[sdiy] There is no fun analogue chips anymore!

[Scott Gravenhorst]

Martin Klang <mars at pingdynasty.com> wrote:
>
>On 28 Jun 2012, at 15:18, Scott Gravenhorst wrote:
>
>> Yes, there is a learning curve bullet to be bitten, but the process is no different
>> than the effort we put in to learn how analog systems work.
>
>well there is no silver learning curve bullet unless you bite it 
>by the horns, and that's the dilemma. 
>
>any more coffee going?

As I'm sure it's understood, I didn't say it was easy.  In fact, my experience with learning
analog wasn't by means of any silver bullet either, it was difficult and took a serious chunk of
my time.  Anything worth doing is going to have that aspect.

I am not an engineer.  I have no degree.  I am not a genius.  Yet I've been successful.  I think
that it's more "gotta wanna" than anything else.

It is what it is, no new wonderful consumer analog parts are being developed, the existing ones
are often bins of new/old obsolete parts which are drying up.  Through-hole is being relegated to
museums.  Remember buggy whips?

As Jim Patchell points out, there is a growing plethora of different ways to do things.  From
small things like dsPICs to extremely powerful DSP ICs to FPGAs with microprocessor cores built in
- to who knows? - but there will be more.  So you can take your pick.  If you can't write HDL,
maybe C or even some new language is more to your taste.  And given a language, there are often
libraries of things that you can pretty much ignore the contents of and use as black boxes much
like many of us have used OTAs.  output = filter( SVF, input ).  No need to understand how the
filter works, only that it does and it's spectral profile.

Like it or not, good or bad, that is what we face and it will not change unless one of us ponies
up the cash fortune for analog philanthropy I wrote about.  

In the world of the possible, the question then becomes - what next?

-- ScottG
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-- Scott Gravenhorst
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