Re: gEDA-user: Spice Example RF_Amp
> > How do I get this patch into ngspice?? The expedient way would be to simply hand edit the file and change 1024 to 2096. But if you want to know how to apply this patch (and others you may come across in the future) then you need to know that it was created using the "diff" program and can be applied using the "patch" program. Read the man pages for both. Just type "man patch" at the terminal (without the quoates) -- = Chris Albertson Redondo Beach, California ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: [OFF] high current amplifier
On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 5:00 PM, Joerg wrote: > Chris Albertson wrote: > > [...] > >> I'm thinking about tube amps that had an output impedance of about 1M >> ohm that used transformers to drive 8 ohm speakers. About a 100,000 >> to 1 ratio. >> > > 1M? What kind of tube was that? I think the highest I had was about 5K. > At 5000 volts on the plates ... OK off by "just one decimal point". My point still is that tube amps have to deal with a huge impedance mis-match and they handle it with a transformer.Then you ask "what transformers can handle a load that is well under 1 ohm. So I thought about arc welders. While on the subject, I'm wanting to build a tube amp. But my goal is not to re-create an old design. Mostly for entertainment and education I want to design and build the transformers too. Anyone have any leads or links to places to buy the parts? I know you can buy frames and the metal plates used to stack a transformer core but where?. I'd start by building something small and easy, like a low power 12V power supply but the goal is to learn the art of high power transformer building -- = Chris Albertson Redondo Beach, California ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: [OFF] high current amplifier
On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 8:37 AM, Levente Kovacs wrote: > Ok, > > > I guess I wasn't clear, so I have to add that it won't be used to drive a > speaker, I used the word "audio" to refer the frequency range. 500W audio > amplifier that designed to drive 4-8 Ohms is easy. But 100A, is something you > won't get in a pro audio store. First off, your requet caught my eye as I'm looking for an audio amp that goes down to about 40Hz and hasthat kind of power. I'd use it for my bass guitar. They are easy to find. Any music store will sell you a 500W bass amp. What about using a very large 500W output transformer to impedence match a "normal" amp to the load. I'm thinking about tube amps that had an output impedance of about 1M ohm that used transformers to drive 8 ohm speakers. About a 100,000 to 1 ratio. You could salvage the transformer from an arc welder to re-purpose as your output transformer. These are designed for close to the specs youd need What are you driving? -- = Chris Albertson Redondo Beach, California ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Surface mounted circuits in hobby projects
> I tried to desolder a SMD component, a capacitor with solder remover > wick (copper braid), and it's very hard to do it. The class setup is rework tweezers. It's basically a double tipped solder iron and you can just pick up the part off the PCB with hot tipped tweezers. But us poor-folk just heat both ends of the part at once with a larger tip solder iron then push the part sideways off the pads with the iron. Also try lifting with normal tweezer while cycling the iron from pin to pin. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: 2 layer home-made PCB
It sounds to me like the person who designed and build this PCB did not know that commercial PCBs have plated through holes. It did not know this at first either. (No one is born knowing this stuff) You can't make this kind of PCB at home so home builders have to design their boards differently and not assume a hole will pass a signal through the board. What you do on your next layout is only have thru-leads soldered on the solder side of the PCB. If you need to pass a signal through the board make a special hole that holds just a short 1/8th inch length of wire and solder that from both ends. It turns out that surface mount parts make life easy. Design your next PCB to use surface mount resistors and caps on the component side. Save s alot of hole drilling and space. At the very least make all the decoupling by-pass caps SMT On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 2:49 PM, richard wrote: > On Wed, 8 Apr 2009 17:18:09 -0400 > DJ Delorie wrote: > >> >> > When you say a wire, are you talking hollow wire so that the >> > component can be inserted into the hole also? I'm not >> > understanding. Does the 22ga wire lay beside the component lead? >> > If that's the case all the thru holes will be too small. -- = Chris Albertson Redondo Beach, California ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Surface mounted circuits in hobby projects
On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 2:13 PM, Steven Michalske wrote: > I was soldering DE9 shells with a 15 Watt radio shack special. > This caused me to deform most of the plastic that the pins were held > with. > My dad saw the results and told me that i needed a bigger iron. > He got out the 250 Watt soldering gun and soldered each pin with out > melting the plastic. > > It's because the 15 Watt iron took too long to impart enough heat to > melt the solder, but could deliver enough heat over time to melt the > plastic. The "normal" way surface mount parts are soldered is in an oven. First solder paste is applied to the parts of the PCB the have no solder mask. Then a machine places each part into the paste. The paste is sticky and holds the part in place then the entire board, parts ,soldr paste and all is placed in an oven and heated until the solder melts. The parts are designed to withstand this kind of treatment It can be done this way at home. Many people have modified toaster ovens, some times with micro-controllers and temperature sensors. You can buy solder paste in a syringe. That said I use a temperature control iron with a fine poiint conical tip. .01 pitch leads are easy, smaller ones take more effort. But what abot ball grid arrays or other parts with no access to all the leads. I'm seriously thinking about building a reflow oven. -- = Chris Albertson Redondo Beach, California ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Problem with OGD1: Can anyone advise on good low-jitter
On Nov 28, 2007 11:09 AM, Timothy Normand Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Does anyone know anything about these? Do you have experience with > specific high-frequency clock generators and know how they perform and > what kind of jitter they produce? > These are kind of like those four pin crystal oscillators except they are six pin devices, with the extra pins for i2c programmeing. Jitter specs look good. http://www.alldatasheet.com/datasheet-pdf/pdf/195314/SILABS/SI570.html -- ===== Chris Albertson Redondo Beach, California ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: firmware and the GPL license
> If you link in GPL'd code, period. That includes dynamic linking, and > any attempts to "wrap" the proprietary code in a GPL'd wrapper. It is easy to come up with counter examples... So if I write a proprietary program the uses the Motif widget set and I license it with very restrictive terms and sell it to a user. Now lets say that user one day decides to install a GPL'd Motiff library (lesstiff) on his system and my code is dynamically linked to it. I don't think my code is now GPL'd. As the author of the software I have no control over what my code is dynamically linked to. Here is the text quoted directly from the GPL: "...If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works" I think this is very clear. I can distribute them both but must make clear the DLL and the main program are "separate works" ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: firmware and the GPL license
> Surely a company cannot enforce footprint > protection, since they cannot tell the difference, from looking at a > board, between a hand-made footprint and a re-used footprint. That's why data can not be covered by copyright. For example the names and numbers in a phone book can be reproduced and re-publised but the typographical layout of space and the pagebreaks and width of the colukns and so on are covered under copyright. I think what this means for foot prints is that the size the location of the pads is not covered but the bytes in the file that describe the size and location of the pads is covered. So you could re-format the file so that the data are written differently you'd be OK. The same applies to compilations of public domain works. each work is not covered but the act of assembling a compilation is itself a creative effort that can be copyrighted. So a footprint library might be covered if it was assembled from public information. -- ===== Chris Albertson Redondo Beach, California ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: firmware and the GPL license
On Nov 15, 2007 11:12 AM, Steven Ball <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > ...what about 'code' in the form of Gerbers > and etc produced by PCB? Would you consider the resultant board > produced by PCB to fall under a GPL license? Absolutely and very clearly "no". This is exactly the same as using the gcc compiler. Compiler output is specifically not covered by GPL. Another example is using a GPL's word processor. The papers you write are not GPL'd The test is easy. If your code (or Gerber files) can be distributed independently from the the GPL'd software then they are not GPL'd. The above test is not trivial and could conceivably fail if say PCB embedded a copy of some GPL'd file inside every output file it made. Then the GPL'd inclusion could not be independently distributed . But most developers are not going to do this or if they did the mistake would be pointed out and it would be corrected.(Yes, I've seen this error made and corrected.) ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: firmware and the GPL license
On Nov 15, 2007 5:00 AM, Duncan Drennan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I've been looking at using some GPL'ed firmware code on a USB board > that I've designed. The board is part of design project for one of my > clients. > > After some reading my interpretation of the GPL is that if I compile > that code into my firmware which will be "conveyed" to the client, > then the entire firmware code now has to fall under the GPL. This > effectively means that my client would have to open source their > firmware if I make use of the GPL'ed code. > > So two questions: > > 1) Is the above interpretation correct? > 2) What practical licenses are out there for this type of situation? In your case where you are wrinting code and you make use of GPL'd code then yes you should release your code under GPL. But there is an exception. The exception is for a GPL'd component that provides some well defined functon that could be provided by some other component. An example of this would by a Windows DLL. Just because your program calls a DLL that is GPLd your program does not have to be GPL'd. The key is the degree of separation. The DLL case is clear cut because any number of programs can call the same DLL and the DLL can be distributed independently of the programs that use it. As long as you maintain this level of independence you are not effected by GPL. If you link in the GPL'd code and make a single object that cannot be taken apart then the object you made must be covered by GPL and you need to offer the source code. But then the next person who gets your product gets to repeat this. If he re-sells your device he needs to offer to give away your source code but he may not have tied your code to his into one big executable object. Perhaps he has only put your gadget and his product in the same box in that case he is re-selling a GPL'd product and some other product. The key test again if if the final product is like the DLL, modular and in theory an end user could replace one part at a time. -- = Chris Albertson Redondo Beach, California ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: Schematic Level DRC DIscussion
On 11/6/07, Dave N6NZ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Steve Meier wrote: > > > What do we expect the schematic DRC to catch? > > The problems that apply to *my* situation and *my* technology. Also, > violations of the in-house design style guides that only I use -- for > instance, require a partnum attribute whose value exists in the > purchasing database. > > In other words, generic DRC is largely pointless. DRC should be > implemented as a DRC engine and a rules database. Of course, one hopes > that a (or two or three) good, reasonably generic rule sets can ship > with the release. End users can start with that and tweak to their own > needs. > > The trick, it seems to me, is to come up with a clean and readable > syntax for the rule set. The language needs to be declarative at its > core, and allow user plug-ins written in C (so that I can run SQL > queries against my parts database, for instance.) Have you looked at Prolog? It is an interesting language. A Prolog program is a set of patterns and actions. For example to write a sortting program you could give as a pattern "x[i] >x[i+1]" and the action would be the exchange x[i] and x[i+1]. In Prolog data and program have the same syntax For DRC in Prolog, one way would be to first "facts" about the devices and the pins. These "facts could be written in Prolog and stored with the symbol. Rules would be patterns. These are declaritive and would say things like Power inputs must by connected to power sources. Source must be able to drive loads, One of the nice things about adopting an existing language is that there are existing interpreters and impotently books and tutorials. People have written very complex programs in Prolog, several so called "expert systems" and it would be agood way to implement features like autoplacement and autorouting. -- = Chris Albertson Redondo Beach, California ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: gEDA/gaf capabilities
On 11/7/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I am looking using gEDA/gaf for my own activities Me too. I think the weakest part of gEDA is the lack of a good symbol and foot print library. basically everyone has to make their own. What would be great is a translator that could translate other libraries into gEDA's format. What's really frustrating is that if I go to (say) Analog Device's web site they will have symbols and foot prints for all their parts, but none work with gEDA. A translator could fix that problem. The othr free GPL'd EDA tool is "Kicad". It is very much like gEDA in that it is made up of a set of programs that interact by passing files. Kicad has slightly better integraton between the tools and a much larger symbol/parts library but then gEDA does some thing better. When would be good is if the two Kicad and gEDA could share datafiles. It would be good for both projects -- = Chris Albertson Redondo Beach, California ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: can't close the preference dialog
On 10/17/07, Kai-Martin Knaak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Sometimes preference dialog fails to close. If it does and I hit the ok- > button the terminal prints an > error:(pcb:1184): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_destroy: assertion > `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed > Most of the times the preference dialog closes just fine. GTK2 on my system is a mixture of 2.12.0-2 and 2.10.13-1 (Debian testing) > > I ran into the exact same error last night. I'm running on an Apple iMac using Mac OS X. It is 100% reproducible. To reproduce the error. First try and close the window by clicking on the "close" button in the window manager. (in the iMac, this is the read button) After I do this then all further input to the dialog box gives the assertion failure. I can guess what the problem might be. I assumed it had something to do with Apple's X11 implementation so I was not going to report it. -- = Chris Albertson Redondo Beach, California ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: collaboration opportunity
On 10/16/07, Ryan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > I would like to see some open hardware with a decent Gigabit interface. > > The GNU Radio project's "USRP2" has a Gigabit ethernet interface done with Verilog in an FPGA. They are contributing the verilog code back to OpenCores (www.opencores.com) I don't know if they have done that yet (just checked, no) but the old (somewhat functional) 10/100/1000BaseT MAC is there now. The new MAC is in the project's CVS. -- = Chris Albertson Redondo Beach, California ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: newbie, couple of Q's about gschem
On 10/15/07, Greg Cunningham <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Mon, 2007-10-15 at 18:10 +0100, Peter TB Brett wrote: > > On Monday 15 October 2007 17:27:43 Chris Albertson wrote: > > > Gschem's primary purpose is schematic capture. If what you want is > > > publication quality schematic drawings use XCircuit. > > > http://opencircuitdesign.com/xcircuit/. > > > > I'm afraid that this is just not true. It's entirely possible to > > produce "publication quality" (whatever that is) diagrams in gschem, and > > indeed I have done so, for reports etc. I admit that it is hard to do > so > > using the standard symbol library -- but I have a separate library I > drew for > > the purpose. > > > > I've also done some electrical diagrams for reports using Inkscape, > which > > worked surprisingly well. > > > > Peter > ... > I think Chris's angle is the font/symbol line 'quality' (can't think of > a better term) A good parallell is computer generated music scores. > Most MS free/cheap packages produce a technically correct score that is > awful for a musician to read. Lilypond OTOH, produces a score that is > *much* easier for a musician to read. It emulates the 19th century > score engraving craftmanship where score 'readability' reached it's > pinnacle. Postscript is just so much better for defining symbols. Postscript is a true "programming language". It features like loops and branching and high end math (matrix multiply) Much depends on your critiera for "quality". For example many people are happy with the typesetting abilities of basic work processors like Microsoft Word. But if you compare side by side to Don, Knuth's "tex" there are differences. There is a difference between how you draw on a computer screen for schematic capture and how you should draw for publication in print. I think it would be great if you could enter the schematic just once and have the netlist converted for quality output just like you can have it convertert for Spaic and PCB. Many you might have an attribute "Postscript Symbol" These symbols can do intelegent functions like allow fonts to be globally changed and test remain upright even if the symbol is rotated. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: PCB paste layer, revisited.
I think the "correct" way to do this is for the file to hold information that exactly describes the solder paste. You need the three dimensional shape. Plan view and thickness. How to cut a stencil so as to get the above is not part of the layout but part of the "process". I see two steps. (1) create the solder past specs based whatever information may be available and helpful The abount oand shape of the paste depends on the part and the size of the pad. A user could specify some rules but reasonable default rules should be built in. Just using the pad size is a rather crude rules but a decent start. (2) The sticil is made based on the shape and volume of the paste. There should be rules that translate past size/volume to stencil shape and again the user can change some parameters The bottom line is that pad != paste != stencil. The relationships are dependent on the process -- = Chris Albertson Redondo Beach, California ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: newbie, couple of Q's about gschem
Gschem's primary purpose is schematic capture. If what you want is publication quality schematic drawings use XCircuit. http://opencircuitdesign.com/xcircuit/. What would be really nice would be a translator between the two ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
Re: gEDA-user: first impressions on gaf v1.2.0
One more idea about symbol library. I'm sure everyone here has seen Apple's iTunes. It has some nice features that could be borrowed 1) Each usr has a local copy of all the tracks 2) It is very easy to add to this local copy. 2.1) Can import from local file system 2.2) Can import from "standard" media like CD 2.3) can buy from online store 3) The local library is a linear (flat) unsorted list. It has no structure or order. However, for display it can be sorted on any of two dozen attributes while at the same time selection criteria can be applied 4) It is very easy to make custom subsets of the list. You can specify a subset by either selecting what to include or by giving some rules that act like live filters. Users can organize these subsets into folders and subfolders Very importent concept is that when a track is placed into one of these subsets it is there by refference only. So it can be placed into many different subsets. This is much more powerful than a simply hierarchical organization. Choosing a symbol is not exactly the same thing as choosing music but it's close enough that borrowing ideas from a popular music player might payoff. ___ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user
