Electronics Now articles from January 1994

Electronics Now archives from January 1994

Semiconductor laser advance. (first vertical-cavity, surface-emitting laser to produce visible light) (What's News)
January 1, 1994... The first vertical-cavity, surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) to produce visible light was demonstrated by researchers at Sandia National Laboratories (Albuquerque, NM). According to the researchers, the VCSEL is an important leap forward in laser...

Semiconductor slowdown. (market slowdown) (What's News )
January 1, 1994... The slowdown in the semiconductor market will continue through mid-1994, according to the October 1993 report from Advanced Forecasting Inc. (Cupertino, CA). Dr. Moshe Handelsman, a spokesman for Advanced Forecasting, reports that the...

Adding old-fashioned gauges to modern automobiles. (Drawing Board)
January 1, 1994... Nothing in life comes without a price of some kind. As we get closer to the twenty first century, there are fewer and fewer global truths around, but this is definitely one of them. Once upon a time, given a certain amount of really basic...

PIC microcontroller programmer. (how to build a reduced instruction set computer-like microcontroller)
January 1, 1994... FRED EADY THIS ARTICLE WILL INTRODUCE YOU to a new and very popular RISC (reduced instruction set computer) -like microcontroller called PIC from Microchip Technology. It will also show how to build a full-function PIC16C5X microcontroller...

68705 microcontroller programmer. (how to program 6805 type microcontrollers)
January 1, 1994... Now you can program your own 6805 microcontrollers with this inexpensive programmer. THIS ARTICLE WILL DESCRIBE THE design of a programmer for the 68705 called the EP705N. The 68705 microcontroller differs from the 6805 in that it has EPROM in...

Radon monitor. (home-built environmental radon gas detector)
January 1, 1994... Build this radon monitor to detect a possible health threat in your home and, while doing it, learn more about radioactivity. THIS TWO-PART ARTICLE DISCUSSES the design, construction, and use of a simple, inexpensive environmental radon gas...

Vintage radio. (practical pointers for restoring antique radios)
January 1, 1994... The vacuum-tube radio, once an important source of news and entertainment, has become a museum piece. But it's fun to revisit those old days of radio by restoring an abandoned set. IT IS SATURDAY MORNING SO YOU DEcide to go to the local flea...

Wave shaping. (waveform generation)
January 1, 1994... Learn the basics of waveform generation and shaping with bipolar transistor circuits that you can build and put to work. THE SUBJECT OF THIS ARTICLE IS waveform generation and shaping as performed by various kinds of multivibrator circuits and...

Multimedia resources, digital bogey contest, CTCSS tone squelching, coin-mechanism sources, and low-distortion sinewaves. (Continuous Tone Controlled Sub-audible Squelch)(includes directory of multimedia resources) (Hardware Hacker)
January 1, 1994... New hacking opportunities seem to be emerging daily. Word has it that there are bunches of new applications for those video camera CRT viewers and their support chips. Such applications include tiny oscilloscopes, VGA interfaces, virtual-reality...

A question of power: what is the sound of one amp clipping? (Audio Update)
January 1, 1994... For many serious music listeners, the advent of digital reproduction raised a troubling question: Can their present low- or medium-powered amplifiers cope with the 90-dB dynamic range inherent in CD technology? Although my real-time analyzer...

Falling prices are not necessarily a good thing. (hardware and software prices) (Computer Connections)
January 1, 1994... Prices of both hardware and software continue to drop, but this may be a mixed blessing. This month we'll examine trends in the hardware arena. Intense price competition (as well as natural technological evolution) has roughly halved the cost...