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Most of the folks on this forum have their heads on straight and likely enjoy a decent gaming session, so it' should be no surprise that we react adversely when somebody directs criticism at a passtime we enjoy, and which has been the economic engine behind the development of a heck of a lot of...

FYI, Digi-Key also ships international on a regular basis--try www.digikey.com and click on the UK flag to go to the website with pricing in British pounds with applicable duties included. Don't know if it'll be all that much cheaper in the long run--take a good look at shipping costs. If...

40x 10uF SMT tantalums per board? Dude, you gotta be spending a fortune on caps... Do consider also that tantalums aren't necesarily the be all & end all of capacitors. For decoupling purposes especially, it's more a question of having a set of caps whose self-resonant frequencies complement...

FIrst off, there's usually a reason that things fry... And often as not, replacing the burnt component doesn't fix the underlying problem, and you only end up burning the replacement too... With that caveat, try the following (at your own risk, of course;) Using the utmost care, take a...

No, the frequency of the power grid is controlled pretty carefully, given the consequences of ignoring it... If you ever get a chance, take a class on power generation & distribution. Even if you don't take away any useful knowledge from it, you'll end up having a healthy respect for the folks...

Nice... I think Iv'e got the hardware end covered, as I've got at least an entire drawer full of ADI dev tools. At one point, I even had 3 BF537 EZ-LITES on mydesk. (too bad they were the crappy old silicon rev though...) I might tap into your software development expereience though, as...

If somebody were to offer a kit to build a nice HTPC receiver, (assemble it yourself) would anybody be interested? I'm starting on a reference design for Analog Devices' Blackfin line of DSPs, and am kicking around the idea of using that processor as the brains of a simple-yet-high-quality...

Yes, Digikey most certainly does carry SMD LEDs. And since I work there, I must admit a certain degree of bias, particularly given the employee discount... ;) I understand the $ part of the equation tho-I've been there myself. My suggestion is to do some careful planning, and take into...

It would take a little figuring, but a FET could serve your purposes quite nicely. You'd have to figure out some sort of feedback scheme to make it work, but it could quite possibly be simpler in the end than using a microcontroller to drive digital pots and whatnot all. SOmething to look...

The amount of flexibility you want will largely determine what your final cost would be. My suggestion for a really ghetto solution would be to build a receiver that's sensitive to two particular frequencies, and use a couple of FETs to either put your batteries in series or parallel depending...

That's probably gonna be your best bet. If you put a $10/hr price tage on your time, it doensn't take long to make dropping a c-note worth it

There's lots of ways to go about it... Everythign from using discreet logic to microprocessor based stuff. If you have/can procure the necessary development tools, i.e. a programmer, a PIC would be great for the application. You could use a photo-gate system set to trigger timing interrupts on...

Pull up a datasheet on the part, first off, and make sure you've got a unit that works for DC. A lot of SSR's are glorified thyristors, in which case they'll never turn off unless you're running AC. Beyond that, an SSR isn't necessisarily identical to it's electromechanical cousins. The...

I've seen cheap USB-based data acquisition systems (~$100) that have digital ports... Depending on how much speed you need, you could just multiplex those ports to get however many digital lines you needed.

It depends strongly on the battery chemistry and the application. Most Manufacturers websites have technical info on their products, including cell voltage curves as a function of discharge.

If you're looking for an audio level meter type of thing, or actually much of anything else for that metter, look at the datasheet for the LM3915. It's a 10 segment bar graph display driver, than can be cascaded for 30 LED's without a whole lot of additional problem. It's a neat little chip...

They're pretty much a battery like anything else, except the lithium chemistry is more tempramental than more traditional batteries, i.e. they are more prone to overheating, blowing up, etc... You'd probably need to either acquire a charger designed for your specific battery pack, or build...

Order Confirmation email: received 1:15 PM 1/21/05 Order shipment notice: received 2:14 PM 1/21/05 My order was en route an hour after I clicked the "submit" button, and I'm close enough to the shipping center that it will arrive with tomorrow's mail... All for $2.60 shipping via USPS...

Um, I beg to differ on that point. The PSU in every computer I've ever seen is of the "switching" type, and work at frequencies in the 10's to 100's of kHz--so there are indeed a hell of a lot of high frequency signals running around the PSU. Half the effort in designing such a device is to...

...introduce yourself to the world of embedded systems, starting at the same place a lot of folks do these days... www.microchip.com

If you're just looking for a delay line, rather than a parallel device, that does make things a bit easier... what worries me is the need to clock the PIC and somehow keep it in sync with the rest of the circuit. Assuming you've got parts that run on a 20MHz clock, you've got a 200ns execution...

I'd suggest just getting the logic chips specified. I'm not even sure that the 40-pin PICs have 33 output lines, and even if they did, you'd end up with a lot of latency (in logic terms) in the shift register, and delays between times when the data on each 8-bit section is valid. (I'm assuming...

Try the NEETS modules from the US navy... Not exactly a bedtime story, but a lot of good info in condensed form. Best luck getting it free would probably be from a public university library. Good Luck

May I ask what the end goal of your project is?

How exactly are we defining "work" here? If you're talking about dropping the clock speed to something low or sub- MHz, then yes, perhaps it would. But in so doing, you'd open up a whole new can of worms with your memory refresh rates, and whatnot all. And all in all, you'd end up with...

HOw exactly do you mean "check"? If the tops of the caps are bulging and spitting crap out, it's time to buy a new MB.

Your requirements are a little unclear from what you wrote-- but anyhow, I would also suggest looking around for some filter design programs-- they could save you some time. I believe that Microchip also has something like what you're looking for in design software, since analog lowpass filters...

here's another spit-and baler twine type solution... Have someone built you a preamp with a switchable highpass filter, crossed at around 200Hz. 2 RC stages would give you a 6dB/octave rolloff, putting your explosions and whatnot at 50Hz down by about 12-15dB. Depending on what components you...

ah, good point. Two of them actually. I've never had much luck getting the digital audio to work, so that might be something to revisit now that I'm starting to care. As far as other info, the card (SBlive 5.1) isn't at the bottom of the pci stack. It shares a home with a LAN card, an all...

I've always had lousy sound from my (don't laugh) SB live 5.1 line out; lots of background hiss mostly, and non-sound signals bleeding into the audio feed, such as disk access, mouse movement, etc. It's worst with headphones, but noticable with a bookshelf speaker system too. So my question...

Actually, for a given power input, 4 ohm speakers will have roughly 4 times greater resistive losses than 8 ohm drivers... Ohm's law here, do the math. And in general, having higher impedance speakers makes amplifier design easier and cheaper. By having to handle less current, (by letting...

I find that there tend to be two windows volume controls on my box-- one for an overall level, and one for the wave output... I'm not sure if it's all software, or if there's an actual hardware volume control on the soundcard... Anyhow, I try to keep the volume in WIndows as high as I can...

I'm going to throw my hat in with the "buy the cheap cable" crowd. If you were talking about analog component video, yes, you've got a reason to buy good cables. But for digital audio... Well, if you're getting a screwed up digital signal, you'd know it. Think of clicks and pops in mp3's...

Depending on what you're listening to, I'd suggest using winamp and the software EQ that comes with it. I'm not real big on the winamp video, but as far as music is concerned it's the only thing I use. Call me old fashined, but I hate media player and all of the foofy crap that comes...

I'm sure there are some tricks the old school had, but they haven't been in use since.... then. Ya know, if you wanted to be cheap and dirty about it, you could always just use a digital logic circuit to do the actual counting, and have relays connected to them to make the fun noises=)...

Those would certainly be valid reasons for filtering the output. I only ask, because there are a lot of well-intentioned folks out there who jump into a project with less than a good idea of why, and end up disappointed with the results. (I certainly have) And I'd be interested to know what...

Sorry I don't have any links, but look up a beginning digital logic text, and see how the various gates are formed using transistors. -- You can regard a relay as a transistor for most purposes, since they perform a similar switching function, and FWIW, an AND gate is basically just a transistor...

Yeah, you're right about the input amp thing... Sometimes the critical thinking skills arent' all that swift when you're got an adult beverage in hand, and it's late;) But I'm still not fond of biasing the noninverting input to half V+... But now that you point out my stupid, I do believe that...

You're gonna kill that transistor by sticking an inductor there without an appropriate catch diode placed across it to snub voltage transients when the transistor turns off. Put the diode with one terminal at the junction of the transistor and inductor, and the other to ground. WHich way you...

First off, the use of the 2134 seems excessive--the things arent' cheap, and since you're looking for only a binary output anyhow, something like a 1458 (a dual 741) would be more suited, or perhaps a dual version of the LF356... And beyond that, I don't think it will work as intended. The...