General > General Technical Chat

"Giving away secrets" of electronics?

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tautech:
And we think DSO’s are bad for aliasing !  :scared:

vk6zgo:
Even though it is Faringdon, there are a lot of places out there which try to pretend the most "public domain" of circuitry can be described as "trade secrets".

One place I worked had an interface board (which they somewhat grandly, called a "mother board") filled with circuitry straight out of the National Semiconductor IC book.
For ages, they wouldn't let us have a schematic, making troubleshooting problematical, to say the least.

Such nonsense is usually driven by Management drones, unfortunately often abetted by technical people who know better, but are playing along for internal political ends.

In another place, a plain old CRT monitor in a piece of hearing testing equipment developed a vertical deflection problem.
The standard procedure was to send them back to the USA, to be replaced with a "Refurbed" unit for around $A1200.

Although this was a "nice little earner" for the supplier, they decided to stop doing that, & to sell us a brand new, much more expensive monitor.
 
Looking at the board, the circuitry around the "jungle IC" which provided all the scanning drive signals looked familiar, although the morons had sanded the identification off the IC.

Following my hunch, I spoke to an ex- colleague, who loaned me a Electrohome monitor handbook.
Sure enough, it was the very same circuitry, albeit in a different PCB layout.
The problem, as with the "E'homes", turned out to be a quite underrated diode, which, when it died, caused this fault.

A look in the store yielded a dusty looking, long forgotten diode which filled the bill admirably, so we were able to return the device to the customer without having to hit them with a huge financial shock!

eti:

--- Quote from: jonpaul on November 22, 2022, 06:39:22 pm ---ETI says
"It's quite the insult to call an electronics engineer an "electrical engineer"....Oh boy did it annoy me!!"

I was in university in 1960s, engineering was CE civil, EE electrical, ME mechanical

We required all three courses regardless of specialty.  I was indeed an EE.


There were no special category of electronic engineer!

My professors were all "electrical engineers" one from Con Edison, many from Bell Laboratoires, some authored out text books. 

most of my 55 years of experience are with analog and power circuit and products design

So, ETI, I take issue of your words about insults.

Have a great day

Jon

--- End quote ---
I had said That is what I thought as a teenager for a short time, not my opinion now.

If you choose to take offence to an opinion I held over 30 years ago, that is somewhat foolish.

IanB:

--- Quote from: vk6zgo on November 23, 2022, 12:23:44 am ---Even though it is Faringdon, there are a lot of places out there which try to pretend the most "public domain" of circuitry can be described as "trade secrets".
--- End quote ---

The real problem is that technology today has taken the place that magic held in the past.

The world somehow thinks that the way things work is so complex, so mysterious, that only a few select people who have been inducted into the hidden knowledge can understand it.

Whereas, in reality, any technical problem can be solved by the application of appropriate logic, imagination, and deductive reasoning. There are no technical secrets. Show a device that does something, and someone else can construct a device that does the same thing. Present a description of what a new device needs to do, and someone can construct a device that fits the bill. The fact this is so easy to do so is why patents exist. Patents are like mining claims. The first person to file the paperwork gets to own the proceeds.

In my utopian world, I would like the patent system to be abolished, and let people be free to create, invent, and compete without restraint.

eti:

--- Quote from: IanB on November 23, 2022, 12:57:02 am ---
--- Quote from: vk6zgo on November 23, 2022, 12:23:44 am ---Even though it is Faringdon, there are a lot of places out there which try to pretend the most "public domain" of circuitry can be described as "trade secrets".
--- End quote ---

The real problem is that technology today has taken the place that magic held in the past.

The world somehow thinks that the way things work is so complex, so mysterious, that only a few select people who have been inducted into the hidden knowledge can understand it.

Whereas, in reality, any technical problem can be solved by the application of appropriate logic, imagination, and deductive reasoning. There are no technical secrets. Show a device that does something, and someone else can construct a device that does the same thing. Present a description of what a new device needs to do, and someone can construct a device that fits the bill. The fact this is so easy to do so is why patents exist. Patents are like mining claims. The first person to file the paperwork gets to own the proceeds.

In my utopian world, I would like the patent system to be abolished, and let people be free to create, invent, and compete without restraint.

--- End quote ---

Brilliant. And also naive. People should be rewarded financially for their own personal inventions, where they’ve invested vast amounts of time and personal money into developing an invention no one has considered up until then. Utopia never works. That is a daydream.

It’s all very well for the rest of society who made no personal sacrifice in this way, to assume they’re entitled to it.

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