On Jun 6, 4:08�am, John Davis wrote:
On 6/5/2010 7:15 PM, K6LHA wrote:

Slight correction. �I'm playing with Microchip's PIC one-packag
e
micros right now, using their free program editor-compiler. �Go
t the
development hardware package because IC lead length spacings got too
small with modst SMDs. �For many years AADE and Neil Heckt have
been
making and selling their one-chip frequency counters up in the Puget
Sound area and many hams have installed those in older receivers and
transceivers. �Neil has a great little workshop instrument in h
is L/C
meter also using a PIC chip.

Not really a correction Len.. We are speaking of two different places on
the development train.. You are starting with ready made hardware and
developing applications or products from that hardware.

I'm talking aout making new hardware.

A PIC microcontroller is just an IC. It is a "tabula rasa" that can
be programmed to do anything wanted (within certain limitations). A
vacuum tube is "ready made hardware" that is made using very
specialized machinery and test equipment. So is a transistor. So is
a resistor. So are most capacitors.

I don't see any dividing line there in buying/taking/scrounging
components to build a larger system of electronics for any specific
purpose. If the "hardware" needs software to make it work in a
specific way, then that does not make it somehow worse/better/not-
applicable. At least not to me.

I, for one, am not going out to mine copper ore to smelt and
eventually make into wire to hook up things. Or make alloys that are
resistive to make resistors or delaminate mica so that I can somehow
silver it to make silver-mica capacitors good for RF.

I had started out as an illustrator. That is an artist who draws/
paints/inks things as they really are. Much later I had formal
classes (Art Center School of Design, now in Pasadena, CA) which
taught that "old masters" how to make their own oil paint. Making
paint is not what I consider "art" but that's what all those old oil
painters had to do. If I want to do some painting now I can go into a
Michaels and buy already-to-go oil paint, or caesin or chalk or
several other items to make an image on my choice of surfaces. I am
an illustrator, not a paint maker.

At the same time I would browse the Allied catalog (Allied then
headquartered in Chicago, IL) for "radio parts" to make things
electronic. I don't disparage those (limited) components nor do I
separate the "hardware" from the (then) "software" that was really
just a schematic/wiring diagram. Today I could (if I had access to an
expensive program) make a mask for a PCB and its drill guide just from
a schematic diagram. I've done that for work...as well as making PCB
masks "the old fashioned way" using tracing paper (for two-sided
boards) and wetware.

Today's programmable microcontroller, whether from Microchip or
Altera, is a wonderful additional component to our modern cornucopia
of fascinating electronic components. WE can do all sorts of things
with those components in ways never thought of back in olden times.

Me, I'm going to keep my nice K&E Duplex Decitrig slide rule (from
high school) as a memento of when "design" meant to 3-decimal-places
tops or having to look in tables of logarithms (and do by-hand
interpolation) to get 5 decimal places. With my HP-35 I suddenly had
10 decimal place accuracy and I could do equations never before
possible without expensive mainframe computer time...all contained in
bulk space of that K&E slide rule.

I've built three frequency counters using old digital logic. With one
PIC the size of one DIP, I can make a single frequency counter that
operates up to 30 MHz and includes the circuit (but not the crystal)
for the reference frequency oscillator. It will drive a small LCD
panel directly and the power demand is so slight the PIC doesn't even
get warm. If worst came to worst, I could program that PIC by hand,
byte by byte, using toggle switches (one per bit). But, the worst is
not here so I use free software to do the programming.

73, Len K6LHA