Ask Fran: Pushing Limits, Circuit Simulation, and Frantone Designs
Added 2021-03-25 18:49:03 +0000 UTC
Comments
Wow.. That looks like the busy lamp field display on a PBX, like this Mitel from my past https://mitelking.com/product/sx-100-200-console-brown/
Robert Singleton
2021-03-29 12:23:44 +0000 UTChey Fran, I saw this crazy display piece of computer equipment and thought you'd like it. It looks like it fell off the hal 9000. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Tesdata-Systems-Corporation-Model-002-0354-00-VINTAGE-COMPUTER-/324411659728
Clem Biscuits
2021-03-27 03:04:51 +0000 UTCFran, I think visually as well. I'm no good at dates and times of personal events that occurred years ago, but I can recall the smell, the air temperature, the sounds and the smells. Schematics appear in my head graphically and continue through parts selection and eventual PC board size and enclosures. I built an elaborate fighter simulator in my basement about 2001 using real aircraft parts. I didb't ask the question of myself if I could really make the whole simulator fly. I just concentrated on all the little pieces, like instruments and control heads without thinking of any kind of timeline. Over the years, all those small projects fit right into the simulator and eventually the instruments, heads-down displays, and even the Heads Up Display all interfaced to 6 networked computers (Windows XP era) and all the flight controls and displays worked with an excellent projected outside view. If I looked at the project as a whole, I would have NEVER expected to accomplish such a thing. But concentration on all the little parts just slowly grew into the cockpit and month-by-month more and more became operational. A real F-4 Phantom fighter ejection seat was restored and put into the simulator as well. The G suit, oxygen mask, and every pneumatic system worked as well. I discovered the activating the G suit when there were no Gs to fight resulted in crushing my legs, chest and abdomen pushing all the blood to my head. Pretty stupid in retrospect, but I dumbed-down the pressure on the G suit and it was no longer dangerous. I used to have "sim parties" where groups of coworkers would fly the fighter simulator while intoxicated. Women were better pilots, on the whole, because they were more gently with the flight controls. Guys just remember movies like "Top Gun" and slam the control stick against their legs, which looked great in the movie, but was totally unrealistic as a control change that violent would slam the head of the pilot against the canopy violently. Fighter aircraft have provisions to stop such stupid over-controlling. I finally got tired of adding stuff to the fighter sim and in 2010 decided to work on the real thing. I had a 747-300 cockpit cut off the air-frame in Victorville, CA and shipped it all the way to central Iowa. I intentionally chose a version of the 747 that had the full analog cockpit consisting of countless instruments, switches and annunciators. I stripped everything out of the cockpit and restored right down to the smallest hidden detail. Ever since then I've been reverse-engineering instruments, gathering 747 System Schematics on eBay and restoring/rebuilding every single panel and instrument. If I were to step back and look at the totality of the project, it would seem absolutely impossible for one person to do. But again, I had no schedule to conform to and I worked on all the small parts and installed them back into the restored cockpit when they were done. Then it really started to come together. It most definitely become an operation simulator like the old fighter sim. So, when I think of "limitations" I think more along the lines of looking at a big project and realizing just how complex it will be to finish. It can be scary. What I don't know, I experimented and figured out. I don't think fanatics like me see a "limitation" as I know if I simply dedicate one small part to work on, it will be finished and the next one would then begin. The cockpit fills up faster than I could have imagined. So, I don't think you have "limitations", but simply "do it" rather than researching every single aspect of a big project. I have some very amusing pictures of the huge cockpit being trucked down my residential street. That shocked most of the neighborhood for sure. But it was only connected to the back of my house until I had a garage built large enough to fit it into with a car beside it. I don't have an inflated ego because I work on such large, unusual projects. It's the adventure of the reverse-engineering and restoring something historical that motivates me. Most people, even at work, don't know I'm doing this off-hours. I'd rather keep it a secret and avoid all the requests for parents to bring their children over for a tour. A sad thing, though, I had the garage door open and was working on the cockpit when a child from the neighborhood asked if he could see the inside of the cockpit. I had to tell him it was fine, but his mom or dad would have to accompany him. After trashing m marriage with airplane parts, I am now single and thanks to the media, every "single" guy must be a pedophile or a kidnapper. This is so sad. My whole youth was based upon interaction with neighborhood adults who had technical answers to share, and taught me new methods of solving problems. Now everyone assumes unknown neighbors who live alone are a threat. What a horrible loss to a kid, like I was, that benefited so greatly from adult mentors. I would love nothing more to be a mentor to a child that liked electronics and aerospace. But it's a darker world now. But thanks Fran for explaining your thought process as I found it matched mine very closely. I don't allow tools to lay out PCB traces either. I want to know I put every trace where I wanted manually to protect myself from errors tools might make. Keep up the answers! They're great!
Matt Wietlispach
2021-03-26 04:07:58 +0000 UTCSo I'm not the only one to have a visual mind. I can test my projects in my mind before start making something, and this normally works great :)
MVVblog
2021-03-26 02:00:04 +0000 UTCI started using Spice only after my breadboards started adding detectable side-effects and I wanted to avoid the solder fumes of iterating on perf-board prototypes. I am old-school enough to have been proficient using wire-wrap techniques, but for me it wasn't well suited to iterating prototypes (the pins became worn with reuse). When I used Spice I typically only simulated the "hard parts" of the circuit because my favorite Spice tools weren't integrated with my favorite schematic capture tools, and I got tired of entering schematics twice. Now the integration is better via data import/export utilities, but these days I'm not doing enough analog design to bother: It's all ADCs and DACs for me now that 32-bit ARM processor boards cost less than an 8-bit Arduino, and I can do real-time signal processing on even an ARM M0+.
BobC
2021-03-25 19:15:12 +0000 UTC
