaine8@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:UO6dne9RdoCZv_TRnZ2dnUVZ8k6dnZ2d@giganews.com...
Hi,

I bought reflow soldering station from USA. I don't know why it did not
occur to me that the voltage over there is 130V. Now I bought an
transformer from 250 to 130. But the output does not include ground.
I wonder whether it affects in what direction I put the plug in now when
the ground lead is not enforcing it. There must a pump inside the reflow
station. I am worried it would turn in the wrong direction.
Any advice?

Its not likely that the pump will run backwards. You will lose the grounded
Click to expand...
tip with your 'isolation' transformer.
 
On 08/16/2010 04:32 AM, Kari Laine wrote:
Hi,

I bought reflow soldering station from USA. I don't know why it did not
occur to me that the voltage over there is 130V. Now I bought an
transformer from 250 to 130. But the output does not include ground.
I wonder whether it affects in what direction I put the plug in now when
the ground lead is not enforcing it. There must a pump inside the reflow
station. I am worried it would turn in the wrong direction.
Any advice?
Click to expand...
First, it's 120V (or 117, or 110, depending on who you ask). 130 is a
bit much.

Second, it's AC -- the pump will run the correct direction; it certainly
can't "tell" what direction the AC is coming from.

Third, wire in a ground. Equipment designed for North American service
uses a grounded frame as a safety measure; if you don't wire the frame
to ground and there's a fault you may get AC on the frame of the
machine. That can make for an unpleasantly exciting day.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Do you need to implement control loops in software?
"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" was written for you.
See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html
 
Tim Wescott wrote:
On 08/16/2010 04:32 AM, Kari Laine wrote:
Hi,

I bought reflow soldering station from USA. I don't know why it did not
occur to me that the voltage over there is 130V. Now I bought an
transformer from 250 to 130. But the output does not include ground.
I wonder whether it affects in what direction I put the plug in now when
the ground lead is not enforcing it. There must a pump inside the reflow
station. I am worried it would turn in the wrong direction.
Any advice?

First, it's 120V (or 117, or 110, depending on who you ask). 130 is a
bit much.

Second, it's AC -- the pump will run the correct direction; it certainly
can't "tell" what direction the AC is coming from.

Third, wire in a ground. Equipment designed for North American service
uses a grounded frame as a safety measure; if you don't wire the frame
to ground and there's a fault you may get AC on the frame of the
machine. That can make for an unpleasantly exciting day.
Click to expand...
The technical term is "big surprise."

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired
 
On 08/16/2010 09:38 PM, Dan wrote:
Tim Wescott wrote:
On 08/16/2010 04:32 AM, Kari Laine wrote:
Hi,

I bought reflow soldering station from USA. I don't know why it did not
occur to me that the voltage over there is 130V. Now I bought an
transformer from 250 to 130. But the output does not include ground.
I wonder whether it affects in what direction I put the plug in now when
the ground lead is not enforcing it. There must a pump inside the reflow
station. I am worried it would turn in the wrong direction.
Any advice?

First, it's 120V (or 117, or 110, depending on who you ask). 130 is a
bit much.

Second, it's AC -- the pump will run the correct direction; it
certainly can't "tell" what direction the AC is coming from.

Third, wire in a ground. Equipment designed for North American
service uses a grounded frame as a safety measure; if you don't wire
the frame to ground and there's a fault you may get AC on the frame of
the machine. That can make for an unpleasantly exciting day.


The technical term is "big surprise."

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired
Click to expand...
Thank you for comments. I was wondering if I could wire that third -
ground - from the 220 side... So the hot wires would be from the
isolation transformer but the ground from the 220 socket. Stupid idea?

Best Regards
Kari


--
PIC - ARM - Microcontrollers - I2C - SPI
Keypads - USB-RS232 - USB-I2C - Accessories
http://www.byvac.com
I am just a happy customer
 
Kari Laine wrote:
On 08/16/2010 09:38 PM, Dan wrote:
Tim Wescott wrote:
On 08/16/2010 04:32 AM, Kari Laine wrote:
Hi,

I bought reflow soldering station from USA. I don't know why it did not
occur to me that the voltage over there is 130V. Now I bought an
transformer from 250 to 130. But the output does not include ground.
I wonder whether it affects in what direction I put the plug in now when
the ground lead is not enforcing it. There must a pump inside the reflow
station. I am worried it would turn in the wrong direction.
Any advice?
First, it's 120V (or 117, or 110, depending on who you ask). 130 is a
bit much.

Second, it's AC -- the pump will run the correct direction; it
certainly can't "tell" what direction the AC is coming from.

Third, wire in a ground. Equipment designed for North American
service uses a grounded frame as a safety measure; if you don't wire
the frame to ground and there's a fault you may get AC on the frame of
the machine. That can make for an unpleasantly exciting day.

The technical term is "big surprise."

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

Thank you for comments. I was wondering if I could wire that third -
ground - from the 220 side... So the hot wires would be from the
isolation transformer but the ground from the 220 socket. Stupid idea?

Best Regards
Kari


Going from memory here, but I think that depends on which country one
Click to expand...
is in. I think the UK ground goes back to the power station, not a local
ground. I'm not sure if there would be a difference if you did that. I
know it's not much help, but that's as far as my thinking goes.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired
 
On Mon, 16 Aug 2010 14:32:03 +0300, Kari Laine wrote:

I bought reflow soldering station from USA. I don't know why it did not
occur to me that the voltage over there is 130V. Now I bought an
transformer from 250 to 130. But the output does not include ground.
I wonder whether it affects in what direction I put the plug in now when
the ground lead is not enforcing it. There must a pump inside the reflow
station. I am worried it would turn in the wrong direction.
Any advice?
Click to expand...
It won't run in the wrong direction, but it might run at the wrong speed
(US mains is 60Hz, Europe is 50Hz).

Also have downloaded the OpenSPARC source - lot of code. I was wondering
how much slower FPGA implementation of processor is compared to native
chip? I have seen somewhere 20%.
Click to expand...
It depends upon the processor and the FPGA. An ancient 8-bit CPU
implemented on an FPGA might run a lot faster than the original CPU.

I was wondering if a computer is
implemented with processor in FPGA it can be updated on the field just
with software - am I correct? Why it has not been done?
Click to expand...
The main reason is that an FPGA is likely to be vastly more expensive than
an ASIC which implements the same functionality. Also, I don't think that
they make FPGAs which are capable of fully implementing a modern CPU
(particularly an x86). A RISC CPU core might be doable, but the FPGA would
have to provide the cache (you certainly aren't going to be able to build
a sizeable L1 cache out of logic blocks).

Could a PC chipset be implemented with FPGA? What are the limitations of
FPGA? Any info welcomed.
Click to expand...
Higher cost, higher power consumption, limited complexity, possibly slower.

Is there a computer based on IBM Cell processors? Something in the range
$2000-2500. It would be nice if there was a computer to which you can
add cards which contain more Cell processors. Any idea why IBM has not
made such? Linux is already ported to Cell so there would be an
operating system.
Click to expand...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_processor

The Playstation 3 uses the Cell, but they have dropped the ability to run
Linux, and recent firmware upgrades disable it. You *might* be
able to find a second-hand one which hasn't had the Linux support disabled.
 
On 08/16/2010 12:13 PM, Kari Laine wrote:
On 08/16/2010 09:38 PM, Dan wrote:
Tim Wescott wrote:
On 08/16/2010 04:32 AM, Kari Laine wrote:
Hi,

I bought reflow soldering station from USA. I don't know why it did not
occur to me that the voltage over there is 130V. Now I bought an
transformer from 250 to 130. But the output does not include ground.
I wonder whether it affects in what direction I put the plug in now when
the ground lead is not enforcing it. There must a pump inside the reflow
station. I am worried it would turn in the wrong direction.
Any advice?

First, it's 120V (or 117, or 110, depending on who you ask). 130 is a
bit much.

Second, it's AC -- the pump will run the correct direction; it
certainly can't "tell" what direction the AC is coming from.

Third, wire in a ground. Equipment designed for North American
service uses a grounded frame as a safety measure; if you don't wire
the frame to ground and there's a fault you may get AC on the frame of
the machine. That can make for an unpleasantly exciting day.


The technical term is "big surprise."

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

Thank you for comments. I was wondering if I could wire that third -
ground - from the 220 side... So the hot wires would be from the
isolation transformer but the ground from the 220 socket. Stupid idea?
Click to expand...
That's technically correct, and is essentially what is done for
grounding in North America (the pole transformer isolates the AC from
any ground reference, and the building wiring goes back to a ground
stake). As Dan pointed out there may be some issues with your local
electrical code, though.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Do you need to implement control loops in software?
"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" was written for you.
See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html
 
On Mon, 16 Aug 2010 14:32:03 +0300, Kari Laine <klaine8@gmail.com>
wrote:

Hi,

I bought reflow soldering station from USA. I don't know why it did not
occur to me that the voltage over there is 130V. Now I bought an
transformer from 250 to 130. But the output does not include ground.
I wonder whether it affects in what direction I put the plug in now when
the ground lead is not enforcing it. There must a pump inside the reflow
station. I am worried it would turn in the wrong direction.
Any advice?

I have been studying FPGA's and bought pluto3 from http://www.knjn.com/
. Could you recommend bigger and cheaper source for FPGA boards. I am
totally out of touch with the pricing and features.

Also have downloaded the OpenSPARC source - lot of code. I was wondering
how much slower FPGA implementation of processor is compared to native
chip? I have seen somewhere 20%. I was wondering if a computer is
implemented with processor in FPGA it can be updated on the field just
with software - am I correct? Why it has not been done?
Could a PC chipset be implemented with FPGA? What are the limitations of
FPGA? Any info welcomed.
Click to expand...
FPGA soft-core processors tend to be slow, because they're not
designed to be processors. A microblaze cpu in a $20 Xilinx FPGA is
probably 10x slower than a $9 ARM. The fpga will also usually have
much less ram and cache available, which hurts for all but very small
programs. An FPGA is a very expensive way to make a microprocessor.

The FPGA can win if some of the computation, like filtering or array
processing or some such, can be done off to the side in many parallel
blocks.


Is there a computer based on IBM Cell processors? Something in the range
$2000-2500. It would be nice if there was a computer to which you can
add cards which contain more Cell processors. Any idea why IBM has not
made such? Linux is already ported to Cell so there would be an
operating system.
Click to expand...
If you want serious number crunching, use a gaming-type video card.
Some have hundreds of processors. Some people even sell them without
the video generators, for pure computation.

John
 
On Mon, 16 Aug 2010 14:29:21 -0500, Dan wrote:

Going from memory here, but I think that depends on which country one
is in. I think the UK ground goes back to the power station, not a local
ground.
Click to expand...
The UK uses TN-C-S, where earth (ground) connects to neutral and to a
ground pole at the entry to each building, then a separate earth
wire is split off before any RCD.

On HV transmission lines, the neutral line is attached directly (without
insulation) to the pylon, tying it to ground.
 
On 08/16/2010 11:19 PM, John Larkin wrote:
If you want serious number crunching, use a gaming-type video card.
Some have hundreds of processors. Some people even sell them without
the video generators, for pure computation.

John
Click to expand...
Thanks John and others!

Best Regards
Kari

--
PIC - ARM - Microcontrollers - I2C - SPI
Keypads - USB-RS232 - USB-I2C - Accessories
http://www.byvac.com
I am just a happy customer
 
Kari Laine wrote:

Hi,

I bought reflow soldering station from USA. I don't know why it did not
occur to me that the voltage over there is 130V. Now I bought an
transformer from 250 to 130. But the output does not include ground.
I wonder whether it affects in what direction I put the plug in now when
the ground lead is not enforcing it. There must a pump inside the reflow
station. I am worried it would turn in the wrong direction.
Any advice?

Yes, you're in the wrong business.
I have been studying FPGA's and bought pluto3 from http://www.knjn.com/
. Could you recommend bigger and cheaper source for FPGA boards. I am
totally out of touch with the pricing and features.
Click to expand...
Help!

Also have downloaded the OpenSPARC source - lot of code. I was wondering
how much slower FPGA implementation of processor is compared to native
chip? I have seen somewhere 20%. I was wondering if a computer is
implemented with processor in FPGA it can be updated on the field just
with software - am I correct? Why it has not been done?
Could a PC chipset be implemented with FPGA? What are the limitations of
FPGA? Any info welcomed.

Is there a computer based on IBM Cell processors? Something in the range
$2000-2500. It would be nice if there was a computer to which you can
add cards which contain more Cell processors. Any idea why IBM has not
made such? Linux is already ported to Cell so there would be an
operating system.

Best Regards
Kari
Click to expand...
I see a prepositional sale of a Golden Bridge here.
 
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