gEDA-user: OT: You-Blew-It Electronics (was: Re: Home PCB and Liquid Tin)
Apropos You-Blew-It Electronics, here's a link to those unfamiliar with this Boston institution: http://www.youdoitelectronics.com/ Ok I know their prices are significantly higher than mail order from almost everywhere but why is it You-Blew-It? I dunno exactly. But back when I was a feckless undergrad, that's what everybody called it. The name always gave me the picture of a geek who had assembled a circuit, flipped the power on, and the circuit immediately burned up. Ha ha -- you blew it! At least for me, it did not have the connotation of making a mistake about where you bought your stuff. There was nothing essentially wrong with the place (unlike Radio Shaft), and the moniker You-Blew-It was intended solely to be jocular. While we are a little OT am I the only one who misses the days when they carried more components and fewer audio video cables. They are getting to much like radio shack. I agree. What I liked about the place back then was that it was what Radio Shaft should have been: A large store full of components and other stuff important to a real electronics geek. But now it's going the way of Radio Shaft, selling cables and other consumer-oriented junk. To be fair, there remains a largish -- but shrinking -- section of the store which still sells components. But the Radio-Shackification is probably happening because the number of hard-core EE hobbiests is shrinking (the disappearing ham radio segment itself accounts for a large part of that shrinkage), and the folks looking for components now get them via internet search and mail-order from the likes of Digi-Key. You-Blew-It's retail operation remains a good place to go if it's Saturday afternoon, and you've realized that you absolutely need a 10K resistor right now, you can't scrounge one from anywhere in your workshop, and you don't want to wait a week for mail-order. Stuart ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: OT: You-Blew-It Electronics (was: Re: Home PCB and Liquid Tin)
On Sat, Mar 7, 2009 at 8:20 AM, Stuart Brorson s...@cloud9.net wrote: Apropos You-Blew-It Electronics, here's a link to those unfamiliar with this Boston institution: http://www.youdoitelectronics.com/ Ok I know their prices are significantly higher than mail order from almost everywhere but why is it You-Blew-It? I dunno exactly. But back when I was a feckless undergrad, that's what everybody called it. The name always gave me the picture of a geek who had assembled a circuit, flipped the power on, and the circuit immediately burned up. Ha ha -- you blew it! Well if the deadline is too close for mail order you get to go to you blew it. At least for me, it did not have the connotation of making a mistake about where you bought your stuff. There was nothing essentially I didn't take it that way. wrong with the place (unlike Radio Shaft), and the moniker You-Blew-It was intended solely to be jocular. While we are a little OT am I the only one who misses the days when they carried more components and fewer audio video cables. They are getting to much like radio shack. I agree. What I liked about the place back then was that it was what Radio Shaft should have been: A large store full of components and other stuff important to a real electronics geek. But now it's going the way of Radio Shaft, selling cables and other consumer-oriented junk. To be fair as I understand it Radio Shack was never the be all and end all. To be fair, there remains a largish -- but shrinking -- section of the store which still sells components. But the Radio-Shackification is probably happening because the number of hard-core EE hobbiests is shrinking (the disappearing ham radio segment itself accounts for a large part of that shrinkage), and the folks looking for components now get them via internet search and mail-order from the likes of Digi-Key. Well in the old days Radio Shack used to encourage young people to take up Ham Radio which lead people into being EEs. I remember around December the owner of the store in Natick used to operate his radio for kids in the center of the malls court yard. It was the 1980's and calling say Russia or Columbia was not something you could really do. I have to wonder if it happened the way you think with the Ham's and EEs going away messed up the electronics stores or if it was the other way around. You-Blew-It's retail operation remains a good place to go if it's Saturday afternoon, and you've realized that you absolutely need a 10K resistor right now, you can't scrounge one from anywhere in your workshop, and you don't want to wait a week for mail-order. I never understood why they stock 2% resistors. I can't speak for everyone but I usually use %5 and %1 until I started going there I didn't even know you could get them. Stuart Evan ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user -- http://www.coe.neu.edu/~efoss/ http://evanfoss.googlepages.com/ ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
gEDA-user: What is the current procedure and location to submit patches for PCB?
What is the current procedure and location to submit patches for PCB? Still the SourceForge Tracker? The ones there seem a bit dated. http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=73743 ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: What is the current procedure and location to submit patches for PCB?
What is the current procedure and location to submit patches for PCB? Still the SourceForge Tracker? The ones there seem a bit dated. Yes, that's still the right way to do it, although for minor bug fixes that just apply mailing to the list is probably more efficient. Not sure how minor they are. Right now I'm working on hid/ps.c . Then going to figure out something to do with lpr. Right now, in lpr, popen is not doing anything useful on Windows, it just flashes up an unreadable DOS box then returns. What I'm doing in ps.c: 1: Running Lint over the code trying to understand what is going on. Should I fix problems like local FILE *f; hiding global FILE *f? Why are things like x2=x2 in there, shall I remove them? Looks like something that at one time was a swap that has accumulated to much bit rot. 2: Add to table of contents 1. Table Of Contents (This Page). Starting with 2. ... just looks broken to me. 3: Add proper PostScript Document Structuring Conventions ( DSC ) header, and fix %%Page to have proper label and number. End result should be a Red Book compliant PostScript file, which Windows can properly digest. 4: If a file FabNotes.txt is found in the current directory include in the PS output. This puts everything of relevance, to me at least, in to a single file for my project record, and to give the board house when doing quotes. Do you want one new ps.c or incremental diffs? ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: What is the current procedure and location to submit patches for PCB?
A single diff for all those changes would be best, I think. As for fabnotes, perhaps something more board-specific? Like board.fabnotes? Or have some attribute in the board indicate which fab notes to use? ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: What is the current procedure and location to submit patches for PCB?
A single diff for all those changes would be best, I think. Ok. As for fabnotes, perhaps something more board-specific? Like board.fabnotes? It really needs to end with a standard extension like .txt; windows issue. board.txt? Not the best. board.fabnotes.txt probably doesn't play well on Windows users either. Seems best at the moment I guess. Or have some attribute in the board indicate which fab notes to use? I'm not to that level of understanding of the pcb code yet, to implement what I needed that way. Assuming I get there, how to you get this attribute into the board file? ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: What is the current procedure and location to submit patches for PCB?
It really needs to end with a standard extension like .txt; windows issue. board.txt? Not the best. board.fabnotes.txt probably doesn't play well on Windows users either. Seems best at the moment I guess. board.fabnotes.txt is probably best; it follows the pattern we use for gerbers. I'm not to that level of understanding of the pcb code yet, to implement what I needed that way. Assuming I get there, how to you get this attribute into the board file? We current have no GUI way of doing this, although I suppose you could add a fabnotes entry in the PS attribute list, prefill it from the board attribute, and update the board as needed. So far, we only have a function for creating a new attribute, not modifying one, as we only preserve the attribute list - nothing in pcb's core uses it yet. See CreateNewAttribute in create.c and WriteAttributeList in file.c for examples; feel free to add more functions if it makes sense to. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: ps.c alignment lines multiplies by zero?
Thank you. There's probably a bunch of spots like that, where I leave useful code in place but somehow disable it in case I want to use it again later. Ok. Didn't see any comments or #if 0 so thought some thing odd was going on. I'm still trying to get a grip on why things are done the way they are in here. For example: int mirror_this = 0; ... if (mirror) mirror_this = 1 - mirror_this; wound be the same as if(mirror) mirror_this = 1; in this first usage. The subsequent if( automirror ... mirror_this = 1 - mirror_this; makes sense (not that I understand that complex test). Just trying to understand it before I break something. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: ps.c alignment lines multiplies by zero?
if (mirror) mirror_this = 1 - mirror_this; Probably just to make it look like the next if, which does the same logic. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
