[sdiy] TI to buy NatSemi!!!!!

[Rainer Buchty]

On Tue, 5 Apr 2011, David G. Dixon wrote:

> You know what else has changed?  The ability and the desire to build 
> things for oneself.  Back in the day, there was Heathkit and the AARL. 
> You could build yourself a television or a ham radio from parts you 
> could buy at your local Radio Shack!  The ability to build your own 
> stuff was a big part of the joy of electronics for many people.

Jumping in late, so apologies if that was already covered by a post I 
have yet to read, but...

...back in the day one driving force in building things yourself was 
that you could actually save money. So you had two benefits: 
learning/experience and saving money.

Today it's merely the experience factor. What's the point in building 
your own flatscreen TV if you can get a working one in a nice casing for 
less than you pay for the display alone?

Plus, doing so involves a lot of specialization as today the formerly 
known "Lego principle" (after all, there was a block/chip for any 
purpose) is no more. So you can't just assemble more complex stuff from 
simple components but also have to dive into the realms of CPLD/FPGA 
programming, soldering TQFP or, worse, BGA, etc.

And since anything is equipped with blinkenlights and stuff, there's 
also little joy left in soldering together that classic LED atomium or 
that big bad LED clock everybody wanted to have so badly 25, 30 years 
ago.

Furthermore, because of consumer industry having switched more and more 
to ASIC-based single-chip devices, BGA soldering and, 
sub-miniaturization there's even little room for acquiring repairing 
skills. Going back to synths, it's rather easy to fix any machine up to 
maybe the mid 1980s. From that on, they increasingly used ASICs and 
other means of money-saving. Sure, you can repair the usual stuff like 
blown PSU, popped caps, and maybe cracked traces. But if one of the "big 
beasts" die, that was it.


However, not all is lost. I think with FPGAs and the relative ease of 
use of modern HDLs, people will come back to hardware DIY (not to 
mention doing it just all in software as in the case of e.g. creating 
VSTi plugins) as they can now create their very own systems on chip for 
less cost than they used to spend for all parts of e.g. a simple 
microprocessor system.

Of course this moves the DIY aspect from soldering to software, 
therefore some skills of the past (like remembering pinouts of your 
favorite part or resistor color codes) become less relevant.

Rainer