Electronics Now articles from June 1994

Electronics Now archives from June 1994

L-Com DXB65 Ethernet Cable Tester. (Equipment Reports )
June 1, 1994... Network downtime has become a real economic threat for nearly every business in the country. Downtime means money lost when it prevents employees from getting their work done, and downtime is always a burden on the guy who is responsible for...

David and Goliath (or) Bill's bad, awful day. (Microsoft Corp.'s Bill Gates; suit filed by Stac Electronics against Microsoft Corp.) (Computer Connections)
June 1, 1994... Grover's Bad, Awful Day is a Sesame Street story about a character named Grover. In the story, everything that can go wrong does go wrong. On the way home from school, Grover's ice cream falls off the cone and it starts to rain. He steps on a...

Two possible designs for our tachometer's counting circuit. (Drawing Board)
June 1, 1994... We're finally ready for the nuts and bolts of the tachometer design. So far we have a conditioned version of the ignition pulse and a power supply. The next step is to design the circuit that does the counting. Counting circuits are a dime a...

Build the tubehead. (combined solid-state and vacuum tube amplifier for compact disc players)
June 1, 1994... THE OPTICAL PITS ON COMPACT discs that store sound digitally are a remarkable technical accomplishment as far removed from the spiral grooves in vinyl records as ICs are from vacuum tubes. However, many audiophiles believe that compact discs are...

AM power loop antenna. (amplitude modulation)
June 1, 1994... Build this AM radio antenna booster and receive distant stations that you never expected! IF ANY OF YOUR FAVORITE AM RADIO stations is hard to receive because it is so far away, the Power Loop, an AM radio antenna booster, is the project for...

Build this PC I/O breadboard. (personal computer; input/output)
June 1, 1994... BUILD THIS SIMPLE, STRAIGHTFORward circuit that lets you bread-board circuits and control them with your personal computer. The circuit consists of three parts: a parallel-interface card, an external breadboard platform, and a cable to connect...

Computer benchmarks.
June 1, 1994... Benchmarks are more than yard sticks--if used properly, they can help you wring every drop of performance from your computer system. BENCHMARKS ARE STANDARDS FOR evaluating all aspects of our lives. They grade everything from academic...

All about relays. (electronic relays)
June 1, 1994... Learn about different kinds of relays, remote switches and CMOS bilateral IC switches and how to apply them. A RELAY IS A DEVICE THAT PERMITS power or signals to be switched remotely by an electrically isolated input circuit. Relays today are...

Build the Digilyzer. (digital analyzer)
June 1, 1994... Build the Digilyzer: It performs some digital analyzer functions, but it costs a lot less--and it fits in the palm of your hand. A DIGITAL ANALYZER IS AN EXtremely useful instrument for troubleshooting digital circuitry. Unfortunately, digital...

Air turbines. (dental tool) (Hardware Hacker)
June 1, 1994... Dentists are concerned about AIDS and related viruses. As a result, a lot of them are switching to newer "single use" dental tools that minimize health risk factors. This leads us to some new hacking opportunities. What you call a dentist's...

FM DX again. (frequency modulation) (Hardware Hacker)
June 1, 1994... Well, the dust has finally settled on the long-distance FM reception problems we've looked at several times in the past. As it turned out, there are lots of genuinely useful problem-solving products out there, but they sure are hard to find. A...