Funniest thing you saw in electronic design/manual/etc

[Agurri]

Good morning/afternoon/night,

I didn't see a thread talking about funny things you guys have encountered while reading manuals, doing teardowns, etc. They could be classified mostly as Easter egg, but if it's funny ... then it deserves to be here !

I'll start, so here's my story :

Back in college, I needed to charge a pack of Ni-Cd batteries, and I had a Hitec CG-340 charger on hand. It was getting late, and to make sure I wasn't making any error, I decided to read the manual. http://www.hitecrcd.com/files/ManualCG340.pdf

I read the paper, and I came to read the User Caution and it says this :

If the battery to be charged is attached to the charger "backwards" or in reverse polarity, the entire structure of the Universe as we know it will be substantially altered as time will then run backwards and it will be your fault.

I just couldn't stop laughing ... really. I was with some guys and we couldn't believe what was written in there. It was, and still is, one of the most memorable night of college.

So, if you have any funny story to share, go for it. Pictures or documents are always a plus !

[Psi]

Not an electronic thing, but when writing the logging system for an application a few years back i needed to choose a name for an event so it could appear in the log.
The task that the event performed was all math and picking a meaningful name for it wasn't really possible.

So i thought, screw it, and named the log text as "Spinning up FTL drive"

It was around the time battlestar galactica was on TV, as you can probably imagine

[JuKu]

Form a license agreement (by memory): "Should you make illegal copies of the software, we will send two ugly trolls after you and your firstborn child."

A delay line IC had a winding route on silicon with a picture of the die on the data sheet. Look closely, and you could see a picture of a steam locomotive engine on the tracks.

I once designed an audio DSP module. I needed to route an 5 track control bus from the control connector to the chips. If you looked the module against light, you saw a few notes on the inner layers, so that the five tracks and the note pictures formed a short music piece.

[AntiProtonBoy]

I once designed an audio DSP module. I needed to route an 5 track control bus from the control connector to the chips. If you looked the module against light, you saw a few notes on the inner layers, so that the five tracks and the note pictures formed a short music piece.

That's pretty cool!

[free_electron]

Old national semiconductor databook ... (see pdf file )

stuff found on dies ...

http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/index.html

[SeanB]

Hey, I have a dozen of those................

Been wondering what to do with them.

[Agurri]

Old national semiconductor databook ... (see pdf file )

stuff found on dies ...

http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/index.html

Took me a while to see the old datasheet. But ... now if I need a buffer, I'll ask "Do you have a damn fast one ?"

[T4P]

Shown them before here, but this is a box that had a test card for PC`s in it..

My chest is hurting with laughter ... it was like reading the first manual that came with my 936 clone (the earlier one)

[Agurri]

Shown them before here, but this is a box that had a test card for PC`s in it..


images

My chest is hurting with laughter ... it was like reading the first manual that came with my 936 clone (the earlier one)

Is it possible to tell me why the hell is there Olympics rings in there ?!

[tom66]

National Semiconductor: Polish Op Amp data sheet

[codeboy2k]

We had developed a mainframe communications hardware for multibus unix platforms, and written device drivers and hardware, etc.
we had a developed a bunch of PAL devices on board that cleaned the memory window (it wasn't CPLD or FPGA back then)..

We called it the windex chipset.

[PA0PBZ]

I'm still puzzled by the PC P.O.S.T. telling me "Keyboard error, press F1 to continue"

[SeanB]

I received a computer box from the front line with the terse description of the fault - "First bomb fell on target".

Pretty good considering the worst............

I just had to phone and ask why the pilot was complaining.

[Agurri]

National Semiconductor: Polish Op Amp data sheet

Now... I will definitely look more into datasheets. That is hilarious !

[artag]

Impressive device. Even more impressive name.

http://www.vishay.com/docs/53058/mepic.pdf

[Yansi]

Thats like the ST's off-line switchers named VIPER12 and VIPER16. 

[BillyD]

Again this is not electronics but a favourite of mine.
A few years ago I was testing a beta of our product and got an error message like 'Server not available'.
Being human I tried again and got the same message.
I tried a third time and got the message 'I thought I told you to fuck off'.

[deephaven]

In those long ago years when the BBC Micro was all the rage, guys at work were having a go at hacking it to release normally paid-for options. They were making good progress, but halfway through they noticed some embedded ASCII which read "Does your mother know you're doing this?"

[KSP]

A couple of mildly amusing ones that come to mind are:

I was running a calibration program and one of the instructions was "connect the UUT to CH1 of the sillyscope".

And the most helpful of error messages - "ERROR: Something Happened"

[Neilm]

National Semiconductor: Polish Op Amp data sheet

Now... I will definitely look more into datasheets. That is hilarious !

Write only memory
http://www.interstellar.com/photos/Write_Only_Memory.pdf

[rx8pilot]

This is classic. I was in the pro audio biz in the 90's, and this got my attention.

http://www.crownaudio.com/media/pdf/legacy/belchfire_datasheet.pdf

[chicken]

Besides those nasty liquid crystals (if liquid crystal is swallowed: flash your mouth thoroughly with water), I was amused about the places to avoid section describing all the places where there are interesting pictures to be had.

[Excavatoree]

J. Gordon Letwin, before he worked for Microsoft, worked for Heathkit, where he wrote HDOS - The Heath Disk Operating System.  He also worked on the Heathkit version of the popular text game "adventure."  One of the HDOS error messages was taken from adventure:  It is now pitch dark.  If you proceed, you will likely fall into a pit."  This message appeared when one activated an undocumented feature "HDOS stand alone" that loaded the entire OS into memory.

[MatthewEveritt]

Required reading in our lab :  Heisenberg's dog

[jc101]

In those long ago years when the BBC Micro was all the rage, guys at work were having a go at hacking it to release normally paid-for options. They were making good progress, but halfway through they noticed some embedded ASCII which read "Does your mother know you're doing this?"

Another BBC favourite was in v1.2 of the BBC ROM

Code: [Select]

D0D0    JSR     &D1ED
Ah, the memories...

[Ryano]

Timely.... I just received this wonderfully helpfully/hopeful popup notification that did noting to stop me from hitting "Ok" and closing the program.



You go plucky little tester, but try harder next time!

[calexanian]

Impressive device. Even more impressive name.

http://www.vishay.com/docs/53058/mepic.pdf

Is that a serious product? Sounds like an surface mount electric match. I cant imagine what you would use it for other than air bags, pyrotechnics, or weapons.

[T3sl4co1l]

Impressive device. Even more impressive name.

http://www.vishay.com/docs/53058/mepic.pdf

Is that a serious product? Sounds like an surface mount electric match. I cant imagine what you would use it for other than air bags, pyrotechnics, or weapons.

Sounds like exactly what it is -- not the kind of thing you'd ordinarily trawl Digikey looking for, but for those certain special purpose or military applications?  Sure, why not?  Kind of neat.

Now I'm kind of curious why ignition rate isn't less than 250us.  Surely it can be fired in a EBW mode in <1us, and used to ignite secondaries* directly?

*Secondary (insensitive) explosives.  Primaries are the sensitive, ridiculously dangerous kind that transition from deflagration (burning) to detonation very quickly (often within the space of a single particle or a few).  Secondaries include TNT, RDX, dynamite (nitroglycerin (a primary) made insensitive with absorbents) and so on, which can usually be handled roughly, melted, pressed, etc.

Explosive shock waves travel on the order of 10km/s, or ~1cm/us, so it takes a pretty fast kick to get things going.

Tim

[kayvee]

Back in the old EPROM days we used to add the following ASCII  at some arb location to help fill it up:

If you are reading this, may the fleas of 1000 camels infest your gonads

No positive feedback on anyone reading it, but I am sure they did somewhere.