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The Mead-Conway methodology for designing VLSI ICs triggered the development of three dominant CAE companies – Daisy, Mentor Graphics, and Valid – which in turn led to the later development of the three dominant EDA companies – Cadence, Synopsys, and Mentor Graphics. These histories appear in Parts 3 and 4 of this article series. The…
Clocks are integral to most electronic systems. Timing and communications systems need extremely accurate clocks. When I started working with electronics, in the heyday of Citizen’s Band (CB) radio, quartz crystals were on sale everywhere, even at Radio Shack. The CB crystals congregated around 27 and 28 MHz, but many more frequencies were on offer.…
There’s no more fundamental piece of test gear for electrical engineers than a multimeter. I own a bunch, starting with my Micronta 22-150 analog multimeter with a mirrored scale, which I bought from Radio Shack in my high school days back in the 1970s. Miraculously, that meter still works. I’ve got at least five Cen-Tech…
The industry lost yet another pioneer last year, and his passing seems to have been largely unheralded. Don Lancaster was a prolific writer whose books and articles going back to the 1960s taught generations of electronics hobbyists and budding engineers how to use analog and digital integrated circuits, how to program early 8-bit microprocessors –…
This article isn’t about a new product. It’s just new to me. The product is Wondom’s BCPB2, a charger, battery management system (BMS), and battery holder for three 18650 lithium-ion cells. I discovered this product while considering ways to repair the battery subsystem in a Keithley 197 Microvoltmeter made around 1991 that I recently bought…