EEVblog #545 - Vintage Design Rant

[EEVblog]

Dave replies to a youtube comment that you can't learn much practical design stuff from vintage teardown videos.

[walshms]

Well said and done!

[c4757p]

I swear, people think that electrons behaved differently back when all this "vintage" stuff was designed. There's always somebody bitching whenever you take the time to look at something old...

[nitro2k01]

Good rant! 

[trebor]

i have always found dave's video's very well done and informative,even so called old technology has a place in learning, just look at valve tubes, making a come back in audio amps, i always learn some thing from the video's

[tinhead]

well Dave, the first part of your rant is actually your own fault. You do have influence on other ppl, so on the one side would be useful to think a sec more before you said again such "wise things" as with the 20 bucks resistors (as you said that in the original video, i thought immediately "gosh, tomorrow ebay would be full of self-made-arduino-based-resistor-ref-boxes-with-blue-led"), on the other side when you re-re-review-and-re-check your videos before release then your "style" will be gone, hard to decide what worse.

One thing i know for sure, i really hate statements like "but Dave said" 

[alm]

You could easily argue that you can learn more from vintage equipment than from modern gadgets due to the lower level of integration and better documentation. Good luck finding schematics for that low-cost DSO or e-book reader.

[kg4arn]

I didn't start out a fan of tear downs.  But now I am hooked.  I learn something every time. 
The vintage equipment tear downs expose the fundamental principals better, because less is hidden in software and large scale integration.  I think that with the vintage equipment, it is easier to see the truly clever wizardry these design and manufacture teams brought to market. 

[Zad]

I was going to comment on the video, but YouTube forced me to transfer to the Google+ registration and has lost all my subscriptions and video uploads! Trying to log in as my usual Zadster sends me in a feedback loop in the login screen...

Anyway.

The only people who don't learn anything from teardown videos are those people with closed minds. I have been taking stuff apart for longer than Dave has, and I still learn things. I probably will do right until the day I snuff it. However, it shows the mental attitude of software people. In software, ideas and concepts go out of fashion so quickly that they are unusable after 20 years or so. Electronics is based on concepts which are centuries old, and will always hold true.

[manticore00]

Great rant, physics doesn't change after all! In fact, I tend to be more impressed by vintage designs since so many modern systems(or at least the ones I can afford to own!) seem to shrug at some challenges and just decide to compensate for them more cheaply using software hacks.

[AG6QR]

In software, ideas and concepts go out of fashion so quickly that they are unusable after 20 years or so.

Maybe SOME ideas do that, but the fundamentals don't change so quickly.  I've been a software professional for over 30 years, and I've seen languages come and go, operating systems and hardware architectures change, and plenty of other changes as you'd imagine.  There are plenty of fads in software engineering, and somewhat like fads in clothing fashion, some of the ones that ramp up most quickly are also the ones that are discarded most quickly.   

But through it all, the fundamental algorithms and data structures stay pretty much the same.  One could potentially learn a lot from a "teardown" of a well designed piece of software from 20 or 30 years ago, even if the details wouldn't be handled exactly the same way today.

[free_electron]

  what would people want. . Let's teardown a kindle..
Here is an e-paper display which was custom made , specs ink own, pinout unknown , how to drive it unknown , and you can't get it anyway.
Here we have the circuit board. It conatains a system-on-chip , custom made, specs unknown. Here are a few resistors and caps, and there isa flash chip and there the radio, also custom made specs unobtainium. It uses a 4 layer circuit board made in china.
Look the case is flimsy plastic held together with clips.

End of teardown.
What have we learnt ? Nothing.

Most likely the same complainer messes around with hardwhinos and prebuilt shields. Has no clue how to wire up an opamp let alone what rail to rail is.... His schematics are spaghetti consting of loose parts scattered aroind with netnames on every pin. The two wires that are drawn cross the chip symbol and his pcb' are all laid out with the same trace width and holes that are either way too small or way too large. Heatsinks are in the middle of the board , connectors are mounted updside down and the end result looks like something the cat threw up, the dog peed on and was then mounted using hot glue in an old tupperware box which was subsequently nailed to the wall.
It does have a blue led (albeit with the wrong value series resistor so it will die prematurely.

 

[c4757p]

Heatsinks are in the middle of the board , connectors are mounted updside down and the end result looks like something the cat threw up, the dog peed on and was then mounted using hot glue in an old tupperware box which was subsequently nailed to the wall.

This sentence brings me a particularly grumpy kind of immense joy.

[orion242]

I think we should have some transistor tube era teardowns for all the vintage electronics fanboys following you.

Great work as usual, keep it up!

[SLJ]

No argument here... It's the new crap with everything on a chip that's boring.

[orion242]

Nice site Steve.

So what does an "Old Reliable Soldering Iron" cost these days?  http://www.stevenjohnson.com/soldering/pics/old-reliable.jpg

Are they relatively easy to find?

I would love one on my workbench.

[andyturk]

... Heatsinks are in the middle of the board , connectors are mounted updside down and the end result looks like something the cat threw up, the dog peed on and was then mounted using hot glue in an old tupperware box which was subsequently nailed to the wall.

You just described my last three projects! Well, except for the cat. Don't like cats.

[Circlotron]

I once had an old (1950's?) Plessey C42 military transceiver. The inside of that thing was pure art. No expense spared. You could wind the knobs and watch all the tuning mechanisms operate beautifully. Great fun to open up and examine. Compared to that, domestic radios were truly cat, dog, tupperware and hot glue.

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=plessey+C42&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=ZjN7UrinE8aXiAeOl4DYCg&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1432&bih=780#imgdii=_

[daddario]

Good rant. I saw that comment in YT and wanted to reply to that person.
I even got the text half way done, but as I usually don't comment on YT and then the saying about arguing on the Internet and paralympics came to mind, I just decided not to...
I absolutely love vintage teardowns and very much love tearing vintage electronics down myself, especially test equipment, military stuff and all sorts of weird and special-purpose devices.
Yes, I know how these things work, I know how a low leakage PCB design is made and why it's like that and I know how a high current lab PSU works. But it's always very interesting to see how an engineer has solved a particular problem and then you can stop and think for a second, how I'd made it and why that engineer made it the way he did and then perhaps you can learn something from it.
Very useful knowledge if you have to design custom stuff yourself.
Tearing down a kindle or, I don't know, a kitchen timer... yeah, I suppose it's interesting to see how a modern mass produced monolithic design looks like and how to minimise BOM, per-unit and production costs when you do things in high volumes.
Not tenth of the (self)educational value in that, though.

[84GKSIG]

I dont care how new or how old the electronics are I find my self always learning something, I don't have the cash to outlay to go buy stuff to just pull it apart and see how it works, so these videos I find informative and entertaining some times even inspire a new way of thinking when it comes to design and putting something together for my self or for some one else.

As far as I can see there's always going to be one person who dose not like a video but I don't see any one being held down against their will to sit and watch it. if I don't like something, I don't watch. simple enough ?

lets keep something in mind here, if it wasn't for the existence of the vintage stuff there wouldn't of been progression, no one would of tried to make things better and we wouldn't have the tech we have now.

To me evolution in the electronics industry as a fellow enthusiast plays a pretty big part in learning and understanding how something gets put together and why it was done in that particular manner.

I don't mind tubes and I don't mind silicone, don't like silicone on women though.

[daqq]

Nice rant :-) I've gotta say, that you can learn a LOT more from old tech teardown of the more exotic/precission stuff. I mean, what can you learn from a consumer 1000+k series kindle/smartphone/printer/whatever teardown? Behold: One obscure ASIC sitting in the middle, some power supply DC DC converter to power the system, a little miscellany and that's it. No clue as to the actual internal function, which is generally: Execute some firmware/OS on the FLASH next to or embedded in the ASIC, communicate through the unknown interface with that unknown pheripheral. All this on 4 cm^2 on a several layered board.

I mean, sure you CAN learn a lot on design by observing some of it, but in more general terms, like "here's a good way to route differential high speed signals, and here's a crappy way to route it", "look, a nice little PCB built in antenae".

With older tech you can actually see the creativity used.

I once had an old (1950's?) Plessey C42 military transceiver. The inside of that thing was pure art. No expense spared.

Military stuff is generally a few grades above the consumer or even industrial electronics/gear regardless of from which era they are from. Both in terms of quality of design/make and in pricing. I'd love to see some space gear teardown.

[ElectroIrradiator]

When you look at the designs implemented in modern consumer electronics, it feels like many of today's product engineers hasn't viewed enough vintage teardown videos...

Many young designers do seem to believe that all the old school analog tricks are pointless today, since 'everything is digital'.

[samgab]

1: I totally agree with Dave's rant... I learnt a lot about designing a high range, high accuracy, high stability resistor array from that video, cheers.
2: What is that purple box in the background, looks like a new DMM or something?
3: To Google/Youtube: Piss OFF with your frikkin' Google+ crap! I don't want Google+, just leave Youtube how it was already!

[qczech]

My opinion is that vintage equipment teardown like that is far more informative and interesting than modern teardown.

In the old circuits all the guts are exposed. They can be easily followed and investigated by a beginner - both the digital and analogue parts.

In a modern design, like the mentioned kindle, all you get inside is a bunch of ICs with part numbers covered up.

Besides, looking into vintage gear is like opening an old book. You get this epic feeling of uncovering the past.

You feel like Indiana Jones of electronics the minute you open up a 70's tektronix scope

[SLJ]

Nice site Steve.
So what does an "Old Reliable Soldering Iron" cost these days?  http://www.stevenjohnson.com/soldering/pics/old-reliable.jpg
Are they relatively easy to find?
I would love one on my workbench.

They show up on line daily (many different brands). Most torches are brass and the people selling them don't realize the hook on top was for holding a soldering iron unless it's still with the torch.

I use to collect mostly antique radios.  One day about 15 years ago I was showing off my collection and heard myself saying "and here's an old radio, and here's an old radio, and here's another old radio".  That's when I realized that vintage test equipment was far more interesting to me as there were so many types and different designs over the years.  I went from around 200 radios down to about 30 and have concentrated on antique and vintage test equipment ever since.  There were some very cool designs especially in the 1930s.  Many were as much works of art as well as built to last many years.

A couple of my favorites:

[dr.diesel]

I wonder if Claudio D is following along?

[Stonent]

My opinion is that vintage equipment teardown like that is far more informative and interesting than modern teardown.

In the old circuits all the guts are exposed. They can be easily followed and investigated by a beginner - both the digital and analogue parts.

In a modern design, like the mentioned kindle, all you get inside is a bunch of ICs with part numbers covered up.

Besides, looking into vintage gear is like opening an old book. You get this epic feeling of uncovering the past.

You feel like Indiana Jones of electronics the minute you open up a 70's tektronix scope

You hardly need a schematic on some old stuff. You can just see everything.

[LL0rd]

My opinion is that vintage equipment teardown like that is far more informative and interesting than modern teardown.

Well, I don't know, if I can support your opinion. What was the vintage equipment part on the teardown? The analog side wasn't vintage - as Dave said. If you have to design such a calibration device today, you would probably use the same design rules. The vintage part was the digital part on the left side. And well, I wished Dave invested some more time on the vintage left digital side.

[dr.diesel]

My opinion is that vintage equipment teardown like that is far more informative and interesting than modern teardown.

In the old circuits all the guts are exposed. They can be easily followed and investigated by a beginner - both the digital and analogue parts.

Just like old cars and middle aged women, you can poke, prod, tweak and investigate without breaking anything.

[ResistorRob]

3: To Google/Youtube: Piss OFF with your frikkin' Google+ crap! I don't want Google+, just leave Youtube how it was already!

I went from being in love with Youtube to totally hating it since they started to screw with the page layout and shoving Google+ down our throats. Forcing people to use G+ might make them look more popular with a higher user count, but it will do little to increase the activity of the overall G+ on the site. To me this seems like a real stupid way to try and compete with Facebook. They just need to forget their social media dreams and stick to what they are good at: Android, Youtube, and Search.

----------------- On Rant Video ------------------

1) Dave has a lot more patience than I do. I think I would have simply replied in the comments "You're a moron" and went on with the rest of my day, lol

2) I actually do agree that I don't learn a whole lot from teardowns. That said I usually do learn something, but it doesn't vary in how much I learn whether or not it's a modern product or vintage. I do on the other hand usually learn a lot from the repair videos.

3) Dave said "only for entertainment purposes" like it was such a bad thing. There has been multiple times I watched a teardown or other electronics video and didn't learn anything, but was still glad I spent the time watching it. I'm passionate about my electronics hobby, so I actually enjoy a good video on the subject as much as someone else would watching TV or a movie. I don't think it should be required to make sure there is an educational element to every video, sometimes just the "wow, that is real cool" element is enough.

4) I don't think the Fluke calibrator was a good example to defend his point. He says "the design would be exacly the same". While it's true for this product, it wouldn't be for many if not most products. A cell phone for example would have a radically different design than a vintage one.  In the Fluke video it was one where I didn't really learn a whole lot, but I still thought the video was amazing. The parts in that thing were pure geek porn. Loved it!

5) One area teardown videos are really helpful to me is they pique my interest in something that was mentioned, next thing you know I'm on Google and I start my adventure down the rabbit hole, and by the end of it I usually learned a lot. An example of that for the Fluke video was this question I asked myself "could you replace the mechanical "sex on a stick" relays with modern solid state relays. By adventure I mean I free flow, so I could start of researching the resistances of relays and 3 hours later there is a jack-o-latern image on my oscilloscope and newly made liquor pouring robot in the kitchen with an option laser attachment. 

[nathanpc]

No argument here... It's the new crap with everything on a chip that's boring.

Finally someone said it! Vintage teardowns are a lot better.

3: To Google/Youtube: Piss OFF with your frikkin' Google+ crap! I don't want Google+, just leave Youtube how it was already!

I went from being in love with Youtube to totally hating it since they started to screw with the page layout and shoving Google+ down our throats. Forcing people to use G+ might make them look more popular with a higher user count, but it will do little to increase the activity of the overall G+ on the site. To me this seems like a real stupid way to try and compete with Facebook. They just need to forget their social media dreams and stick to what they are good at: Android, Youtube, and Search.

In my opinion Google+ comments in YouTube is a lot better than the old crap. Now you can finally have threads (instead of the horrible reply system they had before) and the layout of the comments is a lot better. Just think of it as Disqus, because you're not using Google+, just the comment engine.

[atw60444]

I find these vintage gear tear-downs very interesting and useful Dave. Keep it up! Half of my test gear is elderly HP, Telequipment, Marconi stuff. It's all relevant to me. 
 It makes a lot more sense seeing the building blocks and sections in the flesh, rather than just another custom chip or two and interconnects.
Jon

[madshaman]

D***it, I want to watch this vid so badly.  We don't even have power atm, let alone bandwidth :-(, /gripe

When I came back to electronics, I started messing with an atmega328p.  Then a very respectable individual made a comment about how I seemed to like pushing 1s and 0s around.

A bit bruised, I started seriously looking into analog.  Before I knew it I was buying books and pouring over articles written by the likes of the late Bob Pease and Jim Williams.

Soon I found myself collecting all of Tektronix' "Concepts" books and gathering together as much of this stuff as I could.

A few years later my entire life was changed and I haven't even absorbed a fraction of all this knowledge yet.

The mere suggestion that nothing of value can be learned from "vintage" technology is the most ludicrous position I've heard put forth in my entire life.

There isn't a word in the English language that can come remotely close to communicating the new level of stupidity this suggests.

[driradar]

There isn't a word in the English language that can come remotely close to communicating the new level of stupidity this suggests.


But there is a known explanation: DUNNING KRUGER (basically, they are too stupid to realise how stupid they are]

[Gintoki]

Dave is spot on, you can definetley learn something from old designs, especially the analog designs

Btw. where on earth does one get Tellurium Copper Banana Sockets? Farnell dosn't have them as far as I can see

[ResistorRob]

In my opinion Google+ comments in YouTube is a lot better than the old crap. Now you can finally have threads (instead of the horrible reply system they had before) and the layout of the comments is a lot better. Just think of it as Disqus, because you're not using Google+, just the comment engine.

I like the nested comments too, but there is absolutely no technical reason that someone needs to join Google+ to have nested comments. Now you have to go to the Google+ website to see if you have Youtube replies. Forcing people to use something they don't want is equally as stupid. Google is drunk with power, I'm starting to rethink buying a new Android phone next month. I switched my homepage from Google to Bing as well. Allowing stylized comments and url's are a spammers dream. I expect to see a nice bump in the amount of spam in the very near future.

Btw. where on earth does one get Tellurium Copper Banana Sockets? Farnell dosn't have them as far as I can see

eBay 

[alanb]

Looking and learning from old designs both good and bad is essential.

To quote George Santayana 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it'

[driradar]

There isn't a word in the English language that can come remotely close to communicating the new level of stupidity this suggests.


But there is a known explanation: DUNNING KRUGER (basically, they are too stupid to realise how stupid they are]

Sorry, I was referring to Claudio D.

[Terabyte2007]

Dave,

 I agree with you 100%. I love tearing down old vintage gear just to learn about the early fundamentals of how they overcame certain design problems. It's because of our engineering past is why we have many of the everyday advancements in technology we have today. I think it's extremely vital for any beginner to understand the past before trying to master the now.

[rstoer]

I'm with Dave 100% on this one. I like seeing teardowns of high-end vintage test equipment as I often find them a better dollar value than similar new items from China. So for me these are also product reviews. I especially enjoyed the 5450A video as I buy and sell a lot of Fluke equipment of that vintage but have never had one of those.
I'm glad Dave pushed back. Thumbs Up!

[Dave]

I prefer watching teardowns of vintage precision gear to new stuff, simply because they don't contains as many custom specialty parts that would be unobtainable by a hobbyist. I like to lie to myself: "I could make that", when I see some intriguing design. I find it even more impressive to see a 30-year-old multimeter that outperforms many modern instruments. That's exactly why I have half a dozen vintage meters in my possession, some more than 10 years older than I am.

I can imagine how freaking boring a Kindle teardown would be:
A retarded case design, impossible to get into without breaking half of the retaining clips. Wow, look, a super tight PCB layout. Everything is custom, so I wont even bother to look up any of the part numbers. The PCB is multilayer, so you won't see anything. Well that about does it for this one.

[MagFlux]

I believe that Claudio D. has got the message after 3 pages of people mostly ripping him a new one.
The simple message would be "the wheel has already been invented", look a what as come before and improve it or modify it for your purposes.

[Dread]

I could not believe that someone had complained about tearing down vintage equipment!
Dave got this 100% correct, as a matter of fact what I find to be a waste of time is tearing down new equipment.

Electronic Engineering is almost a dead field because most of the ground work has already been done by engineers throughout the 1960's to late 1990's.  What we have now are mostly materials and chemical engineers going through trying how to fit and meld existing designs into ever shrinking integrated component packages.  If you wan't to learn anything about electronics you have to go back to a point in time when the actual design was splayed out on the board and not hidden in a chip.

Well done Dave I give this a 10 out 10 and I hope you teardown more and more vintage stuff because thats what will create the future engineers.

[Ericho]

I could not believe that someone had complained about tearing down vintage equipment!

+1 I don't get it either  I love thru hole vintage stuff

This rand video is this months favorite of mine, especially the last 2 sentences. 

[M0BSW]

 At work we have the  Golden turd award, given out to people usually management when they messed up somehow, perhaps you could do similar as it's your blog site/forum, for anyone who makes such mistakes, you may like to consider calling it the GOLDEN TURD AWARD  or PILLOCK OF THE WEEK AWARD, or WHOOPS I  WISHED ID KEPT MY MOUTH SHUT AWARD, I commend this idea to the  members
ps encase you were wondering, the golden turd is a plastic replica plastic turd bought from a joke/ prank shop, sprayed golden and mounted on a piece of ply wood, and presented to the latest victim,on a Friday lunch time in the canteen where full applause and jeering takes place.

[walshms]

ps encase you were wondering, the golden turd is a plastic replica plastic turd bought from a joke/ prank shop, sprayed golden and mounted on a piece of ply wood, and presented to the latest victim,on a Friday lunch time in the canteen where full applause and jeering takes place.

If you really want it to have impact, sprinkle it with a little bit of "eau de skunk". 

I do hope everyone there is really good-natured about it.  There are some people that would not take it well.

[M0BSW]

"Oh Yes" it's never taken seriously, some have 4 of them

[walshms]

Four?!? 

I think I'd have done everything I could to have avoided the second!

[BiOzZ]

I like the vintage teardowns .... they use methods of accomplishing their goal using standard chips that today you can get just one small chip for and they use nice large properly marked parts and 1 or 2 layer boards that make reverse engineering easy

i had no idea how a microcontrollers worked before taking apart some old equipment that used a microprocessor!

i say more retro teardowns!

[free_electron]

At work we have the  Golden turd award, given out to people usually management when they messed up somehow, perhaps you could do similar as it's your blog site/forum, for anyone who makes such mistakes, you may like to consider calling it the GOLDEN TURD AWARD  or PILLOCK OF THE WEEK AWARD, or WHOOPS I  WISHED ID KEPT MY MOUTH SHUT AWARD, I commend this idea to the  members
ps encase you were wondering, the golden turd is a plastic replica plastic turd bought from a joke/ prank shop, sprayed golden and mounted on a piece of ply wood, and presented to the latest victim,on a Friday lunch time in the canteen where full applause and jeering takes place.

a golden-foot-in-mouth award.

[M0BSW]

At work we have the  Golden turd award, given out to people usually management when they messed up somehow, perhaps you could do similar as it's your blog site/forum, for anyone who makes such mistakes, you may like to consider calling it the GOLDEN TURD AWARD  or PILLOCK OF THE WEEK AWARD, or WHOOPS I  WISHED ID KEPT MY MOUTH SHUT AWARD, I commend this idea to the  members
ps encase you were wondering, the golden turd is a plastic replica plastic turd bought from a joke/ prank shop, sprayed golden and mounted on a piece of ply wood, and presented to the latest victim,on a Friday lunch time in the canteen where full applause and jeering takes place.

a golden-foot-in-mouth award.

Yes that's a good one

[Whuffo]

In the "olden" days, amazing things were done with small component counts. TV sets with 16 vacuum tubes, radios with 5 of them. And they worked well - given the technology of the time. This kind of elegant (usually) design continued on into the 80's with germanium, then silicon transistors - but now our younger engineers look at a project and throw a million transistor IC at it and call it good. Is this better? Sometimes it is, and sometimes it just shows extremely lazy engineering.

Dave looks at test equipment and some other higher end equipment - but the electronic items that sell by the million are inexpensive - in part due to the elegant design of the circuitry where not one transistor or PC board trace was wasted. Billions of talking greeting cards have been sold - and a Arduino solution here would work, but it's overkill and far too expensive for the market. Furby sold by the millions - and there's teardown videos all over YouTube. No fancy MCU in there, either - and the mechanical design is a work of art.

I'm not trying to disparage Amtel or PIC micros; I use them where they're appropriate. But real engineering isn't all about getting the design done in the shortest amount of time (to heck with the cost) - it's about making the product happen using the least complicated (and least expensive) circuitry. And you can get many valuable clues about how to do it with the minimum by looking at what engineers of the past have done.

Those who think that the younger generation are superior to us graybeards are fools; you might very well be superior one day, but until then you'd do well to listen to the advice of those who have done the job since before you were born. You could learn from our mistakes and our successes and get to be superior even sooner.

[Dave]

Those who think that the younger generation are superior to us graybeards are fools; you might very well be superior one day, but until then you'd do well to listen to the advice of those who have done the job since before you were born.

I'm sorry, but this is the kind of dickhead attitude that annoys the sh*t out of me. I am sure you know many things that a young whipper snapper may not, but that doesn't give you the exclusive right to lecture every young engineer and treat him like a moron. I have worked in a team of EE's during the summer and there were mostly guys around their thirties and one guy who was over 60. He spoke down to us and acted like he was the only one who knew what he was doing there.

Well, I was working on some circuit, and because the guy I was usually working with was on vacation, I asked the graybeard for some advice. He explained some things to me, and sketched a quick and dirty schematic. When I thought he made a small mistake, I asked him about it and got yelled at. I then left his desk with my tail between my legs and continued working. About half an hour later he figured out that he did in fact make a mistake and that I was right. No apology whatsoever.
You know what that resulted in? I never asked him about anything ever again. Even if I was not exactly sure what to do, I just did what I thought was best, and rather corrected the mistake later than listen to him. Is this how a team should work?

When I whined about it to the other guys at lunch break, they just told me: "Get used to it, he's always right. But don't worry about it, he's retiring in 2 years anyway." A fine example of a well-functioning team, don't you think?

[Alexei.Polkhanov]

There is nothing wrong with retro teardown. Even if equipment is 30 years old it may not be completely obsolete and it is easier to teach principles of design on older equipment. When I look at something like that it always make me wonder - where is technology now? What do they use in modern equipment.

I have seen some photos of similar equipment where board was populated with surface mount resistors that are laser trimmed and coated with something after they are installed. Next question would be which resistors are used for that?  These http://www.vishay.com/docs/61011/sc7scb.pdf ? I don't think it is very modern solution either, but applicable YAG lasers are much more affordable  now.

These 0603 ones have dR/R 0.1%: http://www.vishay.com/docs/28893/usinglasertrimmableresistors.pdf. There have to be models that allow higher accuracy.

[walshms]

I asked him about it and got yelled at. I then left his desk with my tail between my legs and continued working. About half an hour later he figured out that he did in fact make a mistake and that I was right. No apology whatsoever.
You know what that resulted in? I never asked him about anything ever again. Even if I was not exactly sure what to do, I just did what I thought was best, and rather corrected the mistake later than listen to him. Is this how a team should work?

When I whined about it to the other guys at lunch break, they just told me: "Get used to it, he's always right. But don't worry about it, he's retiring in 2 years anyway." A fine example of a well-functioning team, don't you think?

The exception or the rule?  Sounds like this particular "greybeard" just has an attitude.  In my experience, most don't.

[sync]

These 0603 ones have dR/R 0.1%: http://www.vishay.com/docs/28893/usinglasertrimmableresistors.pdf. There have to be models that allow higher accuracy.

TC of 50-250ppm/K

[Dave]

The exception or the rule?  Sounds like this particular "greybeard" just has an attitude.  In my experience, most don't.

I am not saying all graybeards are like that. I know many that are happy to share their knowledge and experience, and are happy to listen when you teach them something new.
That's how it should work. But when you have a graybeard that feels threatened by the whipper snappers, everything falls apart.

I had to say it, because Whuffo sounded just like one of those cranky old bastards: "I'll do the talking, and you do the listening, kid. You are young and don't know squat."

[lilshawn]

geeez... this sounds like the kind of guy who would:

1) go ahead and build his own resistance tester with modern surface mounted components

2) find out that for some reason the LOW ohm scale reading error are WAY out to lunch (because of actual trace resistance skewing things...but he wouldn't know that)

3) find out that for some reason the HIGH ohm scale reading error are WAY out to lunch (because the board itself actually conducts a tiny amount...but he wouldn't know that either)

4) put said error specifications on the product anyways and/or market it as a feature

SHAKE MY HEAD.  (also bang)

[trackman44]

I love the fact that it has a Z80 chip inside. I learnt to program in BASIC on a Z80 based computer (ZX81). Then I acquired the ZX Spectrum and learned to program in machine language! Ahh.... brings back good memories Love the teardown by the way. You learn allot, it's all there for everyone to see what's going on. Nowdays every thing is system on chip or FPGA. Nothing to see here folks!

Will

[vk6zgo]

what would people want. . Let's teardown a kindle..
Here is an e-paper display which was custom made , specs ink own, pinout unknown , how to drive it unknown , and you can't get it anyway.
Here we have the circuit board. It conatains a system-on-chip , custom made, specs unknown. Here are a few resistors and caps, and there isa flash chip and there the radio, also custom made specs unobtainium. It uses a 4 layer circuit board made in china.
Look the case is flimsy plastic held together with clips.

End of teardown.
What have we learnt ? Nothing.



Most likely the same complainer messes around with hardwhinos and prebuilt shields. Has no clue how to wire up an opamp let alone what rail to rail is.... His schematics are spaghetti consting of loose parts scattered aroind with netnames on every pin. The two wires that are drawn cross the chip symbol and his pcb' are all laid out with the same trace width and holes that are either way too small or way too large. Heatsinks are in the middle of the board , connectors are mounted updside down and the end result looks like something the cat threw up, the dog peed on and was then mounted using hot glue in an old tupperware box which was subsequently nailed to the wall.
It does have a blue led (albeit with the wrong value series resistor so it will die prematurely.

 

Now,that's a rant!!

[AlfBaz]

<snip> pcb' are all laid out with the same trace width and holes that are either way too small or way too large. Heatsinks are in the middle of the board , connectors are mounted updside down and the end result looks like something the cat threw up, the dog peed on and was then mounted using hot glue in an old tupperware box which was subsequently nailed to the wall.
It does have a blue led (albeit with the wrong value series resistor so it will die prematurely.

How'd you get your hands on my design rules??

[Circlotron]

In the "olden" days, amazing things were done with small component counts. TV sets with 16 vacuum tubes, radios with 5 of them. And they worked well - given the technology of the time.

My idea of good engineering is to accomplish the most you can, given what you have. Vintage radios using regeneration, also reflex circuitry that amplifies rf, turns it to audio then passes audio through the same stage for a second pass at amplification. And look at the effort that went into getting horn loaded and bass reflex speakers right instead of just chucking a gigawatt at black hole of a speaker. Another example is the SU carburettor - unbelievably simple yet gave results WAY out of proportion to it's simplicity. -> http://www.mossmotoring.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/SU-Carb-Weber-Carb.jpg

I reckon a teardown of an old tube/valve B&W TV set would be the go. That's where I learnt my stuff in the early 70's.

[czdt8m]

At work we have the  Golden turd award, given out to people usually management when they messed up somehow, perhaps you could do similar as it's your blog site/forum, for anyone who makes such mistakes, you may like to consider calling it the GOLDEN TURD AWARD  or PILLOCK OF THE WEEK AWARD, or WHOOPS I  WISHED ID KEPT MY MOUTH SHUT AWARD, I commend this idea to the  members
ps encase you were wondering, the golden turd is a plastic replica plastic turd bought from a joke/ prank shop, sprayed golden and mounted on a piece of ply wood, and presented to the latest victim,on a Friday lunch time in the canteen where full applause and jeering takes place.

I used to work at a company that had a yearly "Red Face Award" for the worst performing supplier. (this was a car manufacturing company)
Glad it wasn't us as we did the IT support for them. 

[poorchava]

I find it most educative to tear down discrete semiconductor electronics (like 70's audio amps for example).

It's quite often these times that people don't know how to build a simple voltage amplifier out of transistors. They use an opamp ic - easy and cheap. But what if you need to work at 50V levels? They take a more expensive opamp. Ok. What about 150V? Foooook. Even if there's one that can do it, it will cost you $30 a piece or something. You can make it out of discrete transistors for $2 tops.

[Oracle]

Vintage teardowns are a gold mine of information, and vintage stuff is simpler than recent one (at least for me) it's more understandable...   

[Synergy Hub]

 Dave,
Glad you did a rant video reply to that way off base comment.   I have taught Project Design for over 40 years and the first thing I do is work on getting rid of the attitude many new "engineers" have that there is no point in looking at older designs.   They are the same ones that will take months to design something "great and new"... and have wasted their time and the companies money because it was actually designed better long ago.   

Any person in Any field that does not know the History and Prior work that has been key to the ongoing development is frankly a fool.  Case in point... had one spending a huge amount of time and money to "develop" a way to reset a system each day...  he was using RTC chip, microprocessor, power driver module....   I said just put a 555 on the board set to 24hrs.   He said, and I quote "what is that?".

Other comments here have referenced "greybeards"...  If it was not for us... you would be still cooking on an open fire.   Progress is based on a foundation of people and work.   Pity in some circles the elder pioneers are not respected.

[vk6zgo]

I find it most educative to tear down discrete semiconductor electronics (like 70's audio amps for example).

It's quite often these times that people don't know how to build a simple voltage amplifier out of transistors. They use an opamp ic - easy and cheap. But what if you need to work at 50V levels? They take a more expensive opamp. Ok. What about 150V? Foooook. Even if there's one that can do it, it will cost you $30 a piece or something. You can make it out of discrete transistors for $2 tops.

Yeah,people fall in love with a particular way of doing things!
We had a guy on another forum who tried to make a VLF radio out of Op Amps,with an untuned voltage follower input stage,followed by the sole tuned circuit in the input of a gain stage,then another untuned voltage follower.

The thing oscillated!

Even after he "fixed" the oscillation,it was so insensitive that it didn't receive a thing!

He wanted to know why ordinary Op Amps weren't used n the RF sections of receivers.
I pointed out that the early ones  were unusable,(poor bandwidth,instability,etc),& by the time that they were a bit better,any applications in radios had been taken up by better purpose designed devices.
.

[vk6zgo]

Dave,
Glad you did a rant video reply to that way off base comment.   I have taught Project Design for over 40 years and the first thing I do is work on getting rid of the attitude many new "engineers" have that there is no point in looking at older designs.   They are the same ones that will take months to design something "great and new"... and have wasted their time and the companies money because it was actually designed better long ago.   

Any person in Any field that does not know the History and Prior work that has been key to the ongoing development is frankly a fool.  Case in point... had one spending a huge amount of time and money to "develop" a way to reset a system each day...  he was using RTC chip, microprocessor, power driver module....   I said just put a 555 on the board set to 24hrs.   He said, and I quote "what is that?".

Other comments here have referenced "greybeards"...  If it was not for us... you would be still cooking on an open fire.   Progress is based on a foundation of people and work.   Pity in some circles the elder pioneers are not respected.

A friend of mine told me about the time that his Employer was trying to make a event counter which would count the total number of operations on a production line.
It didn't have to interface to a computer or anything,just give a readout.

My mate bought a cheap calculator,butchered it so it would always  perform the + 1 function,connected it to a microswitch which tripped each time the operation occurred,mounted it where it was needed,and all was well!

[Circlotron]

A friend of mine told me about the time that his Employer was trying to make a event counter which would count the total number of operations on a production line. It didn't have to interface to a computer or anything,just give a readout.
My mate bought a cheap calculator,butchered it so it would always  perform the + 1 function,connected it to a microswitch which tripped each time the operation occurred,mounted it where it was needed,and all was well!

You can do really neat things with a simple calculator and an approach like that. For example put a magnet on a bicycle wheel and have a hall effect sensor or reed switch pulse whenever the wheel completes a rotation. Feed it to the = button on the calc. Measure the circumference of the wheel, say 2.573 metres, = 0.002573km. set up the calc by keying in 0+0.2573. Every time the wheel rotates the calc increments by 0.002573km. Bob's your uncle! Instant digital odometer in km, or whatever units you desire.

[TheWelly888]

I watched your rant before I watched the teardown video!

Thank God (or whatever) for this forum, I can comment on your videos without effing around with G+!

[ResR]

That Google+ $&/t gives me a headache too. They try to force on a product that failed to achieve it's purpose to compete with facebook.
I agree with Dave too. Also vintage electronics parts are much more easier to reuse. Try to desolder and sort by value SMD 0402 parts, or hand solder them onto new PCB. Or desolder and reuse BGA or QFP chips (not to mention if it has any use at all).
 
Not an easy task, specially for beginners.
I have saved only few LED's size 0402 "collecting dust" in my SMD LED 10mL test tube.

[josko]

I am for vintage equipment teardown as well, it was thing that made me come over to eevblog.
I love old stuff, I would suggest to get even more vintage equipment especially test equipment..
Some old tube oscilloscopes.. ones designed for 100MHz with tubes!! That was true black art where all the tube components acts as antennas and designer had to take that into account.
Or what about this beast? that's just thing of beauty - 2kV transformer in oil, mercury arc rectifiers.
And tearing down Kindle, iPads, laptops or toy walkie-talkies? Give me a break... You can tear down those at home.. they are everywhere.

[CJWarlock]

Dunno if it's a right topic to say it but I'd like to see a Commodore 64 teardown - Dave's style.

[Alexei.Polkhanov]

Dialog in a museum:
- What do you think Leonardo Da Vinci would have painted if he was alive today? With all these new pigments that were not available back then...
- Do you think Leonardo was advanced men for his time?
- Yes, very advanced!
- Then he would have used best SLR camera and MRI machine he could find.

[c4757p]

More like "why study the methods Da Vinci used when I can use clipart?"

[ddavidebor]

Because leonardo is cool and clipart nerdy

[Alexei.Polkhanov]

Well, Leonardo often used methods and techniques that were later abandoned due to problems with oxidation, humidity etc.

I guess when we look at old designs we have to look at it in context where half of design decisions were ingenious but another half was just just stupid and later replaced by something better. Point of looking at it is in knowing which one is which.

[Agent24]

While I certainly agree that teardowns are a great way to learn things, and that old teardowns are often much more fascinating, I don't agree that teardowns of modern devices are always bad - in my opinion it matters more on the actual equipment itself than the age.

For example, you will hopefully find good examples of proper board layout for high speed digital connections on a Kindle PCB, design considerations which are just as valid now as they were decades ago.

And you don't find out how someone used a technology on an old piece of kit that doesn't use that new technology, eg: it wasn't invented yet.

[vk6zgo]

Well, Leonardo often used methods and techniques that were later abandoned due to problems with oxidation, humidity etc.

I guess when we look at old designs we have to look at it in context where half of design decisions were ingenious but another half was just just stupid and later replaced by something better. Point of looking at it is in knowing which one is which.

Agreed,sometimes old designs do use something that with hindsight looks stupid, but in many cases the Engineers were forced to do it that way because the "suits" wanted to use up old inventory.

"Penny pinching" has been with us for many years.
A classic case is the way Marconi used big,clunky pots & other such components for decades.
Maybe they stocked up big in the 1940s because they thought WW2 might go another 10 years!

What I think is interesting about old equipment is mainly the mechanical side of things.
Lots of people can design Electronics,but it takes a high degree of professionalism to produce something as physically stable,& just plain "useable"as some of these old beasties.

[Seg]

Hmmm, I have a 3rd gen Kindle that found its way under my knee on the bed one day. Keep an eye out for it in the mailbag...

[mimmus78]

I think this generation is very fortunate to have this stuff to play with. Old equipment is like open source software, you can understand how it works and try to improve repair it if you know what you are doing.

I repaired many analogic equipment in last few years and I enjoyed it because every time i learnt something.

I find more interesting watching this old equipment teardown than poking with boring new digital stuff.

D.

[kcozens]

If a person is watching teardown videos only to see what circuitry is inside the boxes they are missing out on part of the learning opportunity offered by the videos. A teardown shows you see the circuitry inside the box and what parts are used but more than that, and equally as important, is how the circuitry was packaged. You can learn whether one circuit board was used or if there are multiple boards. You can see how the boards, and other items inside the box are mounted and interconnected. You can see how the displays, buttons, knobs, and switches are mounted, and how they are connected back to the main circuit boards.

There is more to electronics than just making a circuit that works if you are trying to create a product.

[CHexclaim]

Which is the best part of the teardown of a modern scope or similar signal gear? The black squares with heatsinks on top? The switching power supply? The handle? NO! The signal front end, with all that black magic shaped traces that make a beautiful background picture for the computer.

It comes to my mind that it is really a pity when technology gets lost in time. Sometimes engineers need to copy old designs to achieve a goal. Nasa, on the process of designing the new spacecraft, sent engineers to the museum where one of the Apollo capsule sits to learn how certain things were designed then and why. I cannot find the quote for that but I clearly remember. I did find this though: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2268189/Nasa-fires-museum-piece-rocket-time-40-years.html

CH!

[samgab]

Hmmm, I have a 3rd gen Kindle that found its way under my knee on the bed one day. Keep an eye out for it in the mailbag...

He's already done a teardown on one of those...

[madshaman]

Which is the best part of the teardown of a modern scope or similar signal gear? The black squares with heatsinks on top? The switching power supply? The handle? NO! The signal front end, with all that black magic shaped traces that make a beautiful background picture for the computer.

It comes to my mind that it is really a pity when technology gets lost in time. Sometimes engineers need to copy old designs to achieve a goal. Nasa, on the process of designing the new spacecraft, sent engineers to the museum where one of the Apollo capsule sits to learn how certain things were designed then and why. I cannot find the quote for that but I clearly remember. I did find this though: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2268189/Nasa-fires-museum-piece-rocket-time-40-years.html

CH!

Great point wrt NASA.  Honestly, if a person cannot see or refuses to see value in studying designs of the past in any field they are only hurting themselves.

Design is a creative process (I'd go as far as saying it's artistic) and the more ideas one is exposed to, the more ideas one has to draw from when facing a design challenge.

[Bored@Work]

I think the worst offenders are usually software people. Everything older than a few month and they don't want to use it. They have a new, useless programming language every six month, new web frameworks, new libraries to blink a LED every six month. They just can't have it to leave something alone and just let it work.

The irony is that their shiny "new" is often just another rehash of something decades old.

[JoannaK]

I think the worst offenders are usually software people. Everything older than a few month and they don't want to use it. They have a new, useless programming language every six month, new web frameworks, new libraries to blink a LED every six month. They just can't have it to leave something alone and just let it work.

The irony is that their shiny "new" is often just another rehash of something decades old.

A good example of the 'new' are languages like Java (and later) that use immediate compiling and virtual CPU.s to run the identical precompiled code on all machines. Like using Byte (or 16 bit) stack based computers were something new.. Even on home/personal computers have been having those Since System-P (that was available at least AppleII at it's heyday, and I'm quite sure the System-P is a lot older than that.

And IIRC, it's still available at some variant.