Brads Electronic Projects Forum

They're auctioning off some old stock they found. Neat stuff. Take a look: https://ubidestates.hibid.com/catalog/103245/radioshack-auction--1/ I see they have TRS-80 model 100 and 102 portable computers with the high bid so far being in the $30's, radio equipment, other stuff. The address: RadioShac...

Thanks Brad! This light blue background that appeared this morning makes it a lot more readable than the old dark gray. I think it's phpBB's "Prosilver" theme. I went into my "user control panel" to see if there were now other options (just to see, because I have my other phpBB forums set to Prosil...

I expect it is derived from the XYRS file, ie, the spreadsheet file you supply to the assembly house that tells the exact part to put in each place, along with X and Y coordinates and rotation (what angle to put it at), and which side of the board to put it on.

Thanks. I tried commenting, but the sign-up page didn't work. Here's what i would have commented: Another myth I would add is that everything can benefit from 32 bits, or even from a MULtiply instruction. I've brought many products to market with PIC16's. Every one of them was just twiddling I/O bit...

I believe they put a tiny spot of epoxy under the parts (especially the ones that are too heavy to be held on by the surface tension of the solderpaste or molten solder), and let it cure before putting the board in the oven. The epoxy goes between pads so it doesn't interfere with the electrical con...

Our company had our own thru-hole assembly equipment; but since going to SMT, we've always farmed the assembly out. I've seen the equipment working at the industry trade shows though. It's very impressive how fast and accurate the machines are. My next PCB layout for work will probably put parts on ...

Well said. The Radio Shack closest to me is in a shopping center that's not a mall, but I know malls are extra bad for renters. The previous closest one was at a mall, but that mall had an awful lot of empty spaces, probably because of the high rent and penalties and so on, and it got torn down. Sam...

Radio Shack in the U.S. seems to be going out of business. I remember they were having trouble a year or two ago and closed a lot of stores and turned other ones into combination RS/Sprint stores; but now the one near us is closing, and I just went to the website and it says "Clearance sale up to 6...

One of my beefs is that the necessary math is presented in such a theoretical and sterile way, and without application, with the idea that it must be laid as a foundation ahead of the need. How will that generate interest? How does that help the student understand what's going on in his circuit on t...

I learned Pascal in college. We were taught to define our variables first. That's pretty normal—at least to define them before they're used, although not necessarily at the beginning of the source code. It took a long time to program because I had to keep going back and forth through the editor to ...

Wow, if I counted right, that's 665 ICs on one board, assuming there aren't any on the back.

I just now ordered that second book, because I've gone through the K&R book, "The C Programming Language," second edition, and if I had to take a test on it, I'd probably get less than a 30%. The C language seems to me to be an absolute disaster, and I often don't understand what they're saying, or ...

Brad, definitely no 32's. I'm committed to the little guys. I think the MSP430 and AVR are 16-bit, and maybe it also makes a difference also whether 16 describes the data bus too or just the register size. I do like the 65816 microprocessor which has registers that are 8/16-bit selectable, 16-bit st...

I've brought a lot of products to market with the PIC16F's, using an old DOS-based MPLAB assembler and my own home-made programmer. I wanted to use a PIC18 for my last big project (described elsewhere on this forum), but the old assembler would not support PIC18's, and Microchip was obviously not se...

It sounds like the Pintos' reputation for their gas tanks exploding when the car is rear-ended. I read that it was only a fraction of a percent of those that were rear-ended that exploded or caught fire; and in fact my sister-in-law was rear-ended in a Pinto, and as usual, nothing happened. That's n...