Vector Imagery

[Jules Richardson]

Ethan Dicks wrote:
> I was just hoping to upgrade my dodgy ladder with a more precise one
> without resorting to additional cables and powered circuits.  I seemed
> to have opened a can of worms.

:-)

I thought that pretty much all DACs are ladder-based internally anyway, just 
with far finer tolerances than the typical "bag 'o resistors" hack. In other 
words, by fine-tuning a homebrew ladder and using suitable buffering, you 
could probably get something pretty respectable running.

I stumbled across a few pages on DACs and ADCs a while ago:

   http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/vol_4/chpt_13/1.html

thinking about it, I wonder if the resistor packs often found in old equipment 
are any finer tolerance (or at least more closely matched) than using seperate 
resistors? If you have any scrap ones laying around it might be worth 
investigating.

cheers

Jules