This is my introductory post to the EEVblog forum. I notice it's somewhat longer than others. Maybe because I'm older than most on this forum.
I am a retired EE (electric power) who has dabbled in electronics since the mid 60's. Textbooks were switching from vacuum tubes to solid state as I was in collage and my employment involved practically nothing under 2300V AC unless it was control circuitry (125VDC) or support equipment (480V AC). I worked on auxiliary system design and large motor application for power plants and was the company's "rotating machinery specialist", i.e., the guy the plant called at 3AM when the generator went boom. (the largest motor I've worked on was rated 261,000HP & the largest generator was 800MVA) The motor was the main machine (there were 2) at a pumped storage hydro station. Motor at nite and generator (220MVA) by day.
I KNOW what it takes to run a power plant because I've been part of it. Burn 5000 tons of coal a day, get rid of 500 tons of ash (without filling the sky or your room with it), all without blowing the place to kingdom come.
I've built many Heathkit bench gear kits starting with the EK-1 VOM and moving up to the IM-13 VTVM (still in daily use after about 55 years) and winding up with the IO-4235 dual trace scope (still in use after 37 years), a couple signal generators & a counter.
I have a Rigol MSO2102A & DM3068 bought new when my electronics interest reignited a year ago.
I designed and built a digital computer using RTL logic in the early 70's a few years before the Altair. It had a whopping 64 BYTES of memory, I/O was via toggle switches and LEDs. Eventually I built an Altair 8800 kit which was my main computer til the Mac Plus in 1985 IIRC.
I have a flock of old Mac computers, most of which work including this one (a 2.3GHz G5 tower anchor) which is my newest computer. It runs OSX 10.4 because 10.5 breaks too much software. (I'm a Mac fanboy because I never liked MS because of Bill's attitude toward hobbyists when he worked at MITS.)
Lately I've acquired a bunch of old gear from eBay. The list:
2 HP3478A 5 1/2 digit VM
2 HP 3456A 6 1/2 digit VM one of which I repaired failed zener in the inguard PS
1 Fluke 335D voltage standard & null VM (replaced a bunch of caps)
1 HP 6253A dual PS (repaired, failed zener)
1 HP 6642A PS
a couple GR decade boxes, a DP1311 Decapot (Kelvin Varley divider which I'd never heard of til Dave mentioned it) & an ESI D887 Deka box. All seemingly in spec or close enough.
My main interests in electronics are power supplies (usually model RR throttles), repairing (& building) test gear, voltnuttery, test & measurement, digital computers & digital circuitry in general. Most of my hobby work is usually in support of something digital (Arduino these days). I never really understood the pole & zero stuff.
For me, positive current flows from the plus terminal to the minus terminal & we should have never let the physicists name the terminals on a FET.
Sayings:
Never remember anything you can look up. (Einstein)
Groves giveth and Gates taketh away. (?)
Fred_47
Fred Lotte, PE (not current), BEng, MEng
Ohio, USA