Disc analyser news update

[Philip Pemberton]

Tony Duell wrote:
> Absolutely. Strippd, it's good for soldering along broken tracks (yes, I 
> know the really relaible way is to solder to the nearest component lead 
> on the track, but for a lot of things, scraping off the solder mask and 
> soldering a wire along the track is good enough. A blob of solder over 
> the crack most certainly isn't!). 

At one point, I had a copy of the NASA standards for PCB modifications, 
which covered green-wire fixes. I think it's online somewhere... Anyway, 
for SMD parts (SOICs etc.) you're supposed to run a piece of wire along 
the pin, then solder it to the pin. The icing on the cake is that you're 
supposed to solder along the entire length of the pin, not just the land 
pad.

I would LOVE to see someone do that with a 0.5mm-pitch QFP. Soldering to 
the track is not only easier, but more likely to succeed...

I found one roll of the stuff (30AWG w/w wire) on my "big shelf o' 
miscellaneous wire" last night. It's green, made by "OK", on a 500ft 
reel. Ideal for greenwire fixes in the literal sense :)

Also found a roll of RG58/U, and another roll of RG174. More stuff I 
didn't know I had.

> That's what I thought too. But when I wanted that 38swg enamelled copper 
> wire to rewind the motors I mentioend, Maplin were the only place that 
> stocked it. RS and Farnell don't (as far as I can see). I popped into a 
> Maplin in London and they had a 250g reel of it on the shelf. I was 
> amazed. 

Enamelled copper wire is a pig to find in general. You are right though, 
Maplin are usually one of the only places that stock it.

What annoys me is the scrapping of the in-store-order scheme. Basically, 
if the store was out of stock of something, you could place a 
back-order, and when it arrived (they sent it direct to the store in the 
weekly stock replenishment) you could go and pick it up. Worked pretty 
well for me.

> Unfortunately that darn EMC directive killed off the Maplin kits (they 
> would have had to be checked for compliance when assembled according to 
> the instructions). Maplin still sell a few Vellemann kits, and another 
> brand that I can't rememebr.

At the time the kits were discontinued, Maplin were basically in a bit 
of a "hobby electronics is dead" blast. They sold the rights to their 
electronics magazine to Kanda (IIRC), the kits went the way of the dodo, 
and the component selection got severely trimmed to make way for more 
"Innovations-catalogue tat" (as one of my friends so eloquently put it).

It's a shame about the magazine, though -- they published some pretty 
neat projects, all of which could be built from parts available from 
Maplins (with the occasional special-order), and the articles usually 
did a pretty good job of explaining not just how the thing worked, but 
also why it was designed in that specific way.

EPE have gone down the road of buying in articles from Silicon Chip, and 
ETI went bust (or were absorbed into EPE depending on how you look at 
it), which really just leaves Elektor and Circuit Cellar. Both of which 
seem to be pitching themselves more at the "experienced engineer" market 
than home hobbyists.

Actually, speaking of Circuit Cellar, I seem to recall Elektor buying 
them out... $DEITY knows what's going to happen to my CC sub, but I did 
notice that the renewal cost for an online subscription has gone up a 
fair bit since they took over. Hmm. It should be noted that it's still a 
quarter of the cost of an Elektor Online sub (and an eighth the cost of 
a year of Elektor in dead-tree format).

I'm actually in the process of replacing a lot of my paper magazines 
with PDFs -- it's just easier (not to mention quicker) to find things 
when I need them... Dave Tweed's Circuit Cellar index is immense (and 
it's a CSV file so easy to pull into MySQL)

> I can remember, perhaps 20 years ago, going to the Maplin shop in Bristol 
> and comping home with a couple of bags of ICs, conenctors, cable, etc for 
> whatever I was building at the time. Alas not any more :-(

You can still do more or less the same thing in Leeds, though not with 
Maplin. The Farnell Trade Counter is based in Armley, and fairly easy to 
get to by public transport (there's a bus stop on the opposite side of 
the road). Ring ahead, give them an hour or two to pack everything up, 
then call in and collect.

Though that said, even standard "over the phone" sales orders tend to 
arrive next-day if you order before about 4PM. I don't think it's 
actually guaranteed, but there's no delivery fee and IIRC the only 
restriction is that you have to order £30 worth of stuff if you're 
paying by card, or £5 if you're paying by cash at the trade counter.

-- 
Phil.
classiccmp at philpem.me.uk
http://www.philpem.me.uk/