This reminds me of the Dilbert cartoon on my wall:

PHB (Pointy-Haired Boss), pointing to flip chart graph of declining
sales: "Our sales are dropping like a rock."

PHB, pointing to flip chart graph labeled "Future" and steadily rising:
"Our plan is to invent some sort of doohickey that everyone wants to buy."

PHB, to Dilbert: "The visionary leadership part is done. How long will
your part take?"

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

Roy Lewallen wrote:

This reminds me of the Dilbert cartoon on my wall:

PHB (Pointy-Haired Boss), pointing to flip chart graph of declining
sales: "Our sales are dropping like a rock."

PHB, pointing to flip chart graph labeled "Future" and steadily rising:
"Our plan is to invent some sort of doohickey that everyone wants to buy."

PHB, to Dilbert: "The visionary leadership part is done. How long will
your part take?"

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

Wonderful! I missed that one somewhere.

73, CJ KØCJ

On Tue, 10 May 2005 20:24:45 -0500, "Clair J. Robinson"
wrote:

Roy Lewallen wrote:

This reminds me of the Dilbert cartoon on my wall:

PHB (Pointy-Haired Boss), pointing to flip chart graph of declining
sales: "Our sales are dropping like a rock."

PHB, pointing to flip chart graph labeled "Future" and steadily rising:
"Our plan is to invent some sort of doohickey that everyone wants to buy."

PHB, to Dilbert: "The visionary leadership part is done. How long will
your part take?"

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

Wonderful! I missed that one somewhere.

73, CJ KØCJ

The really funny thing about Dilbert is that people who work in that
type of environment see only that the character names are wrong for
their office.

Reminds me of a Will Rogers quote, "I don't make jokes. I just watch
the government and report the facts."

Scott Adams worked in a high-tech office, and reports the facts.

Happy trails,
Gary (net.yogi.bear)
--
At the 51st percentile of ursine intelligence

Gary D. Schwartz, Needham, MA, USA
Please reply to: garyDOTschwartzATpoboxDOTcom

-exray- wrote:

Michael A. Terrell wrote:


I was a volunteer advisor for the Lake county Florida Vo-Tec
electronics program, till it was shut down. Right now I am trying to
find the money to finish repairs to my four car garage and convert it
into a 1200 sq ft electronics shop to teach basic electronics to the
kids who are still interested. Its not easy when you're 100% disabled
and living on a tiny pension, but I don't give up too easy.

Good luck with finding money for your garage. Sorry about Vo-tech
shutting down and your your disability and tiny pension.
Was there anything positive you wanted to say?

-Bill

In case you missed it, I was saying that I don't let these things get
me down. I find something to keep me busy. I could be like a lot of
people I've met recently who throw up their hands and give up on
everything, but I'm not like that.

The diabilty stops me from climbing ladders or carrying anything
heavy so I bought a large cart to move things around the shop and house.

The small pension makes me consider what I want to spend money on
rather than just write a check while knowing that I had a wad of money
in the bank to cover it, so it didn't matter.

Life goes on, if you let it. :-)

--
Former professional electron wrangler.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

Michael,

If you don't mind my asking, what sort of professional electron wrangling did
you do prior to becoming disabled?

Good luck on converting your garage... I think there's a good chance you can
get a decent amount of equipment and supplies donated once it's clear (to the
outside world) that you're serious about what you're doing.

----Joel

John Smith wrote:

You miss the point, I expect the cards to cover the planet... our present
way of thinking enslaves us to "our beloved componet" or, "our beloved
manufacturer", time for a change...


You can't see the forest for the trees. There isn't a big enough
market for what you want to EVER bring the price down to a reasonable
level. You can't do anything without some initial specifications. You
have to do research on available parts, cost to tool up the metalwork,
and liability for your design. You mention a "PA" implying a transmitter
module. You talk about "manufactures of the modules" This brings the
FCC, UL, and other testing costs and problems. You have no idea what you
are talking about, unless you have worked to design a modular system.
It can easily triple the cost of the design. Then there is software
compatibility. You have to set strict standards for each module, or one
"X" module won't work with someone else's "Y" module. How about the
GUI? who is going to write a new one for every combination of modules?
Or do you plan on having a couple dozen separate programs on screen at a
time for each function?

have you ever designed a complete radio system?

I suspect, in the future problems will arise and be delt with--just recently
I had to do a "kludge" and replace a 6cw4 with a fet... who knows what
"fixes" will be forced on those of the future...


I'm all too familiar with finding replacements for obsolete parts.
Both in manufacturing and repair. There is a mature product on the
production line. Purchasing comes running to the production manager to
tell them that the last manufacturer of a line of components has just
dropped the whole line, and we missed the "Lifetime buy" option by a
couple days. Do you drop the product, or do you redesign it? DO you
spend days or weeks tracking down surplus parts through a broker that
may or may not be good, and risk bad PR when they have a high failure
rate in the field? Been there, done that. The tee shirt was NLA.

Warmest regards,
John
--
When Viagra fails to work--you are DOOMED!!!


There is your problem. You want a fast cure for every perceived
problem.

--
Former professional electron wrangler.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

I don't think the "apple boys" had ever designed a complete computer before
they did--indeed, don't remember anyone else (or team of engineers, techs,
scientists, etc...) doing a desktop before then...

You mean, China, Russia, India, USA, Canada, So. American, Mexico, etc--and
every gov't, business, private individual, ham and cb'er... is not a big
enough market... these things would be manufactured in China yanno!!!

Kinda like Mac's and IBM's, yanno.

Lets face it, it is most difficult to buy American computer boards, memory,
etc--these radios would be the same... the computers are already made there,
we would just be giving them one more task...

Warmest regards,
John
--
When Viagra fails to work--you are DOOMED!!!

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in message
...
| John Smith wrote:
|
| You miss the point, I expect the cards to cover the planet... our
present
| way of thinking enslaves us to "our beloved componet" or, "our beloved
| manufacturer", time for a change...
|
|
| You can't see the forest for the trees. There isn't a big enough
| market for what you want to EVER bring the price down to a reasonable
| level. You can't do anything without some initial specifications. You
| have to do research on available parts, cost to tool up the metalwork,
| and liability for your design. You mention a "PA" implying a transmitter
| module. You talk about "manufactures of the modules" This brings the
| FCC, UL, and other testing costs and problems. You have no idea what you
| are talking about, unless you have worked to design a modular system.
| It can easily triple the cost of the design. Then there is software
| compatibility. You have to set strict standards for each module, or one
| "X" module won't work with someone else's "Y" module. How about the
| GUI? who is going to write a new one for every combination of modules?
| Or do you plan on having a couple dozen separate programs on screen at a
| time for each function?
|
| have you ever designed a complete radio system?
|
| I suspect, in the future problems will arise and be delt with--just
recently
| I had to do a "kludge" and replace a 6cw4 with a fet... who knows what
| "fixes" will be forced on those of the future...
|
|
| I'm all too familiar with finding replacements for obsolete parts.
| Both in manufacturing and repair. There is a mature product on the
| production line. Purchasing comes running to the production manager to
| tell them that the last manufacturer of a line of components has just
| dropped the whole line, and we missed the "Lifetime buy" option by a
| couple days. Do you drop the product, or do you redesign it? DO you
| spend days or weeks tracking down surplus parts through a broker that
| may or may not be good, and risk bad PR when they have a high failure
| rate in the field? Been there, done that. The tee shirt was NLA.
|
| Warmest regards,
| John
| --
| When Viagra fails to work--you are DOOMED!!!
|
|
| There is your problem. You want a fast cure for every perceived
| problem.
|
| --
| Former professional electron wrangler.
|
| Michael A. Terrell
| Central Florida

Clair J. Robinson wrote:
Roy Lewallen wrote:

This reminds me of the Dilbert cartoon on my wall:
PHB (Pointy-Haired Boss), pointing to flip chart graph of declining
sales: "Our sales are dropping like a rock."
PHB, pointing to flip chart graph labeled "Future" and steadily
rising: "Our plan is to invent some sort of doohickey that everyone
wants to buy."
PHB, to Dilbert: "The visionary leadership part is done. How long
will your part take?"
Roy Lewallen, W7EL

Wonderful! I missed that one somewhere.

Then there's the Feature Creep character, who specifies user
requirements to people like Dilbert... and Roy.

Dilbert: "Your requirements list includes 400 features.
No human would be able to use a product with that level of complexity."

FC: "Good point. I'd better add 'Easy to use'."


--
73 from Ian GM3SEK 'In Practice' columnist for RadCom (RSGB)

http://www.ifwtech.co.uk/g3sek... temporarily offline while changing ISP

On 10 May 2005 13:59:13 -0700, wrote:

From: Paul Keinanen on 10 May 2005 09:11:19 -0700

In a radio receivers, the signal levels vary
from less than a microvolt to several volts, so the crosstalk issues
are much more demanding.

I will disagree on radio receivers on such wide dynamic
ranges. "Several volts" INTO a receiver front end?
No. Such levels aren't encountered in practical
locations and would, definitely, cause enough IM
that would create much distortion and spur products.

Look at a multitransmitter contest site with one transmitter on each
band, the voltage induced to the receiving antennas for other bands
can be quite large. Of course, in a competent receiver design only the
frequency band of interest is filtered out before processing. However,
if the antenna is connected directly to the backplane and the modules
do their own filtering, the large composite signal on the backplane
will radiate all around the system.

In non-contest sites large wire or log-periodic antennas can collect a
quite large signal voltage (in the order of 0 dBm, 220 mV or more).

Also if the final IF is within or below the receiver tuning range and
a diode ring mixer is used as the SSB demodulator with +7 or +17 dBm,
you must keep this BFO signal and harmonics from entering the front
end.

The CANbus has been used in the automobile industry for more than a
decade. The CANbus has a nondestructive collision system, so this
makes it possible to have a true peer-to-peer communication system,
without complex protocols (such as token passing).

IF and only if this SDR of the future NEEDS micro-
computer control...or even modular microcontroller
sub-systems.

Trying to use an EXISTING computer interface system
isn't always good because that system has worked for
a decade-plus. While automotive computer interface
system speeds are increasing with increasing control
demands, radios aren't quite vehicles. The control
needs aren't quite the same.

Even the SDR is going to need some switchable front end band pass
filters in order to survive in the hostile RF environment these days
with a lot of strong signals even in ordinary sites.

In transceivers, there would be several points that would need
switching.

I used the CANbus as an example, since the cable can be tens or
hundreds of meters long depending on speed and thus, it could be used
to control some internal points in a transceiver as well as wire all
devices in the ham shack as well as in the tower. For instance, the
same controller could control the antenna rotator, command the antenna
preamplifier to bypass mode, turn the transvertter into transmit mode,
select the VFO frequency for transmit (in split operation) and finally
turn the transmitter on.


examples of previous control systems deleted

The basics have already been laid
down for the SDR system on what CAN work.

What is lacking is STANDARDIZATION.

This is definitely a big problem.

That can't be worked out in newsgroups,

A newsgroup is a good place for open ended discussions between people
with experience in quite different fields. This can generate quite
different ideas (some useful, most less usable) than a "business as
usual" attitude. It is a good idea to have a lot of new ideas to chose
from than having no new ideas at all.

but requires much more organization...

Writing a formal specification may require some formal organisation,
but on the other hand quite a few successful RFCs in the IT sector are
written by a single person or a small group.

and willingness to compromise

That is the problem in formal committees, in which most delegates from
various vendors have large commercial interests in the subject and in
order to be able to produce even some kind of standard, all features
from various vendors are included. This makes the final standard hard
to implement properly or each manufacturer is implementing only a
subset of the complex standard and thus, there is no real guarantee
that two devices would actually communicate, even if both claim
compatibility with xxxx standard (remember the RS-232 "standard" :-).

Paul OH3LWR

John Smith wrote:

I don't think the "apple boys" had ever designed a complete computer before
they did--indeed, don't remember anyone else (or team of engineers, techs,
scientists, etc...) doing a desktop before then...


Have you ever looked at the schematic for the Apple II? It was bases
on the MOS technology 6502 processor and support chips. Its probably
the simplest "Computer" ever sold and most of the design was in the IC
data books, just like the original IBM PC was quite close to a sample
design published by Intel. The only real difference was that the design
was broken up into modules. Neither of the original designs were
anything to brag about. Monochrome displays, Apple's half assed
"custom" floppy disk interface that threw away most of the capacity to
keep it cheap. The PC was shipped with a cassette interface and no
floppy drive. It had BASIC in ROM, and was fairly useless until floppy
and hard drives were available to do any real work.

If you think this is an easy project its time to put up, or shut up.
Design your simple, "It'll sell billions" project and prove everyone
wrong, or just shut up.

--
Former professional electron wrangler.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida